Dive Housing

[bencoyote]

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I've heard that Subal has a dive housing for the Leica SL. http://www.subal.com/a445c98c2c1/Housing/UW_Housings/Sony_Leica/SL.aspx

 

I also found that BS Kinetics can make one. https://bskinetics.com/?lang=en

 

Has anyone tried either of these?

 

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[tom0511]

Interesting that there are options available. Personally underwater I use m43 (EM1), I feel better to not have $10k inside the housing, also there are macro and Fisheye options available. Also I find the larger DOF can sometimes be an advantage underwater.

Sorry for not really answering your question.

[bencoyote]

Interesting that there are options available. Personally underwater I use m43 (EM1), I feel better to not have $10k inside the housing, also there are macro and Fisheye options available. Also I find the larger DOF can sometimes be an advantage underwater.

Sorry for not really answering your question.

 

 

For this trip I'm taking an Olympus TG-5 with an Ikelite housing, and a GoPro Hero 6 with a SuperSuit. If I get notably more into underwater photography, I will look into one of those other two options along with the 16-35mm. I couldn't budget in all the additional gear for the SL for this trip. Plus with both of these, as you suggested I'll be making cheap mistakes.

 

I also looked for something like the SuperSuit for the Leica X-U couldn't find one. To me that seems like a nice combination. 

 

However since this is a question that may be answered by only a very few people in the world, I thought I would ask expecting it to linger for a while before I got an answer.

 

I do think that the SL is potentially a good camera for underwater use. Its few buttons and simple interface should make designing a waterproof housing easier. My TG-5 has 9 buttons on the back, 2 on the top including the shutter, two wheels to turn and a zoom lever. The SL on the other hand has 3 on the top, 5 on the back, two wheels, the on/off switch and joystick. So fewer case penetrations than even a compact camera.

[bencoyote]

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Edited June 21, 2018 by bencoyote

[tom0511]

The question is - imo - which functions do you have to access underwater. For me it is usually mainly f-stop, exp comp, iso and eventually WB. On the EM1 I can do all this with 2 wheels and 1 button.

I am sure the SL would work well too underwater. But I would miss an AF Macro lens, and I assume the housing and port for a SL+16-35 would be quite big.

I use and like the SL on land, but underwater and on the boat the m43 equipment does the job for me.

[rriley]

I wouldn't dive with an SL and Leica lens in a housing.  

 

At some point you are going to flood the housing, no matter how careful you are.  Salt water in an SL would be a pretty big problem.  Better to use some other camera that won't matter as much if flooded.  There are plenty of good alternatives out there and a lot of state of the art technology isn't needed to get excellent underwater photos.