Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Patima for Canon G10





A friend of mine just bought a Canon G10, which is also my favorite compact camera. The reason I like it, beyond the optical performance and the fact that it can shoot in RAW, is the fact that it goes to 28mm equivalent at the wide end (whereas so many point-and-shoot cameras only go as wide as 35mm). Perhaps more significantly, the navigation is so familiar to anyone who comes from more traditional photography. Important controls are by means of logical & easily accessible dials rather than arcane menus and sub-menus, all of which generally require me to put my glasses on to read.

Anyway, my buddy wanted to take his new camera underwater, but wanted more sophistication than he could get with the Canon OEM housing. Actually, he would have been fine with that, except that he wanted to use his existing strobe with a housing, an Inon Z240 with a traditional Nikonos 5-pin synch cord. Some housings either easily accept a fiber optic strobe, or will do so after significant jury-rigging. But, using an existing strobe with a Nikonos connector was the one determining criteria he asked me to satisfy.

The solution ... I got him a Patima housing, with the help of Ryan Canon at Reef Photo in Ft. Lauderdale. http://reefphotovideo.com/

Very cool little housing. Nicely machined, and the port is easily interchangeable for a wide angle port Ryan said is soon to be introduced. Apparently the 28mm lens has made it tough to source an external wide angle that doesn't vignette, and I haven't seen the Patima solution yet, but really, that's all this housing lacks to make it to make it an excellent medium-priced solution for UW digital imaging.

1 comment:

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