Jonah Canon 10D underwater housing review
*NOTE* This review covers a pre-production Jonah Canon 10D Housing. I recently traveled throughout Indonesia with a Jonah C10 - a prototype housing made exclusively for the Canon 10D digital camera. During a two-month period, I captured thousands of images during fifty-seven dives and am providing this review to DigiDeep to help others who are also searching for an underwater housing for the Canon 10D.
| Camera | Canon 10D |
| Housing | Jonah Housing C10D |
| Ports | 50mm flat port, extension ring for 100mm, 4 inch dome, and 8 inch dome |
| Strobes | Two Sea&Sea YS90-DX Duos (connected with Nikonos 5-pin |
| Lenses | Canon 100mm macro (F4); Canon 50mm macro (F2.5); Canon 35-80mm (F2.5); Canon 20-35mm wide angle (F5.6) |
| Modeling Light | Single UK-40 (or, alternatively, a standard PC-A) |
| Hardware | Compaq 2600 Laptop (P4 with 60 gig and 500 ### RAM) 1 gig Lexar 40x CF cards |
| Software | Photoshop 7.0 Capture One DSLR Limited Edition (for RAW conversion) |
- Quality – RAW
- Red-eye – Off
- AEB – Default
- WB-BKT – Default
- Beep – On
- Custom WB – Not set
- Color temp – 5200 K
- Parameters – Adobe RGB
- ISO Expansion – Off
- Review – On
- Review Time – 2 seconds
- Auto Rotate – On
- LCD Brightness – Level 2 of 5
- White balance – Auto
- ISO – 100
- Drive mode – Single frame
- Autofocus Mode – One shot
- Focus point selector – Usually set at “All” points
- made from machined aluminum, so no corrosion worries
- provides access to all camera features (The test unit did not have a button for the LED display on the top of the camera, but production models will have this feature.
- enables you to quickly and easily mount camera inside housing body using the quick release tray
- allows removal of CF Card without removing camera from housing body
- enables you to connect strobes using a Nikonos five-pin connector and/or an S-6 connector
- provides molded hand-grips for easy handling
- provides smooth shutter-release functionality
- provides high-quality glass for the lens ports
- provides a moisture alarm seated in the bottom of the housing (see 5895)
- provides two small metal pins that ensure the housing pieces are properly secured
- rubber buffer on the eye-piece prevents mask scratches when looking through view-finder
- provides clear identification of all buttons for camera features
- immediate access to responsive customer service
- provides limited magnifier in the viewfinder eyepiece (see Wishlist comments below)
- a few of the little rubber nipples on the buttons inside the housing were lost
- some buttons did not consistently activate camera controls
- hot-shoe for strobe malfunctioned (easily corrected, read review notes)
- eight-inch dome port too loose (problem resolved using a set-screw)
- no rubber cover provided for flat port or 8-inch dome port (cover provided for 4 inch dome)
The Problems Encountered section provides more detailed information
about some of the “rough spots” I encountered with this
housing, but overall, I was very pleased with its performance.
For the purposes of objective evaluation, I will briefly speak to
a few topics related to this housing.
E-TTL Issue
In recent months, a lot of people have discussed the E-TTL issue
related to shooting DSLRs underwater. Although no housing currently
enables your Canon camera to shoot E-TTL with your Ikelite or Sea&Sea
strobes, you should have no problems quickly learning how to shoot
your strobes manually.
Button Stickers
The housing uses clear stickers with black writing to mark the buttons,
as shown at right.
Early on, a friend of mine and I wondered whether these stickers
would hold up to the abuse and normal wear and tear of repetitive
daily diving, but we were both pleasantly surprised at how tough
the stickers were.
The adhesive on the stickers is strong enough that you will not
need to worry about them eventually peeling away, but you may want
to ask the company to send you an extra set so you can replace the
stickers after a few years – by the time I came back from
my trip, the menu sticker had a small cut and another sticker had
a small tear in it.
Bouyancy
The housing is negatively buoyant in the water, but is very well
weighted in my opinion. I was able to consistently achieve good
results holding the camera by the handles as well as by placing
my hand under the lens port for support.
Housing Handles
The housing handles for the Jonah Housing are identical to those
made for the Nexxus housings, with the only exception being a small
support tab near the base of the handle – you would never
notice the tab unless you were comparing both handles side by side.
The handles are molded and coated and would be very comfortable
to hold for medium to large sized hands.
Focus Lock ( * )
Some people have reported having trouble reaching focus lock buttons
while having their hands on the trigger, but this housing should
not offer you any problem with that unless you have very small hands.
Extension Ring
To shoot a 100mm lens with this housing, you must use a 100mm extension
ring attached to the standard macro port made for the 50mm lens.
I never had any problems attaching or removing my extension ring,
although I believe some people later reported that the ring they
used was loose. I can assure you that I would have not used the
extension ring if I thought I was taking a risk with ruining my
lens or my camera. (Author’s note: Jonah released a newer
version of the extension ring in late 2003 to resolve problems that
were created during a small manufacturing run.)
Buttons Issue
The only serious problem I encountered was that some of the buttons on the back of the camera and on top of the camera did not enable me to access the camera’s functions. I shrugged this problem off since I was using a very early prototype of the housing.
The buttons on the top of the camera (shown at right), such as
the ones to manually change the White Balance and change the Focal
Points, simply did not work.
From what I could tell, the buttons were perfectly lined up with the camera itself, so the issue was more related to the button nipples simply not reaching the top of the camera itself. (Some of the nipples fell off, which is discussed separately.)
Additionally, I occasionally had problems with the buttons on the back of the camera, such as when I needed to access the Menu, Info, and Jump features. I would say that these buttons did not work about 10% to 15% of the time. I theorized that the camera was moving slightly while attached to the base tray, but I am not really sure. There were several dives were I desperately wanted to check the histogram but couldn’t because the indexing button just would not work.
Fortunately, the knobs for the shutter speed, aperture, and the trigger itself all worked fine 100% of the time, which was really all that mattered to me. It is my understanding that Jonah has resolved this problem and keep in mind that I was using the second prototype ever made.)
Missing Nipples
In the image below, you can clearly see that three of the six nipples
within the red box have fallen off.
Although you can glue the nipples to the buttons, be sure you don’t
use an adhesive that will eat through the rubber. I am fairly confident
that Jonah will send you some extra nipples if you ask nicely. (And
who wouldn’t want to have the chance to ask nicely for an
extra ######?)
On-Off Knob
The On-Off knob was really the only questionable design issue that
I encountered.
The idea here is that a portion of the camera’s on off button fits into the shallow horizontal groove shown on the left of the button. Unfortunately, I could never get this button to make contact with the camera. (A small piece of felt resolved this issue.)
Be careful when you are turning the on-off knob from the outside because you can theoretically forcefully rotate the knob 360 degrees and cause damage to the extension inside the camera
Sleep Mode Prevention
One of the buttons – I have no idea which one – may
have been making slight contact with the camera because while I
was diving the camera would never go into sleep mode. Even with
heavy shooting, the camera battery lasted about two hours so this
was never a major concern since by that time, I was usually forced
to surface anyway.
However, this problem forced me to switch batteries after every
dive, which led to the discovery of a separate problem.
Hot Shoe Issue
Technically, the Jonah housing enables you to change batteries
without removing the hot-shoe by simply flipping removing the camera
from the base tray, flipping it upside down, then ejecting the battery
and replacing it. However, I eventually began disconnecting the
hot-shoe and removing the camera from the housing completely so
I could avoid an awkward quick juggling act with my $1600 camera.
After disconnecting the hot-shoe and reconnecting it about 30 times, I began to have a strobe problem.
Basically, after about 30 or 35 dives, I went down on a dive and
the strobes wouldn’t fire. I assumed I had forgotten to reattach
the hot-shoe, but at the end of the dive I discovered it was already
connected. I experimented with the problem for awhile and eventually
realized the problem was related to a small metal pin on the hot
shoe mount.
There are six small pins located on the hot shoe mount. The bottom
most pin – the one closest to the wires and in between the
two screws shown at right - has a small lip that occasionally got
stuck under the metal plate used to slide the hot shoe up into the
camera body.
If this happens to you, you can use a toothpick to free the restrained
pin or you can remove the metal plate and manually move the pin
to free it. (A close-up of the pin with the plate removed lip is
shown below.) Be careful if you take the hot-shoe apart as the pin
is seated on a very tight – and very small – spring.
If you lose that spring, your toast.
Lense Covers
The 4 inch dome port had a rubber lens cover, but the 8 inch did
not. I found out later that Jonah would make an 8 inch cover available.
A cover for the macro port would be nice too, but isn't "mission
critical"
On-off Button Re-Design
If the power switch is re-designed, it should include a “block”
attached to the inside of the housing that ensures the lever is
properly positioned. (If the camera goes into sleep mode, you probably
won't really need the on-off switch.)
An Optical Advantage
For years I have wondered why all of the underwater housing makers
design the housings with the smallest possible viewfinder window.
Maybe it is just me, but it seems like there is plenty of room to
design a rectangular window with a small magnification factor that
would significantly improve my ability to see through the viewfinder
while wearing my mask.
I have theorized about this for years but have never heard anyone
convince me of why this could not be done. (As you can see here,
there is plenty of room for a rectangular window instead of the
small circular one.) The rectangular one you see below is to view
the histogram and other camera settings.
I logged around 100 hours underwater using this housing and had very few problems – the only serious problem was that some of the buttons did not work consistently, but this issue has been resolved with the development of new buttons springs.
The owner of the company has rapidly responded to issues and concerns related to the housing, but be aware that
Bottom line… would I buy a Jonah housing? The answer is Yes.
