Having always wanted to take decent (read: macro photos with a digital SLR camera) underwater shots whilst snorkeling and SCUBA diving, I had pined over an underwater housing for my Canon 40D. However, if you’ve ever looked into underwater housings for SLR cameras, you’ll know that they are horrendously expensive ($2500+ at the bottom end of the market)! A new housing can cost as much or more than the camera body itself and that doesn’t include the lens ports which are costly as well.
Secondly, my camera is old (bought in 2007), almost ancient by digital camera standards! So getting a new housing for the camera is impossible because the underwater housing manufacturers make a new housing for the next camera released. No point making housings for old cameras, that’s not where the money is.
I had bought an underwater point and shoot camera (Olympus TG-4) a few years ago to test the waters (note, there’ll be a few intentional and unintentional water related puns in this tale today) and it was OK. It definitely took photos underwater and is a solid piece of gear (I even made a bunch of accessories for it). However, I was never truly satisfied – the photos could be grainy (due to low light and a high ISO), photos were a bit flat (need a powerful flash), focus was difficult and don’t even consider cropping the picture. I wanted to take NatGeo quality photos and that requires a decent camera and decent lenses. Which I already owned. I don’t want to downplay the little point and shoot, it has taken some great photos shown below, however, the success rate is very low, probably 1 in a 100.
SteelCity Electronics 