As previously announced a few weeks ago, the manufacturer of underwater housings entitled HUGYFOT was able to present a ready-2-dive underwater housing for the Nikon D300 (developed at light-speed) during the Antibes Festival. The new housing also has some interesting new details which we were able to capture in pictures.
Contrary to some speculations available on the internet about D300/d200-compatablity, HUGYFOT mentioned that they had to design a complete new front and backplate of the housing. Next to the usual adjustments for fitting a camera they also included some recent customer feedback to generally improve their housing design.
Shaped more Ergnomic to the wrist
For the first time since Hugyfot was bought by the new Belgium owners the company displays a product with an ergonomically shaped wrist-corner. René Hugenschmidt previously introduced this with Housings of the SIRIUS/ATLAN series, several years ago. Unfortunately this elegant feature was lost during the takeover and is now seeing a highly appreciated comeback. It will be a standard feature for the upcoming Canon 40D and Nikon D3 housing.
Improved Transition for Aperture/Shutter
An interesting detail is he new transition fort he front control-wheel. Some customers requested a better solution on the predecessor D200 housing. For this problem a solution was presented during the festival. However there is a downer for existing D200 customers. The improvement is not compatible to existing housings and only available with the new D300.
Tight knobs instead of wheel
Another change compared to the D200 design is the upper set ob buttons. Previously this was solved by a wheel which was holding the function ISO, WB, or QUAL constantly pressed when you wanted to turn the knobs for changing the setting on the right side of the housing. Certainly this avoids long search for the exact position but on the other hand it also demands to hold the button pressed for a while. What is going to be best practice underwater remains to be seen. The new design certainly follows the land-handling suggested by Nikon.
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