ColorGrinder’s Malta Pages

In yet another photography related post I am going to describe how I made an improvised underwater housing for my Kodak Zx1 pocket video camera. It cost me less than €10 to make and, although it is not going to give serious filmmakers any sleepless nights, it did allow me to get some fun shots of the kids snorkeling in Comino’s Blue Lagoon. Check out my first underwater video …..

My Kodak Zx1 camera is weatherproof/splashproof but certainly not designed to be submerged in water. I bought a rectangular lunchbox (the sort with 0-ring type seals) which was just big enough to house my Kodak. The plastic bottom of the box was translucent but not properly transparent so I cut a hole and used Araldite epoxy resin to glue on a piece of clear plastic from the top of a Pringles snack tube. I figured that even though it was not ‘optical glass’, it would probably give me the same sort of view as peering through a steamed up snorkel mask. I was right.

I wedged the camera into the box with a dishwashing sponge, figuring that in the (highly probable) event of a leak, the sponge would absort some of the sea water and give me enough time to get the camera out of the water. As it turned out I needn’t have worried as the housing proved pretty watertight.

One of the main drawbacks of my DIY housing was the fact that I had absolutely no access to the camera controls. I had to open the housing to start and stop recording. Another difficulty was with the viewfinder which was very tricky to see underwater. As you can see in the video, my framing was rather hit and miss! Note the short example above has been compressed to get the entire clip under 10MB in size. In reality, the camera is capable of filming in 720p High Definition. As a comparison, here is a longer (yawn) version of the video in full resolution. Don’t forget to press the HD button.