Lee Peterson (Marine Camera Distributors) and Joe Holley (of Marine Visions) were at the Nexus USA booth showing housings for just about every SLR out there.
New this DEMA were housings for the Fuji S5 Pro, Canon 1D Mk III, Olympus E-3 (prototype), Canon 30D (40D expected to be similar), and Canon Digital Rebel XTi...
Olympus America's booth at DEMA represents the second time Olympus has represented their underwater products at DEMA.
Olympus compact cameras have always been very popular in the underwater photography community, and I personally knew probably dozens of people who used their venerable C-4040 and C-5050 cameras in red PT housings. With the introduction of the Four Thirds standard, Olympus is now pushing their tiny Evolt E-410 SLR...
ULCS displayed their usual assortment of popular arms, clamps, and accessories showing their versality in being able to mount to any camera, still or video housing, light or strobe.
Fairly new are the larger buoyancy arms, available in 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16-inch lengths. They also have two new clamps: a 2" and 3" version. The 2" clamp is perfect for the large buoyancy arms because it allows two of them to fold together (see photos). The 3" clamp is turning out to be a great modeling light clamp.
ULCS also has a new mounting system to attach Sea & Sea's TTL controller to a Subal housing. I didn't get to see it, but I'm told that it exists.
Arnold and Sigrid Stepanek at Subal showed a prototype Canon 1D Mk III housing (the CD3), which looked fantastic. All controls were in reach of fingers when the housing was held in typical shooting position, including the AF-ON button and both dials. The new housing uses a larger bayonet mount to accomodate new lenses, which are bigger in diameter. This probably means that there will be an entirely new line-up of ports, but I didn't find out details. The CD3 should ship during the 2nd half of November...
Robbie, Rick, Randy, and Kathy were at the NCUPS booth showing off printed images and promoting their annual photo contest. Randy and Kathy were in costume, which made me very happy. Other than the two of them, I only saw one other person in costume ALL DAY, ON HALLOWEEN (I mean, aside from Eli and me). So sad!
INON had fewer new products this year, but Steve Philbrook and Mark Rupert showed me a full line of compact digicam housings and accessories in addition to their popular strobe models, the Z-240, D-2000, D-2000s, and Z-22 ring strobe.
A new 180° straight viewfinder prototype will please those people looking for a magnified viewfinder who hate 45° models. The new viewfinder is 1:1 and designed for APS-sized sensors. It should ship sometime in January...
Peter and Gunild Symes were at the X-Ray Magazine booth showing off their free electronic magazine. Starting in 2008, X-Ray will ramp up its publishing schedule to 8 issues a year. Harald Apelt, former editor-in-chief at Tauchen magazine, recently joined the X-Ray team.
Light & Motion had an exciting new line of LED video lights on display. The Sunray 1000 and 2000 video lights both use bright LEDs, which offer instant on/off and solid-state design. Because the LEDs have a 50,000 hour bulb light when not overdriven (these are not overdriven), users should never have to replace a bulb again!
The Sunray 1000 uses 9 LEDs, and is compatible with older battery packs, which means that you can upgrade your system by just buying new heads (although older battery packs do not support multiple brightness levels). The 1000 should last 65 minutes at full power. The new battery is a 6-cell lithium-ion pack, which support 3 different light levels...
Backscatter showed off quite a few products at their booth, but we'll focus on the new products. Backscatter boys Berk, Jim, Dave, and Marshall manned the booth.
First, Backscatter and Reef Photo & Video are now sharing USA distribution of Seatool products, so Backscatter had Seatool housings for Sony HDR-SR7/HDR-SR8 (AVCHD onto hard drive) and HDR-CX7/HDR-CX8 camcorders (AVCHD onto MemoryStick media). Also on display was a Seatool prototype housing for the Nikon D200 digital SLR...