Mr. Rene Hugenschmidt was not on
the expo anymore. He has retired in the proud age of 74. and informed
us that he will relax on a ten week holiday. On the last
expo he received an honorary award from
"tauchen"
magazine for his lifetimes work, which is
machining very fashionable, small uw housings. There he also met Tom
Leys from Greenforce and agreed that Greenforce is worthy to continue
the Hugyfot housing philosophy and design. Rene Hugenschmidt was convinced
that Greenforce will take care of the spirit and the quality of the
Hugyfot housings.
Tom Leys is also an enthusiastic underwater photographer and always
admired the Hugyfot housing he owns. He promised to continue the
current Hugyfot lineup and overcome the capacity problems "Hugy"
had faced during the last years. Tom assured us that he does not
want to sacrifice design and the quality for moving to mass production.
Hugyfot still enjoys a brilliant reputation among divers around
the world. However the housings were handpicked and always considered
as something special.
The first [and so far only] housing for the new Leica digilux II
illustrates that Tom is going to keep his promise. It was designed
on special request of Leica. They have been looking for a non-block
styled housing. It was the first product completely brought to life
from the new Hugyfot owners. The digilux II housing looks nice and
unique in quality with the typical round shapes. As the price is
comparably high for a non DSLR it will be only of interest for real
Leica enthusiast. The price for the housing also takes this into
account.
However I had to witness a weird scene when a real Leica-holic
who could have been my grandfather suddenly appeared next to me
at the Hartenberger booth. Grandpa tried to push the man behind
the counter to manufacture a dedicated Leica strobe. [What for I
still do not know]. He spread the latest news, that Leica finally
went digital and that "Hugy" already made a housing for
it. His eyes had the glow of a young boy opening his Christmas presents.
I did not dare to explain technical details on digital to him and
ruin his world picture. However he ruined mine J Maybe Leica really
managed to find a gap to survive in the fierce-competition digital
camera market. And overall aren't we just all big boys who want
to play with big toys?
Another very interesting toy from Hugyfot is a prototype of an
iPaq housing. Unlike the Leica this suits exactly the taste of my
generation. All operation of the Handheld could be done without
using the touch display. They just used buttons and we are not sure
if this will be enough for other devices.
Tom had the idea when hearing about tech divers killing time with
eating apples while doing their safety stop. He thought it would
be nice to play games while decompressing. Also he showed us the
demo of a fish logging tool they developed together with another
partner. It allows you to mark fishes you have seen on the dive.
Lars and I were amazed and thought it is about time to finally launch
the
[url=http://www.divelogger.com]http://www.divelogger.com[/url] website. Of course other applications like
decompression calculations are possible. We will keep you updated
on the progress of this very interesting prototype.
" and "how
to use the Powershot housings". We think many visitors would
have liked to walk home with one of the small housings but there
was no sale on the Canon booth. For transactions you were suggested
to visit the multimedia-online.ch AG booth. We wondered if the reps
did not know that they would send their potential customers into
a massive Olympus presentation. Sometimes business is strange…
