looking at ideas to make cannon 40d ike housing nuetral with macro port,i only have 1 arm for macro which has a couple of stix floats on ultralight arm still a bit heavy any ideas maybe something at the base where the arm attached?

You can buy Buoyancy-Arms from different manufacturers
such as Stix and ULCS. However as a first step I would
suggest to leave out the weight tray of your Ike that
usually ships with each housing.

unfortunately the tray and arm system is molded together,i just unscrewed the tray arm off and found a cavity ,thru not a large area i might fill it with some type of foam,every bit helps

Hi Scuba-1
What I have done on a few housings with the same weight problem, is to add a piece of “Compressed Neoprene” under the base plate. The best size to get is 12mm thick.
Cut it to the full length of the base-plate, and the same width.
Push a sharp set of scissors through the material at each corner, so that you can push a piece of double sided velcro through the slot, around the base plate and back through the other slot. So that the compressed neoprene is ‘hanging’ below the base plate.
This material is cheap and very buoyant and does not compress at depth. I have used one piece of this material on my own housing for two years and it is still buoyant.
The material needs to be the compressed variety, as normal neoprene absorbs water and compresses at depth.
I hope this helps?

Reefwalker - 04 November 2008 03:56 AM

Hi Scuba-1
What I have done on a few housings with the same weight problem, is to add a piece of “Compressed Neoprene” under the base plate. The best size to get is 12mm thick.
Cut it to the full length of the base-plate, and the same width.
Push a sharp set of scissors through the material at each corner, so that you can push a piece of double sided velcro through the slot, around the base plate and back through the other slot. So that the compressed neoprene is ‘hanging’ below the base plate.
This material is cheap and very buoyant and does not compress at depth. I have used one piece of this material on my own housing for two years and it is still buoyant.
The material needs to be the compressed variety, as normal neoprene absorbs water and compresses at depth.
I hope this helps?

do you have a picture of the way you have put the neoprene on the housing ?
steve:-)

Hi Steve
Photos attached below:

This is the Neoprene Strip with Velcro attached through the slots.

This is the underside of the base plate with the neoprene attached with the velcro wrapped around the base plate.

thanks for that, i appreciate the trouble you went to, have to find somewhere with neoprene that thick ,great idea ,i have so far put some hi density foam in the cavity in the base plate and have stix floats on my arm and i will try your idea ,should lighten the load heaps thanks again
steve:-)i

reefwalker i see you have one of those leak detectors work well, i am thinking of getting one of them?

I’ve also seen a friend attaching floating materials (such as sponge tubes - the ones uses in swimming pools) on the strobe armes. as many needed in order to reach buyancy.

scuba-1 - 07 November 2008 11:44 AM

reefwalker i see you have one of those leak detectors work well, i am thinking of getting one of them?

Sorry Scuba1, I only just saw your question in this thread. Yes, the Leak Detector is great .... I manufacture and market them, so they must be!
Check out my website link http://www.UWleakdetector.com for details. I can send them anywhere in the world.

I used one of those spongetubes used for learning to swim, cut a piece of and experimented with how much i would need. then cut the size i needed of the tube, drilled a hole in it and cut with a sharp knife a slit to the hole in the tube so i can just kind of wrap it around the arm. Works brilliantly and only cost me 2,50 Euro. And i have still enought left to make at least another 10 of those cilinders.
Furthermore i filled the indentation of the base plate underneath the housing with the same material by cutting a piece of the tube so you get a circle with the height of the indentation, this fits for me quite snuggly in the indentation and then cut another piece and made that to fit the 4 extrusions that where not filled by the first piece.
What i noticed is that the housing with the baseplate is almost neutral depending on the port you have, but the flash and its arms are what makes the whole unit greatly negative.
For me with the wideangle port for the Canon 18-55mm IS kit lens, just slightly positive and with the macro flat port with Canon 60mm it is just a little more negative.

What i did is in a bucket of water is put the flash unit with arms in there and offset that with the spongetube untill i achieved almost perfect neutral bouyancy. (make sure you put the caps on the flash unit

hope this helps