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By Tony Baskeyfield

Fuji S2 Pro SLR camera
Sea & Sea DX Housing
November 2003

Price £1440
Available from Alan James Photography 0117 9699988

Film cameras were King until very recently. The benchmark was the Nikonos V with 15mm lens. Well… Now there are a few digital SLR cameras that have changed all of that.
Now… Imagine having an underwater camera that takes 220 shots at 12 million pixels that you can see and delete underwater. I had the opportunity to put my Fuji S2 pro SLR inside the first Sea & Sea housing and take it diving in Thailand for a really good workout.

I had recently spoken to Alan James of Alan James photography. He has converted himself to digital SLR photography in a housing with his Nikon D100 in a Sea & Sea DX Housing. Alan is so convinced that this is the way to go in underwater photography he has sold all of his Nikon film cameras.
Alan won 14 gold, silver and bronze awards in 2003 with his digital prints to prove the point.

Alan agreed to loan me one of his first Fuji S2 Pro Sea & Sea housings to see what I thought of it. So I went down to his shop in Bristol and took full advantage of his knowledge on the subject.

First of all, I had all of the wrong lenses. He loaned me his own 105mm Nikkor lens and advised me to buy the 16mm fisheye. These are the two prime lenses that he swears by. The 105mm for fish portraits and macro plus the 16mm for wide-angle photography. These lenses get you really close and minimise the column of water to shoot through.

At first glance the housing looks and feels like a SLR film camera housing plus more buttons to operate digital functions. It is larger than the Sea & Sea NX range measuring 363x220x135mm and weighing in at 3,700g. The front case of the housing is constructed from ABS resin and the rear case clear polycarbonate. My first thoughts were that it looked huge in comparison to the Nikonos V I was using. Especially with the second flash I added. But later on in the water all of those thoughts were put away.

The body is exactly the same as the Sea and Sea DX100 but machined out with different buttons and controls. Domes, ports, handles and tray are identical but with a Nikon 5 pin Flash sync enabling TTL, a must for some photographers.

The S2 takes Nikon AF lenses and flashes. So if you already have Nikon gear it will all work with the Fuji and Sea & Sea housing, ports and domes. The advantage over the D100 is this set up will give you TTL flash.

Users will need a laptop with Photoshop and storage space to save images.

So that's the technical bit, next was to see how it all performed. A couple of e-mails to Hilde Montgommery from Scuba Cats and I was on a plane heading for Phuket in Thailand.

Dropping the camera into the housing was easy. All the cameras buttons and housing controls line up perfectly. The back clips on with four locking catches. I liked the clear polycarbonate back so that I could see the o-ring was seated correctly and check for leaks.In the water the complete set up is well balanced and is slightly heavy which was just right. All of the controls fall nicely to hand and are easy to operate. There's a push button for every operation. So anything you can do above water can be done underwater (except depth of field preview). The shutter release button is nice and sensitive. I could feel the focus lock operating on half pressure and could press gently home to shoot. All in all the Sea & Sea is a beautifully made housing, although I did have a slight leak problem saved by a well positioned tampon that soaked up about half a thimbleful of water.
There was a very slight indentation about the depth of a hair on the housing back where the o-ring seats. This has now been fixed. I'm putting this down to operator error from the housing taking a knock causing the indentation.

It was brilliant to have 220 images at 12m pixels and I shot the lot on each dive. I was able to vary the exposure and flash settings to get the best possible image. Then I viewed the results immediately. This allowed me to adjust all aspects of the shot in the water, from the flash lighting to the ambient exposure and composition

In this fast moving market of ever improving camera technology, this housing is a very specialised piece of equipment. It does its job superbly and is precisely made to operate nearly every button on the Fuji S2 Pro. The S2 will be superseded with the S3 sometime this year.

Long live the King

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