DIY underwater camera box. How to make an underwater box (aqua box) for a Sony HDR-CX250E camcorder with your own hands? To make a box for underwater photography, we need

Do you plan to use it often for underwater photography? Then maybe you should get a dedicated secure camera. This is a great choice for those who love travel and recreation in the wild: such cameras are usually protected not only from water, but also from falls, and also withstand extreme temperatures.

Underwater cameras differ from conventional cameras not only in their resistance to moisture and their ability to withstand high water pressure. They also have dedicated Intelligent Modes for underwater shooting, which allow you to take beautiful photos even in such extreme conditions.

There are also waterproof action cameras that can be mounted on just about any surface - whether it's sports equipment or your body. Such a camera will not interfere with you during the dive. In addition, action cameras are better suited for shooting: their image quality is much higher. If you are going to use your camera exclusively for diving, you can buy a diving mask equipped with a photo and.

Covers

Waterproof cameras are very convenient. However, there is also an unpleasant moment: for the sake of camera durability, manufacturers often have to sacrifice image quality. Therefore, if you do not agree to make such sacrifices, you can protect your camera with a special case.

Covers and boxes for underwater shooting are made of transparent plastic. You can choose one for any camera model - from a simple soap dish to a professional DSLR. The covers are made of durable but soft plastic, which allows you to press the shutter button and change the camera settings. In the center of the box is a round lens insert made of hard plastic. It will protect the lens from high pressure during the dive.

However, if you want really high quality underwater shots, a case alone won't be enough. Water absorbs light very well, and even in perfectly clear water, when immersed literally several meters, the photographer is faced with the problem of insufficient lighting. Special off-camera flash units for underwater photography help to solve this problem. These flashes are mounted on a special bracket and synchronized with the flash of your camera.

With your own hands

If you are not ready to spend money on expensive equipment, but just want to try shooting underwater, you can make a waterproof case with your own hands. To do this, you will need a piece of clear plexiglass, a sealant, and a piece of soft rubber (a balloon or a children's inflatable ball, for example, will do). Plexiglass allows light to pass through and makes it possible to take pictures, and a soft rubber wall allows you to press the camera shutter button.

Make a box out of plexiglass to fit the size of our camera, leaving the top and back sides of the camera open. Keep in mind that the camera lens will extend when focusing and using the zoom. Glue the sides of the box with a sealant. This is a crucial moment - the joints need to be worked out very carefully, otherwise the cover will let water through. When the sealant is completely dry, place the camera in the resulting box. Cut a rectangle out of soft rubber and use a sealant to carefully glue the sides that you have closed. The camera is ready to dive!

12.02.2017 3023 DIY accessories 0

As you know, most photographic equipment and water are completely incompatible. To use the camera in water, special devices have been invented that help to protect photographic equipment from moisture. There are many varieties of both underwater camera housings and soft photo housings for protection from splashes and falls into the water. If you are unlikely to make the first ones, which allow diving to great depths, on your own, then making a simple and effective splash protection for your camera with your own hands is quite possible. We will tell you about this today.

Initial materials for the underwater box: a transparent hermetic bag for 5 or 10 liters (usually tourists use these to store documents and money), two plugs from plastic sewer pipes, 8 stainless steel bolts of small diameter, liquid sanitary silicone, one soft rubber hood and one cheap UV a filter with a diameter for the lens thread with which you plan to shoot.

1. We stitch the edge from one plastic plug in height, as you can see in the photo below, and cut a hole in the middle so that the width of the side remains inside, which does not exceed the dimensions of the bolt head.

2. Drill eight bolt holes in the side.

3. We insert the bolts through the bottom of the pressurized bag: not ground off the plug outward, nuts inside the bag from the side of the ground off plug.

4. Apply silicone sealant to the space between the plugs and the bottom of the pressurized bag. We tighten the plugs with bolts and leave the structure for one day for the sealant to polymerize. The next day, a part of the bottom of the pressurized bag between the plugs is cut out.

5. The camera is inserted into a sealed bag with the lens extended to the maximum zoom. The hermetic bag itself is closed in a standard way.

6. Next, the hood is screwed onto the light filter, the light filter onto the lens, and their threads are sealed with grease silicone grease. After that, the outer edge of the rubber hood is turned inside out and pulled over the protruding edge of the plastic plug. Just in case, two rubber rings are pulled on the hood so that the rubber does not come off and you can also apply silicone.

As a result, we got a box that is much cheaper than those offered in photo equipment stores. Now you can shoot in a rainstorm or in a storm and you are not afraid of your camera and optics.

If you are fond of scuba diving, then you have probably tried to shoot underwater several times.

Today for this there are many different cameras that allow you to conduct underwater photography. You can make an underwater box for a camera and dive into the depths of the abyss with an expensive digital mirror to find interesting shots.

However, it is not always financially possible to buy a specially designed camera for shooting underwater or time to make an underwater box.

In this case, the natural ingenuity of the Russian person comes to the rescue! Here's an example of a simple underwater device.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated! We take an ordinary glass jar, turn on the camera for video filming and roll up the lid - you get absolute tightness!

Plastic covers can also be used, but they are not as reliable.

Pancho comments:

there are metal caps of quick twist sealed - tomorrow I'm going to check what depth they can withstand. I will assume that you need to insert a frame reinforcing the lid - resting it on the bottom of the can. the most important thing is that the can is round and many boxes are square, which complicates their sealing and weakens their strength

artem comments:

It's always better to take a good underwater camera right away than to regret it later.
Especially for lovers ...

Yes Easy!

For a pleasant reading, you can turn on your favorite radio below:

To make a box for underwater photography, we need:

hermetic lunch box "Lock & Lock",

camcorder,

small blocks or something like that, in order to fix the camera inside the box,

polyurethane foam,

food bags,

• masking tape,

  washers for bolts,

  Chinese chopsticks (for food),

  bolts, or screws with nuts, better nuts with Teflon, but if there are none, then you can lock the nut with a nut and, of course,

  silicone sealant for aggressive environment is better.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:

soldering iron.

Well, let's start!

First, we need to somehow position the video camera and fix it inside the lunch box. For this, I personally used dry branches as thick as a finger, put two bags in the lunch box so that they flowed around the inner cavity of the box, then, after opening the camera screen and turning it outward, in the same way as in the photo. # 1, put the camera in two food bags. It is desirable that the bags are longer, do not tie the camera in the bag, put it in the box with the lens towards the bottom in the middle, bring the untied edge of the bag to the top so that the edge of the bag sticks out of the lunch box (this is done so that during foaming and drying foam clearly flowed around the camera). Then, I fixed the back of the camera with spacers, from sawn-to-size branches, I have a Sony camera (see photo # 2) and it has a rectangular battery sticking out at the back, so I put spacers into it from four sides so that the camera is more or less rigidly inside the box, this is done so that the camera does not move while the box is foamed with polyurethane foam and then dries up!

Photo. # 1

photo # 2

Create a shape for the camera using polyurethane foam.
It is best to do this in three or four passes, because if you foam a lot at a time, the foam at the bottom will dry for a very long time or will not dry at all!

So, the camera in the initial position in the bags is fixed in the box. We take the masking tape with glue on the box in the middle above the recording start button, make a hole above the button, insert a Chinese stick or a branch into the hole (first wrap the branch or stick in a bag so that the foam does not stick to it), bring it to the button and leave it in this position, We put the whole thing on a garbage bag on top so as not to stain the floor with foam, and we begin to foam the bottom of the box literally no higher than three centimeters (see photo # 3), let the foam dry for several hours, it depends on the foam, how much it will dry, read on a spray can!

Photo. No. 3

After the first level is dry, we begin to foam further as well - no more than three centimeters of foam, let it dry, and if the dry foam has not reached the edges of the box, we make the third level.

After everything is dry, shake the camera out of the box in foam, pick the camera out of the foam from the side of the lens, carefully so as not to destroy the foam shape for the camera. After removing the camera from the foam mold, cut out a window in the mold opposite the screen so that when the camera is in the mold, the entire screen is visible.

Now we attach the glass to the bottom of the box!
We insert the camera back into the mold, we enter the shape into the box until the lens stops against the bottom, and, with the camera turned on, we determine the view of your camera, mark something at the bottom of the box where we will cut the window (it should look like this (see photo. No. 4) , we take out the form with the camera from the box.
We take a heated soldering iron and begin to gently melt a rectangular window. After that, we check whether the edges of the window in the camera are visible during shooting, if visible, then we remove the edge further with a soldering iron. (see photo # 5)
Now you need to attach the glass. I took a glass lens from an old gas mask, it was perfect for this business, it is not necessary that round glass can be square, for example, with a photo of a frame of the appropriate size. I placed it in the center so that it evenly overlapped the window we cut out, and noted where I would make holes for bolts or screws (I put four screws, they were enough for me). Then, we burn out the holes with a soldering iron so that the bolt clearly goes into it (we burn it out, since when cutting or drilling, there is a chance that the box will burst). After that, we check together with the glass - how all the holes are suitable for the bolts - do not rest against the glass, if it rested somewhere, we bring the holes to perfection with a soldering iron. Bolts with washers and glass are degreased, in my case there was a solvent, dried. Now we take a bolt with a washer, apply sealant to the washer from the side of contact with the box, insert it into the hole on the inside of the box, and so on with all the bolts. On the glass, in the place where there will be a window in the lens box, we glue masking tape, directly opposite the window, repeating the contour of the window (so as not to smear the clean glass with sealant). Now we apply the sealant to the outside of the box in those places where there will be contact with the glass and apply the glass between the bolts on the sealant, insert the washers on the bolts, attach the nuts, press the glass well to the box with nuts, if the nuts are without Teflon, then we lock them with the second nut , we are waiting for the sealant to dry completely, and then rip off the assembly tape from the glass.

It should turn out something like this

Photo. # 4

photo # 5

We insert the form with the camera into the already underwater box from the side of the box lid, cut off the excess foam from the foam form so that the lid can be closed freely. We cut off the stick or branch that is responsible for pressing the "record" button in size, so that one end clearly touches the box lid, and the other - the "record" button, so we can, by pressing the box lid, turn on and off recording on the camera ...
Since my camera turns off after two minutes of inactivity, I had to make it so that I could turn on the camera when I pressed the wall of the box from the side of the screen, I have a camera on / off button on the camera behind the screen (see photo No. 6) ... What I did for this - I glued masking tape coiled into a ball with masking tape on the camera shutdown button (see photo # 7), now you could turn the camera on and off by lightly pressing the screen body when it is turned towards you with its front part. In order for the screen to move away from the button after pressing, I glued an elastic material next to the button (it is usually glued into the doorway so that the door does not slam when closing) similar to rubberized foam (see photo No. 7).
Now, opposite the screen body, when the video camera is in the foam form, we glue something to the mold that could press on the screen body when pressing the box wall, for example, foam plastic or what you find at hand (see photo # 8).

Photo. # 6

Photo. # 7

Photo. No. 8

Well, that's all, now you have an underwater box! And yes, I almost forgot, the most important thing is not to shake the camera too much under water, because when watching a video it can start to muddy from the dynamics of movement, shoot as smoothly as in airspace!
And first test the underwater housing without a camera, but with a camera mold in the bathroom, and then dive deeper into the sea. And there is a possibility that when diving deeper, the camera itself will turn off or turn off the recording itself, do not be alarmed by this because of the pressure at a depth that squeezes the box, just cut off the stick that is responsible for turning on the recording and the stick or foam, which is responsible for turning on or off the video camera. ...

Before going to the sea, I decided to make an aqua box (AB) for a digital soap dish.

Material - acrylic glass. The panels were sawn with a hacksaw on wood, for the lens rings - with crowns, the edges were leveled with a milling cutter. To attach the lens rings to the body, I used brass nuts with a 3 mm thread. (which are used in office equipment), heated and melted them into the body.

At first I wanted to use glass for the lens, but it gives "green" to the light, in the end I decided "they are not looking for good or good" and put the same acrylic glass.

In the photo there is acrylic, as you can see no shades one-to-one. Although ... maybe glass would be better for water, you have to compare ...

He connected the panels with 3 mm screws and cut the threads.

At the final connection of the gadget, I used a silicone sealant, and sealed the buttons with it:

• photo and
• video.

To accommodate the chamber, the back wall was closed - the back wall was opened, the chamber inside the AB was fixed with a white seal such as a polypropylene mat. There were problems with the tightness of the back wall, it was solved by the same thin white seal.

Even during the "land" tests, concentric circles were noticed in the photographs; to eliminate them, a black visor was installed.

this problem could have been solved more gracefully, but there was no time, but there was a universal fastener at hand - scotch tape.

Here's what happened in the end.

In the future, if I'm going to do another AB, it is necessary to provide for:

• the use of light filters (fortunately, the Chinese comrades have a sea and for nothing)
• use a barbell (like for a selfie)
• built-in gyroscope (for smoothness).

Photo and video in resolution (as it was filmed).

It is better to watch the video downloaded, because in the archive it is painfully "broken".

Yes, by the way, the cost of the gadget is zero! Since discarded production residues have been used.