400D Underwater photos - HOW TO ?

Hello a im big fan of bodysurf, and sometimes while in the water i feel the will

of taking pictures of what i see.

 

Is there equipment to go underwater with my 400D + 17-40 F4L?

Is it safe if there is?

 

Or should i use a "disposable" camera and don?t take the chance?

In your research, take a look at

<a href="http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/2dslr_400d.html" >Ikelite</a>

as they have been producing housings for quite a number of years. There are other manufacturers who use aluminum housings but the price goes up accordingly. The housings are fairly large so it may force you to either surf or photograph......have you thought of an amphibious camera such as the Nikonos? Although discontinued and film based, the Nikonos V is still available, even in new and unused conditions. Good luck!

If you don't need the DSLR absolutely, you might consider one of the digicams for which underwater housings are available. Canon has a lot of them in their offerings (S70/80, S3 and so on). This would be a lot cheaper I suppose.

There are quite a few housings for the Canon compact camera's but not many for DSLR's. I have seen one for the 300D (Rebel) advertised in a UK magazine last year - but very expensive (about US$3000 ! ) they might have hopefully come down in price. I saw a housing for the 10D last week in an Australian mag, so there must be one coming soon for the 400D. Currently I use disposables ($10 inc film) but the other option is go with the Nikonos because it still gives good results. I used to have a 300D and I actually used it in the surf without a housing (believe it or not) it went under waves a couple of times, so I would just get out and wash it down with fresh water and thoroughly clean and dry it. it shot well over 100,000 shutters always subject to salt air/water and finally died from too many sunset exposures.

Some of the Olympus P&S cameras are waterproof to a depth of 5m, which should be enough for your purposes. For your 400D, I suggest you do some research at this site:

 

http://wetpixel.com/

Thanks for all the replies.

I think i will a get "cheap" and small camera instead of putting a lot of money on my 400d plus the risk and the lack of mobility.