Well when I received the pre production 95 degree port from Amphibcio to test out I knew I had to try it out in the field, so I jumped on a plane and flew over to Bali (3.5 hour flight from Perth) and made my way to tulambenwreckdivers where I met up with old friends "Tony and Dot" whom use to own the Exmouth Dive Centre over here on the Ningaloo Reef in Exmouth about 1200km north of Perth in Western Australia.

I also took the mighty Discovery G3 HID light and the 16.9 external HD monitor plus the EVO underwater housing along with the Sony A1 to go inside along with a bunch of tapes. One of the great things about these small setups are they are easy to travel with. The G3 light I carried on in my camera bag while the rest sat in the EVO's pelican case which I then placed into a normal large suitcase. They also told me not to loose the port as this was a one off lens and cost them abit to make...lol...

Once I arrived I set up all the gear and was soon underwater. The water conditions were not the best due to bad weather but I still got some nice footage. The two things that really struck me about the new port was the nice 95 degree footprint and how far you could zoom into subjects from a distance. As the discovery G3 light is so powerful, this made for some nice zoom in and out shots as the port is 100% zoom through meaning you get 100% focus right through the entire zoom length. Watch the video and you can see for yourself how nice this port is.

The new port has no vignetting when underwater but out of the water you will see a tiny bit in the bottom corners. No problem, just zoom in abit when shooting through it out of the water. Its pretty sharp and you do get abit of distortion on the edges as this is a wide port but watching the video you can see its no problem.

The Discovery G3 HID light works really well with this little setup and having two would be complete overkill. My longest dive was 1 hour and 20 minutes, it was on the 50 watt setting the whole time only giving up just as I was about to surface. One thing I might add is that is does not get dimmer as the power runs out, its just a suddenly switches OFF. You can get two dives out of it on the lower 35 watt setting. The best way was to have it shooting over the top of the 16.9 monitor and housing.

It was really easy to charge, took about 2 hours just enough time for me to have a nap and ready to go again.:-) I did one night dive but the water was too stirred up and I only got a couple decent shots. At night 50 watts is way too much, poor little fish did not know what to do...lol.

The external 16.9 monitor is perfect for setups like this. The batteries last a couple dives easily if using good rechargeables. I use to top them up after each dive which took about 30 mins.

The whole setup worked perfect, no hiccups with anything. As many cameras are going tape less now days, I was quite happy to have the little Sony A1 and to just pop in a new tape instead of having to lug over a delicate laptop and two hard drives to save and backup everything every couple of dives. Editing the footage I used EDIUS 5 on my QUAD XP-PC editing the raw HDV-m2t files as is.

So if you have a housing that takes this new 95 degree port, it would be a great add on allowing you to capture some really unique shots due its wide angle and zoom in abilities.

Recommended retail is going to be around $1,000 US and they should be ready to ship around March - April 2010.

If you ever go to Bali, get out to Tulamben and do some dives with the guys at tulambenwreckdivers.

Have to say thanks to Tony, Dot and the crew for looking after me. I'll be back there soon that's for sure. Nothing like riding the scooter down the road, wind in ya face sipping on a Bintang. Cannot do that in the West...lol

Also to Amphibico for trusting me with their rather expensive pre production port.
Click here to see some more pics of the setup.

Cheers

Paul Wags
January 2010