Lower Cost Underwater Camera Housings

We have a number of alternative housings that may be more suitable for certain productions where hiring a Nauticam or Gates dive housing isn’t required. We get asked quite often why the dive housings are expensive to hire so here’s some information to hopefully help you decide what’s best for your production.

Our budget range are typically a plastic construction with acrylic dome and flat ports compared to the more robust nature of the aluminium Nauticam and Gates housings which feature glass optics instead of acrylic, and that’s the main reason for the price point difference when comparing the different options

1. Gates and Nauticam housings are a mixture of aluminium and glass for precision engineered camera control and optically perfect imagery.
2. ABS / plastic housings have less engineering tolerance and come with acrylic ports rather than glass so optically inferior
3. Gates and Nauticam housings are designed to be perfectly neutral underwater when operated by a diver, plastic housings will typically be unbalanced when used underwater and positively buoyant making smooth operation more difficult
4. Plastic / ABS housings are perfect for surface level shooting where dive kit isn’t being used by the operator, some also have flat port options too
5. Gates and Nauticam housings have full access to every camera function including manual focus and zoom. Plastic housings sometimes can’t operate certain features such as playback, and they never have manual focus control of the lens so auto / one touch focus is the only option

If you feel your production doesn’t need a Nauticam and Gates housing then we have lower cost options for Canon 5D4, Panasonic GH5/GH5S and Sony FX3

These housings typically rent for around £100 per day plus VAT, so please contact us for an accurate quote across your shoot days