Hugyfot HFC-40D Housing Review

The Travel

Coiba National Park

Panama means 'abundance of fish' in the indigenous language of one of the Indian tribes. In Coiba this is obviously the case. But due to a minor sight at times, the fish is not always clearly visible. Coiba is the largest island of Panama and consists mainly of ancient tropical rainforest. Between 1919 and 2004 the only occupants residing in Coiba were prisoners and their guards. During those years the island was closed for other people, let alone tourists. In the meantime this situation has altered but still very few tourists visit Coiba. One of the reasons is the fact that the island finds itself in a deserted faraway spot. And what might even be more important is the protected status of the island. Coiba is a National park, (the island, the reef and marine life) and UNESCO declared the entire Coiba National Park a "World Heritage Site" in July 2005. It is prohibited to build on Coiba.

The only place to stay at is ANAM, the Panamanian organization of nature preservation. ANAM owns a visitors centre on Coiba and sleeping-accommodation in the form of dormitories for small groups of 5 people. Every morning the howler monkeys woke me up when I was staying there. Unlike the tufted capuchin, the howler monkeys stayed hidden in the forest and I didn't get to see them. The most impressive inhabitant however is the 4 meter measuring crocodile listening to the name Tito. One of my greatest wishes is taking underwater pictures of a crocodile. The ANAM rangers however thought me very foolish when I asked them if it was possible to shoot Tito underwater. Even though Tito has been living in the mangroves close to the visitors centre for a couple of years now and gets treated with dinner-leftovers from time to time, it still is a crocodile, a wild animal and cannot be trusted, according to the rangers. I had to let go of the idea and had to settle for making pictures on land of this ancient animal.

Cold current

Millions of years ago, Coiba was situated close to the Galapagos Islands; it drifted away and ended up in front of the Panama coast. In February an equatorial undercurrent moving eastward from the Galapagos Islands towards Coiba causes up-welling of cold ocean water. This up-welling of cold ocean water feels rather weird underwater and it also looks weird. During one of the dives I had put the Canon 40D on the bottom to be able to take pictures with my other camera. All of a sudden I noticed a brown wall approaching me. Within seconds the water temperature dropped some 5 degrees Celsius, the sight reduced to around 5 meters and the current got really strong. I was able to grab the Canon EOS 40D just in time before it would have started a solitary dive. These cold currents appear also in different colours, like yellow and green. But they do have a common feature; they are full of nutrients and this attracts fish. Large shoals of mackerels, barracudas, white tip reef sharks and small manta rays swam around us. We were probably more often surrounded by large shoals of fish but unable to see them because of the limited sight. Sometimes I was aware of animals in my neighborhood but I couldn't see them. Or they approached you from behind, all of a sudden when you least expected it. At one time a large perch of 1.5 meters freaked me out by sneaking up on me and giving me a penetrating look. I was so shocked I couldn't even take a decent picture of him. According to our guide Herbie Sunk of Scuba Coiba (http:///www.scubacoiba.com) these experiences make diving on Coiba a true adventure.

Excess baggage

Distances in itself are not too bad in Panama, but since the island is divided by mountains and volcanoes, it still takes hours to travel over land. And exactly for that reason I chose to take a national flight which would save me some 8 hours. However; I didn't think of luggage restrictions on national flights. When booking the ticket I had asked the company if my baggage would be a problem. Not only did I have a bag with clothes, toiletries and battery chargers, but also a large bag with diving gear, a rucksack with two digital reflex cameras, lenses, underwater housings ports and flash units. The lady in the travel agency did not mind at all. But the lady at the check-in counter gave me a bewildered look and asked if I really had to take all that baggage with me. She'd have preferred to send it over land. I would then be allowed on the plane and my luggage would arrive two days later. After a long persuasive talk and the payment of a considerable amount of money for my excess baggage she granted me a boarding pass. After that the hand luggage check was scheduled. The small airport did not have a scanner at its disposal. Instead a customs officer searched the luggage manually. And very thorough I must admit; every bag was emptied completely and every box or sack was checked individually. I felt so not at ease when it was my turn. The customs officer herself seemed rather uncomfortable too when going through my hand baggage, she had no idea what to do with it. The underwater housing was investigated from top to bottom but she didn't know what it was or if it could be a dangerous item on board of an airplane. Finally she decided it was not listed among objects strictly forbidden on board so she let me go and I had to try and put all my stuff back into the bags. Finally I was able to enter the plane with my cameras and the stack of equipment too. I was ever so happy to get permission to take my luggage with me because it meant being able to dive and shoot the underwater life the very next day.

Panama Canal

During a trip to Panama you must visit the Panama Canal. The Gamboa hotel is the perfect spot to start from. The hotel is situated close to a village called Gamboa, one of the villages built during the construction of the Canal to reside the workers working on the Canal and later it became the home base of the Americans who managed the Canal for many years. It is an impressive sight to see the sea-going vessels sail through the Canal and the locks. Being from Rotterdam (a Dutch harbor city) I must admit that the vessels arriving in the Rotterdam harbor are a tad bigger than the ones I see here although they are certainly not small. A ship that wants to sail through the Panama Canal is allowed up to a length of 294.1 meters and a width of 32.3 meters. With the knowledge of this Canal having been built in the beginning of the 20st century in the back of my mind, it is a extraordinary achievement.

Canon 40D

The Canon 40D is my companion on this trip to Coiba. It is the successor to the 30D. A striking feature of the Canon EOS 40D compared with its predecessor is the introduction of Live View. Also almost inevitable is the increase of pixel amount on a new camera. This is also the case with the Canon 40D. It has the disposal of 10.5 million pixels; its older brother has to settle for 8.2. A more important difference is the faster processor (DIGIC III) enabling to work with 14 bytes. It delivers improved dynamic range and thus nicer pictures. The LCD monitor has increased from 2.5 inch to 3 inch. The amount of pixels on the LCD monitor however remained the same, 230,000. And although Live View could offer a solution for underwater photography, so far its use is still rather limited. You can use the auto focus when you use the AF-ON button. Unfortunately the monitor turns black when pressing the AF-ON button, (since the mirror needs folding up in order to focus) which makes it difficult to decide your composition.

Sensor cleansing

The good thing about the Canon EOS 40D is its fast start-up time. After activating the camera, the filter in front of the sensor vibrates to get rid of dust. It takes not even a second and it didn't give me the feeling I missed a shooting moment. If you do get that feeling however, then it is good to know that the cleansing gets skipped the moment you press the shutter release; this button holds a priority position. And finally the camera is well-sealed and protected against water and dust. The sealings have been vastly improved compared to the 30D and you don't have to hide the 40D from a rain shower. It is a welcoming feature in the wet environment of a boat, a place I often find myself in as a diver.

Hugyfot

The underwater housing that will take the Canon EOS 40D underwater is the Hugyfot HFC 40D. The first Hugyfot's underwater housing was built in 1953. The latest underwater housing, the Hugyfot HFC 40D appears on the market 55 years later. One can state for sure that Hugyfot has a lot of experience in developing underwater housings. Underwater housings are manufactured by Green Force since 2004. Characteristics of the Hugyfot housings are their round curves. This goes for the HFC 40D as well, it has a nice round shape and the housing looks more than sophisticated. The matte black combines extremely well with the red colour of the shutter release button. Besides that the housing is astonishingly small. It fits the camera like a glove.

Aluminum

The HFC 40D is milled out of a solid block of High-End sea-waterproof aluminum with the aid of a 5-axis CNC milling machine and computer aided design (CAD). The underwater housing weighs 2649 grams (without camera or port) and has been tested to a pressure of 300 feet depths. This is deeper than the underwater housings of most brands. And because the housing is made of aluminum, less humid will appear inside than in a plastic housing. During our dives we encountered large temperature changes - 33 degrees Celsius on the surface and sometimes only 16 degrees on depth - and I was very happy with the latter feature. My housing never suffered from humid, not once, while my buddy's plastic underwater housing became completely steamy at times.

Port system

Hugyfot offers a neat number of three ports: a macro port, a wide angle port and a fisheye port. In combination with a port adapter of different lengths many lenses can be used underwater: Canon (100 and 60 mm macro, 10-22, 16-35, 18-55 en 17-40), Sigma (50, 70 en 105 mm macro, 10-20, 12-24 and 17-70) and Tokina (100 mm macro, 10-17 fisheye and 12-24). For other lenses you can contact Hugyfot and they can advise you as to which port you should use, eventually in combination with an adapter. The ports connect to the underwater housing through a bayonet mount. This system works excellently. The ports connect flawless to the underwater housing and they are so firm that I was never scared I'd loosen one accidentally. Furthermore zoom rings and focus rings are available to enable using the zoom function of the lenses or to manually focus underwater.

Fisheye

In Panama I used the EOS 40D for diving combined with the Tokina10-17 3.5-4.5 AT-X DX fisheye lens in combination with the fisheye port of Hugyfot. The lens is the first fisheye lens with zoom function. The crop factor of 1.6 makes the lens a classic 16 mm fisheye lens on 10 mm. While increasing the zoom, the angle of view gets smaller and the deviation characteristics of a fisheye lens disappear. The 17 mm equals a 27 mm lens. The fisheye port is suitable for this fisheye lens without adapter. The top and bottom contain a lens hood. Not only very convenient for blocking the reflection of sunlight in the port but also to place the housing upside down on a surface. Thanks to the extended sun hood the round port is well-protected. The port is made of acrylic. Acrylic is just a tad more scratch-prone than glass but it's easy to wipe off the scratches. The fisheye port works excellently with this fisheye lens and does not suffer from any distortion in the corners.

Macro

In order to capture the small species I took the Canon EF 100 2.8 USM macro lens and the macro port with me. The minimum focal distance of this lens is 31 cm. Compared with the 60 mm macro lens, you can capture a shrimp in a 1:1 ratio from a larger distance. Normally I would keep the distance between the lens and my object as small as possible because colours underwater fade fast when the distance increases. When trying to capture shy animals a larger distance is an advantage. In that case the flash has to work a bit harder. The combination of the Canon 40D with the 100 mm macro lens delivers a quite fast auto focus. A lens such as this macro lens, does tend to find it difficult to focus and lingers a while sometimes but I did not experience any of this.

Flash connections and leak detector

The HFC 40D is standard equipped with two Nikonos flash connections. Operating the two Sea & Sea YS 110 flashes worked out faultless. I used these flashes manually. A TTL converter can be installed in the housing. The built-in leak detector is super sensitive. When it detects the smallest bit of damp it starts beeping. In a country like Panama, with a high humidity rate, this sensitivity may be annoying. For example, once when I was changing the batteries and the memory card, the leak detector started to beep. It surely startled me as I was certain I dried the camera thoroughly before opening it in my hotel room.

Patented Hugyfot grip

The underwater housing carries a grip on its left side. On top of the grip the connection for two flash arms is positioned. The second connection is on top of the housing, in the centre. To the right there is a hand strap made of neoprene for your hand. This strap is adjustable and fits large as well as small hands offering a good grip on the housing. It also facilitates diving with thicker or thinner gloves. You can also swap this strap for a normal grip with flash connection. That way you can use flash arms of equal lengths to operate two flash units at the same distance and the same angle from your object. I had to use a longer flash arm for the right flash unit to manoeuvre the flash in the same position as the left flash unit.

Allen screw

The underwater housing closes with two Allen screws. The manual states you have to tighten the Allen screws normally and not too tight with the included Allen wrench. I am a bit scared; how do I know they are tightened enough? And if I don't do it correctly the underwater housing might get flooded. Pascal Eeckhout of Hugyfot told me just before my departure that I would feel it when the Allen screws are correctly tightened. Somewhat tensed I try to tighten the Allen screws for the first time and I soon discover what Pascal had already told me, that it is easy enough. At one stage both sides of the underwater housing are perfectly fitting together and you can feel that. Testing the now closed underwater housing in the hotel room's washbasin comes out positive I guess; the leak detector does not beep. Now that I can feel it in my fingertips, I am brave enough to open and close the underwater housing daily and to take it underwater. Closed definitely means closed here.

Operation

The standard viewfinder is clear and offers an almost 100% coverage. Hugyfot has developed an optional angle viewfinder that enlarges the image and enables viewing through the lens at an angle of 45 degrees. All camera functions are operable from outside. And what's even more convenient, the functions are also described in miniature on the underwater housing. This is a handy reminder when you don't know the camera inside out yet. Despite the house being very compact for a DSLR, it is built for big hands. The zoom dial for example has been placed a tad too far away from the hand grip for my female hand to operate it with ease. And that is also the case with the aperture dial on the right side. I just can't reach far enough to operate this dial with my hand caught in the neoprene strap. I literally have to take my hand out of the strap before I am able to change aperture. For people in the possession of bigger hands it won't be a problem. A nice function is the button to detach the lens from the camera. You don't have to open the housing's back but you just have to change the port. And the front of the underwater housing then lets you change the lens. However if you want to change the battery of the camera, you have to take the camera out of the housing completely. It will not suffice to just open and remove the back of the housing.

Conclusion

The combination of the Canon 40D and the Hugyfot HFC 40D is an excellent one. The underwater housing fits the camera like a glove and is very compact and waterproof to a depth of 300 feet. Its round curves and matte black colour make this housing look beautiful. Unfortunately it is somewhat difficult to operate the underwater housing for people with small hands. The fisheye port has no obvious distortion and the housing does not suffer from steaming up at all, not even at huge temperature changes. One point of interest is the fact that the camera has to be taken completely out of the underwater housing when its battery needs changing. And the leak detector works too well at times. Live View still needs to be further developed to be of use for underwater photography.

++ Very compact size of the underwater housing
++ The underwater housing is waterproof to a depth of 300 feet
++ No steam inside the housing at vast temperature changes
-- The underwater housing is not attuned to small hands
-- Live View slows down operation
-- Leak detector is over-sensitive when high humidity rate on land
-- Changing a battery requires taking the camera completely out of the underwater housing