I know there are many people looking for a Sony a6000 Water Housing for surf photography, so I put together a video showing the modifications I’ve made to my Aquatech CR-60 housing which allow me to use my Sony a6000 camera body and all my lenses inside.
Although this process was specifically for the CR-60 housing you’re going to be able to use these instructions to adapt pretty much any surf housing designed for a DSLR style camera to create a Sony a6000 water housing.
If you need to know if your old housing will match up to your new camera I recommend the excellent Camersize.com website, it will allow you to put the two cameras side by side at the same scale, the dimensions are listed with them and you can easily see if the controls match up with the different angles offered for each camera.
What do you need?
- Any DSLR water housing designed for surf photography, I used my Aquatech CR-60 water housing
- DSLRkit Canon to Sony terminal converter cable (Nikon to Sony should also be possible by using two adapters, see page 3 for details)
- PU-60 Arca Swiss style quick release plate
- Longer than usual tripod screw
- Self adhesive foam pads
Click through to the next page for more details on each stage
Page 2: Positioning Your Sony a6000
Page 4: Using Different Lenses In Your Housing
Page 5: Adding Controls & Conclusion
Part 1: Positioning Your Camera Inside The Sony a6000 Water Housing
All Aquatech housings use a metal plate which slides into place on a plastic tray within the housing, normally you bolt the camera directly to the plate itself, positioning it securely in exactly the right position for the controls and lens port, obviously the a6000 is a different shape and size to a Canon DSLR, so I had to position the camera appropriately.
I tried a few different options, I had some luck using a bolt and an oversized washer with foam pads stuck on each size, but I found the camera twisted when I used the zoom control on the telephoto lens port as there wasn’t enough resistance.
The PU-60 quick release plate, it’s supplied with a tripod screw, but you need a longer one to attach it to the Aquatech plate.
The solution was to use the PU-60 Quick release plate, it’s designed to slide into an Arca Swiss style clamp, and it’s got three slots in it to attach your camera in various positions, as luck would have it if you attach the Sony a6000 to the far end of the longest slot one of the threaded parts of the other slots lines up almost perfectly with the original tripod screw hole in the Aquatech tray.
To attach it to the tray you can use any tripod screw that will fit, I found you need a longer screw than normal though, so if you don’t have anything suitable lying around you can buy a set of two for a few dollars:
You need the longer screw in order to securely attach the PU-60 plate to the Aquatech base plate.
The PU-60 plate is cheap and readily available, I actually bought it as part of a set which included the clamp, then I picked up a cheap L bracket too so now I have an arca swiss style clamp for my tripod that I can use for landscape photography in the future.
If you’re converting a different style of housing you might need to work out a different method of adjusting the position of the camera, the SPL housing I had didn’t use a slide in base plate but you could definitely stick some foam in the housing to make it a sung fit, alternatively you could install your own quick release clamp system in the housing if there’s room.
Page 2: Positioning Your Sony a6000
Page 4: Using Different Lenses In Your Housing
Page 5: Adding Controls & Conclusion
Part 2: Taking A Photo
Releasing the shutter is the next challenge, the reason I didn’t put it in first (and the reason that I forgot about it until near the end of the video) is that it’s actually very simple,
All housings designed for surf photography have a way of triggering the shutter with a button on a pistol grip via a wired remote port on the camera body, and it’s often a standard or even built in feature of basic models, so the chances are you will have a wire inside your housing designed to fit the original camera that it housed.
Most enthusiast range cameras have a wired remote port built in, the Sony NEX 5 series is notably lacking this though (I shot the video on my new backup camera body – a Sony NEX 5R), and I’m sure there are other examples of cameras which would otherwise work well for shooting surf photography, that’s why I included it as one of the features that I wanted in my backup camera.
Because the shutter button is relatively simple, a wired remote is usually just a button that when half pressed causes the camera to autofocus, and when fully pressed releases the shutter. This means not only is it easy to make your own shutter release cable but you can also fairly easily separate focus from shutter release if you wish, this is something that has become more popular recently with two-button pistol grip designs available from Aquatech and Essex housings.
My DIY version of the separate focus and shutter controls that I made for my old Aqualenz housing.
It’s worth noting that back button focusing is something that’s been used by surf photographers on land and on their water housings for decades and this is essentially a more ergonomic extension of that idea.
The a6000 uses Sony’s proprietary Multi port for triggering the shutter via a wired remote, it’s the same shape and size as a Micro USB cable but there’s some extra contacts in there, allowing you to control things like the zoom of the lens (only with a power-zoom lens).
The Aquatech housing has a 2.5mm jack plug which fits a lot of mid and low level Canon DSLR’s, so originally I bought a cheap wired remote which I intended to chop up in order to make an adapter for this remote plug, then I found a very cheap pre-built option on Amazon and thought I’d give it a go:
converts a Canon wired remote to a Sony wired remote, you can buy it from Amazon for $9.99
It works perfectly and it does exactly what I need it to for my Sony a6000 water housing, and I didn’t even have to break out the soldering iron, I am now tempted get hold of the Sony RM-VPR1 remote control which includes video pause/record and zoom controls and have a go at butchering it to help make the ultimate surf housing for a Sony mirrorless camera. At $53 it’s a bit too much to invest in a hair brained scheme, but as soon as there’s a knock-off third party version I’ll snap one up.
I can imagine a pistol grip with some buttons placed handily for your thumb (like this Essex pistol grip) with a rocker switch for zoom control and a pause/record button, all in a tiny package custom built for the Sony a6000.
I Want to Adapt A Nikon Water Housing For A Sony a6000
Not all water housings are so simple to convert though, Canon have two main types of wired remote shutter ports and Nikon have a couple too, as Nikon and Canon are by far the most common brands to have surf housings made for them you’re pretty likely to be able to get the cable for you from DSLRKIT
The full range of terminal converters available from DSLRKIT, as long as you know which camera body your housing is designed for you can find the suitable cable, or combination of cables, that will trigger your new camera
If you’re in any doubt about which adapter you should use leave a comment on this post and I’ll do my best to help you out.
I Want To Adapt A 35mm Film Housing For A Sony a6000
There are other brands out there and even older Canon cameras, usually 35mm SLR’s, can have some exotic cable systems, I’ve got a housing for the Canon EOS 630 film SLR that has a very DIY looking 9 volt battery style connector on the pistol grip connected to a hacked together battery grip.
35mm camera housings are often quite a good fit for mirrorless cameras, as they tend to be less bulky than more modern DSLR bodies.
In cases like this you will need to go down the DIY route, I suggest buying a cheap knock-off wired remote like the one I got for $9.99 so that you’ve got the male end which fits your Sony camera, then strip the wire and solder it to whichever wire you have on your old housing.
Mudder wired remote control for the Sony a6000 is available on Amazon for $9.99, if you need to make your own cable this is a great place to start
Do some tests to make sure you’re connecting the correct wires to allow you to focus and release the shutter. If you have problems, or if you fancy a challenge, you might want to re-build the original pistol grip trigger with some new buttons, like I did on my old AquaLenz housing.
It’s not too difficult to do but it takes a while, I do plan on adapting my old EOS 630 housing at some point so I’ll document the process then in case anyone’s interested.
This is the best site I’ve found for finding out which pins do what on various shutter release cables: http://www.doc-diy.net/photo/remote_pinout/
My Camera Body doesn’t have a Wired Remote port
Unfortunately it’s very unlikely that you’re going to get an easy adaptation to allow a physical control on a DSLR housing to press the shutter button on a much smaller camera body, so I would seriously consider buying a new mirrorless camera body which does have a wired shutter release, or going for a Meikon style housing which has a physical shutter button designed for your camera.
Page 2: Positioning Your Sony a6000
Page 4: Using Different Lenses In Your Housing
Page 5: Adding Controls & Conclusion
Part 3: Using Different Lenses In Your Housing
One of the key advantages you have when adapting a surf water housing is interchangeable ports, being able to use different lenses with the same water housing is key to being able to take a variety of photo’s. I’ll list the lenses I use on my Sony a6000 for water photography and the ports that I use with each one.
If you’d like to read up on some of the basic techniques for keeping drops off the relevant port check out my Water Housing Users Guide – Part 3 – Prevent Water Drops, Wet Port Vs Dry Port.
Samyang/Rokinon 8mm f2.8 fisheye
My 8mm fisheye says Samyang on it, if you buy it in the USA it will likely say Rokinon on it, they are the same lens just branded differently.
I found, unsurprisingly, that the Samyang 8mm on my Sony a6000 had a wider field of view than my Tokina 10-17mm fisheye on my Canon 70D, this means I’m more able to get the really cool distorted fisheye effect, and that it’s easier to have vignetting at the corners of the image due to part of the dome port getting in the shot.
A shot with the Samyang/Rokinon 8mm f2.8 Fisheye, the vignetting at the corners is because of the rapidly fading light more than the lens port in this case
By using the PU-60 quick release plate and sliding the camera as far forward as possible I was able to minimise this, more recently I have stuck a cork to the inside of my back plate to keep the camera from twisting inside the housing, this is a temporary measure until I get around to building something a lot less ugly into the Aquatech base plate itself.
Sigma 19mm f2.8, Sigma 30mm f2.8 (and recently purchased Sigma 60mm f2.8)
These small prime lenses easily fit inside my LP-5 flat port and I’ve had no issues shooting with them using the dry port method, no adaptation was needed for these to work and I’ve got a bit of adjustment forward and back if I end up getting a longer prime or zoom lens in the future too.
Sony 55-210mm
This is where it gets a bit more challenging,I have the LP-TZ4 port which is designed for the Canon 70-200mm lens, it has a knob on the side which operates a little cog type thing on the inside which in turn engages with a collar that goes around the lens, this allows yo to zoom the lens whilst it’s in the port.
I had to increase the diameter of the lens in order to get this mechanism to work, I happened to have an old dive housing lens collar lying around which worked pretty perfectly for this, but you could easily improvise something with a piece of neoprene or anything that would go around the lens.
The blue pre-dawn light gives this shot a nice cool colour palette, the Sony 55-210mm handled the lack of light pretty well considering it’s not got the widest maximum aperture.
luckily with the camera in position the lens can operate throughout the full focal length from 55mm to 210mm without any vignetting at the short end or it hitting the front element of the port at the long end, so it’s a pretty good fit.
If you compare the dimensions of the Canon 70-200mm f4 lens with the Sony 70-200mm f4 it’s fairly similar so I expect you could use this port for that lens too.
Page 2: Positioning Your Sony a6000
Page 4: Using Different Lenses In Your Housing
Page 5: Adding Controls & Conclusion
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 the 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.