Finally! An underwater housing for smartphones! Beginning with the ever popular iPhone version, Divevolk has innovated a version of underwater housing to have true touchscreen ability on the entire real estate of your phone screen! Not buttons that work on Bluetooth connection or restrictive presses on the volume buttons. The gel-filled layer is the piece of spongy-feeling layer between your phone’s screen and you. Any screen protector would have to be removed before inserting into the housing on its specially moulded tray designed for specific models of iPhones from iPhone 6 to 6plus, 7 to 7plus, 8 to 8plus, 10 to 10Max. This is to facilitate the sensor to sense your finger contact more effectively on the phone as the ambient pressure is already exerting a force on the entire gel layer, the phone needs to sense your ‘finger’ to register it as a contact.
Android-users will rejoice soon when their much-anticipated Android version of the housing is released in August! Yes! Yes! My dependable, photographically superior Samsung Note FE (and all the Samsung Note series & S series as well as the Huawei P & Mate series) will get to capture marine life eventually and with the inbuilt Pro features of White Balance adjustment, shutter speeds & aperture control, ISO selection from 50 – 800, metering modes and auto focus areas (helpful in shooting macro) with special photo effects! Only a month away!
If you have not started underwater photography yet, how many times have you wished you could take your trusty smartphone underwater with you? A gadget that you are familiar with, can operate the camera app with ease and don’t have to figure out technical jargon??? Have you been intimidated by complex camera gear and equally complicated setup? It kills the joy of gearing up even before you get into the water. Having Divevolk’s SeaTouch 2 Pro eliminates the complexity of a time-consuming setup, freeing you from the stress and annoyance of misplacing essential accessories that comes with a huge camera setup. It has only one door that has a double O’ring and it’s secured with nuts and bolts. Forget all the chunky gear that photographers need to lug along with strobes, lights and accessories. The entire setup plus macro and wide angle lenses, ball arms and tray with 2 lights and a float fit into one cabin-worthy case with room to spare. It was just about everything I carried to my trip to Bidung Island in Terengganu. I didn’t even used the lights as there was ample sunlight for my dives.
If you have been taking pictures underwater with your humongous gear, let me give you a reason to have this on your next outing, especially if you are going on a business trip with a detour to a neighbouring dive site and can’t carry that behemoth with you. This gadget doesn’t require tray and arms because the centre attachment grip has grooves for screwing on two bendable mini lights plus snoot for your macro-mucking about. Having a housing ready means you never have to miss that opportunity no matter where your boss sends you!
Divevolk has an assisted camera app that you need to download and install to enable you to utilise the different WB preset modes. I was using a borrowed iPhone 6 (I’m an Android girl!! Android!!!) and the native app leaves a lot to be desired. The only time I used the native camera app was when I needed to shoot panorama with it. With the wide angle lens and red filter attached, the result is better than shooting ordinarily without. The app has 4 shooting functions, Time-lapse, slo-mo, photo & video mode. When you want your video to have adjusted WB, you have to use the Photo mode first to pre-select the preset and select Video afterwards to continue with the preset white balance. It has to be said that my favourite mode is the panorama and video mode.
I had one problem, the housing (with phone inside) was lighter than my 2 lights and shooting videos was like driving a car, my hands kept swivelling the setup causing rotational shake! That can be fixed on the computer but it’s another step that I’d rather miss. I would want to shoot it right from the start. The other problem I encountered was the vignetting on the left corners and apparently the attachments that enable the wet lenses didn’t cater to iPhone 6 camera placement. This is not a problem with the other iPhone models.
The quality of the video is dependent upon the quality of the phone model, in my case, I used the iPhone 6 that only has 1080p and not 4K resolution and I shot in 4:3 instead of 16:9 without realising it. Even without the wide angle lens attached, videos came out pretty decent.
All the videos are edited for clarity, white balance tweaked further for visual appeal. Raw footage is useable if you are not visually-fussy like how I am.
I conduct smartphone photo editing workshops periodically and will update the schedule when available. You can purchase one directly at https://bit.ly/mydivevolk and get a token discount.
