Part 4: Adding Controls
Unless you’re experienced in precision engineering, and you have the right tools for the job, I do not recommend adding any extra waterproof controls to the housing yourself.
You could get controls added by a professional, but I suspect that the costs would mount up pretty quickly and end up meaning you’d be better off buying a custom housing for your camera.
My advice is to use the controls that are already on your housing, for my adaptation I was pretty lucky, the top dial control on my housing lined up pretty well with the top dial on the Sony a6000, all I needed to do was extend the control by half an inch or so.
To do this I used some cheap foam rubber pads, they are designed to go on the bottom of furniture to protect the floor and they’re readily available in most DIY shops or via Amazon.
If you get the self adhesive type you can just stack them on one another until the controls reach the dial, as you can see in the image above.
No Physical Controls? Try WiFi
If you don’t have any controls that are a good match for your camera body you could always go for the WiFi control option, all recent camera bodies have WiFi connectivity built in, and the brands all offer some sort of app that controls the cameras settings.
You can pick up a cheap Android handset for about $30 these days, or you might even have an old one lying around, you just need to check which version of android you need for your camera (Sony’s smart remote app requires at least Android 4.0, iOS 7.0 or windows 8.1).
All the controls you could ever need could be as simple as waterproofing a cheap smart phone
- $30 – Huawei Premia 4G handset running Android 4.0
- $20 – AquaPac keymaster waterproof pouch
- Wifi enabled camera body in housing
This is just an example, I haven’t personally used this exact set-up, but there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work.
I would do a few tests before investing in a full WiFi set-up, I know that my Sony Xperia M2 will connect with the Sony a6000 through my Aquatech housing, but if you’ve got a metal housing it might be harder to get a signal through it, also bear in mind that your battery life will suffer if you use WiFi a lot.
Conclusion:
Whilst a professional might baulk at the idea of having to modify a housing for it to work properly for their chosen camera body, the majority of people using these camera housings are not professional photographers, and with the relative abundance of old DSLR housing’s on line combined with the lack of options from the major surf housing brands, this is one of the best ways to get a modern camera like theย Sony a6000 in the water.
If you’re the type of person who sees a project like this as a fun challenge, and you want to squeeze the best possible value and functionality out of your budget, I’d recommend trying this out.
If you’ve done something similar or if you would like some specific tips on converting a housing for the Sony a6000 or any other camera leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to help you out.
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