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Field Review: Nikon D750 and Nauticam NA-D750

by adamhanlon

Field Review: Nikon D750 in the Red Sea

With Nauticam NA-D750 housing

By Alex Mustard.

Nauticam NA-D750

Returning to the same Red Sea reefs with the D750, that I had used for my D700/Subal review six years ago, brought a lot of memories back of old reviews. A year after that trip I headed to Australia for my chance to review my first Nauticam housing, also for the D700. Re-read the conclusion of that review and you’ll find it was a nice product with room for improvement. The primary controls of aperture, shutter and shutter-speed (the ones you use for almost every image and often need to use in a hurry to bag the shot) needed work. And boy, what work Nauticam have done in those five years! Their output has been prodigious, and founder, Edward Lai is now credited with having “produced more innovative underwater designs than anyone else on the planet”.

It is five years since my first Nauticam review. That housing was already impressive, but apart from the same black finish the NA-D750 has evolved massively.

Nauticam’s greatest strength, however, is that they are never satisfied. They constantly try to improve all aspects of their designs and characteristically the NA-D750, being the newest, has features that aren’t yet on any other Nauticams. In this quest they really listen to underwater photographers and their products are all the better for it. Such humility is impressive given the large market share Nauticam now controls and sadly is too rare a commodity at times in the housing manufacturing world! The primary controls on the NA-D750, which caused gripes in my original NA-D700 review, are now exemplary in the industry.

The dials for aperture and shutter speed (which are also used for scrolling through various settings) are deeply sculpted, perfectly geared and easy to use with the lightest of touches with just a single finger. They are a pleasure to shoot with.

Nauticam’s effort on their primary controls makes the housings both a pleasure to use and makes a real difference in nailing the shot or missing it. This is the deeply sculpted dial for adjusting shutter speed.

I also really love Nauticam’s multi-selector solution, which is used for moving focus points around and for navigating menus. It is not new, first appearing on the NA-D7000V, but it remains a standout ergonomic solution on Nauticam’s housings. It performed faultlessly on the NA-D750.

Some housing manufacturers aim to replicate the feeling of using the camera on land in their housing design. Nauticam aim to exceed the ergonomic solutions of the camera by placing a number of the most important controls on levers designed to be pushed with your thumbs. On the left side of the housing there are levers for ISO and Playback, and on the right side for Video Record, Thumb Focus (AF-ON), Info and a small one for exposure compensation. The positive is easy to reach controls. The negative is a very busy outside of the housing. Some manufacturers have designed these levers as push and pull for different functions (Seacam is a particularly neat example), which is an intelligent solution for providing the same easy access to controls with less clutter.

The red lever is Nauticam’s excellent port lock, to the left are levers for the Pv and Fn buttons on the front of the camera (this is a little fiddly to use as it is designed to be pushed with your little finger, and mine is less strong and dextrous than my other fingers). Above this are the aperture control dial and shutter release (half out of shot).

Nauticam’s design philosophy is based on finding optimal ergonomic controls almost regardless of how complex this makes the designs. As I have said before, Nauticam’s designers like to do the hard work, so you don’t have to. The result is buttons and dials at your fingertips, but also a housing that is packed inside with a multitude of cogs, gears and levers. I completely understand the motivation behind this approach, but as a field photographer I tremble slightly at designs I feel are overly complex. Travel and time the ocean have a way of revealing the weaknesses in such designs. They look great in the showroom, but will they really put up with the rigors of the field? In my experience, the answer seems to be sometimes yes, sometimes no.

The jam-packed innards of the NA-D750. Some may see this as leaving no stone unturned in the quest for perfect ergonomics, others unnecessary complexity that may prove unreliable over time.

Any ergonomic dislikes? The thumb lever that many underwater photographers value the most is the one that activates the button for AF-ON, allowing autofocus to be separate from the shutter release. This is usually called back-button focus or thumb-focus. It is a useful technique, I use it at times when I expect autofocus to struggle and hunt, like in supermacro or shooting wide angle in dark places, such as inside wrecks and caves. Some photographers like to use this way of focusing for all their photos.

Nauticam have moved their shutter release lever on the NA-D750, so it is higher relative to the handle of the housing. On all the other Nauticams we had on board it was at least a finger width below the top of the handle, but on the NA-D750 it is level. This does not effect using the shutter release, but it does mean it much harder to simultaneously reach the thumb focus, which is too low. I found it impossible to use the thumb focus when holding the housing one handed (despite the housing being completely neutral in the water). The thumb-focus lever is reachable when you rest the housing on a table, or when you hold the housing with two hands, but not for me when shooting with one hand, as underwater photographers often do. This is the only time I have found this lever hard to use on a Nauticam housing. Every photographer has different hands, but if this feature is important to you, make sure you check it.

Shooting one handed is something that underwater photographers do frequently, whether using their spare hand to steady themselves or simple to be able to reach further. Here Alex Mustard zooms with the camera, while photographing an oceanic whitetip. Photo by Alan Cranston.

I do miss having a top screen on Nauticam housings, as I use this screen all the time to check my settings before going in to shoot. Instead Nauticam encourage you to use the INFO button to see this information loud and proud on the larger rear LCD screen. On the NA-D750 the lever for INFO is tucked in a behind the right handle and I felt this could be hard to use in thick gloves. If this proves to be the case, you can double press the i button to get the INFO screen. Nauticam has excellent and exceptionally easy to use port and housing locks. It is the work of seconds to open, close and securely lock the housing. They are also easy for all to use, don’t have snappy finger biting catches and don’t require tools or strong finger muscles. I know that initially there was a problem with the new style housing latches becoming clogged with black sand on muck dives and no longer locking closed, but I have heard that this has been solved.

It is also less of a concern now that Nauticam have an industry leading vacuum system on their housings. Nauticam were not the first housing manufacturer to fit vacuum seals to the their housings, but, to date, theirs are the best integrated. And that gets even better with the NA-D750, which has a new button to allow you to reset the system when only opening the port (to change lenses). One of the photographers on my workshop told me that the quality of Nauticam vacuum system was her main reason for choosing that housing for her Nikon D4S.

The blue button on the base of the camera tray allows you to reset the housing’s vacuum system when only opening the port. As trays have become more complex, they make it hard to use (well, just hold, as they block the grip) the camera out of the housing and must be unscrewed for topside shooting.

I particularly like the fact that the Nauticam system, unlike the Schrader value solutions, allows you to equalise and open the housing without needing a special attachment and pump. You can even close and pull the vacuum it, if you are prepared to pucker up (the lengths I am prepared to go to save some baggage weight)! I am sure many photographers have been on dive boats and realised they have left their lens cap on. With most vacuum systems you are stuffed if the pump is back at the resort or on the liveaboard. Nauticam’s intelligent solution allows a tool-less manual override.

A great feature of Nauticam’s fully integrated vacuum system is that you need no specialist tools to repressurise and open the housing and, indeed, close and depressurise.

It is worth over-pumping the Nauticam vacuum system a little, as I have seen several photographers abort dives this year because their green light has changed to flashing amber, indicating a change in the vacuum. In two cases the cause wasn’t a leak, but the expansion of air, either from preparing a camera in a cool air-conditioned room, and/or the black housing absorbing too much heat from the sun afterwards.

Any other gripes? I regularly struggle with Nauticam’s electronic synch sockets. I realise that this does not effect 95% of Nauticam photographers, who shoot with only fibre optics, but it occurs regularly for me, and the other Nauticam user on my workshop who used electronic strobe cables had exactly the same problem. I find the Nauticam synch sockets are very prone to leaking, especially when used with synch cables from European strobes (like my Seacam and Subtronic strobes). I suspect the issue is a very tiny engineering tolerance issue, as I feel that the blue o-rings on my Sea & Sea cables are a tiny bit larger and therefore less prone to leaking in the Nauticam sockets then my Seacam and Subtronic cables, so probably I am the only person who uses this combo and therefore suffers!

Almost all Nauticam users fire their strobes with fibre optic cables. I don’t and have had problems with leaky synch sockets shorting out my strobes on several housings. This video simply shows me turning on my camera (and not even touching the shutter release) before the second dive of the trip. Drying and cleaning the sockets and plugs and then reinforcing the seal with electrical tape solved the issue.

I think that the cause of the problem is that there cable ends can move slightly in the sockets and this lets seawater in, shorting out the connections. The result is strobes that flash away on their own as soon as you turn the camera on (see video above). I have had this problem on several Nauticams, including after three dives when using the Nauticam NA-D800 and after just one dive with NA-D750. I fixed this problem by cleaning the sockets and cables and then securing the cable plugs into the sockets with electrical tape (which you can see in the Nauti-suck video, further up the page), which provided an additional barrier to water, but more importantly stopped the plugs moving around. The strobes then worked faultlessly for the remaining 16 dives of the trip.

Nauticam know that almost all of their photographers trigger strobes fibre optically, but I should also mention that if you use the electronic synch sockets on the NA-D750 you cannot use the strobe mounting balls on the housing. The sockets are so close that when a cable is inserted, there is no longer space for a clamp. You are forced to mount your strobe arms on the balls on the tops of the handles instead.

If you use the electronic synch sockets on the NA-D750 then you cannot use the on housing strobe arm mounting balls, and must use the ones on the handles. There is simply not room for the clamps.

Those minor gripes aside, it is easy to conclude that the NA-D750 is a first class housing. It is compact, yet not too heavy in the water. It is fully featured with excellent ergonomic solutions, especially with industry leading solutions in the multi-selector and integrated vacuum system. The crucial primary controls are exemplary, yet the housing is not 100% perfect and I do recommend carefully trying before buying, if thumb focus is an integral part of your shooting technique.

Page 1. Introduction.
Page 2. The Nikon D750.
Page 3. The Nauticam NA-D750.
Page 4. Autofocus Performance.
Page 5. Sensor Performance and Conclusions.