Dema 2014 Coverage

Take a look at all the great new underwater photo & video products Bluewater Photo recently previewed at DEMA 2014 in Las Vegas. 

ACQUAPAZZA HOUSINGS

Acquapazza had the new RX100 III housing on display this year. This is another great option for the poular Sony camera, available in several different colors! This housing is currently available, click here for more information. 

AQUATICA - NEW HOUSINGS, ARM SYSTEM

Exciting things are coming from Aquatica this year as they venture further into the mirrorless line with the new small, lightweight housing for Panasonic GH4. Optional is a small, glass dome for the 8mm fisheye lens. 

In addition they are hard at work finishing off new DSLR housings for the much anticipated Canon 7DMKII and the new Nikon D810 camera. Expect these housings out around the beginning of 2015.

In addition, Aquatica also debuted its fully redesigned Technical Lighting Control line of arms and clamps. This includes new style arms that are much lighter and still very durable, now with an o-ring in the ball mount similar to many other ball arm styles. They also have some nice aluminum float arms that offer up to 1 full pound of lift per arm. Aquatica says they tested their float arms down to 450ft (136m).

BENEATH THE SURFACE

BTS is working on some great new products like a handstrap to attach to their popular Travel Lite handles as well as a carrying case with customizeable foam for small rigs, more on these to come in 2015. Also, if you had not seen yet, they recently released their set of foam floats which fit over thier ball & join arms to add up to 4 oz of lift per float. Now they have a new float system available, designed to fit on the flex arms. This is the first float system for a flex arm we've seen, allowing you to easily adjust the buoyancy for your camera rig. 

NEW FANTASEA HOUSINGS

Fantasea showed us the new RX100 III housing which will start shipping in just a few short weeks. It looks great, a nice low cost option for the new RX100 III camera. We were able to bring this housing back to test out, so look for more great information coming soon! Lastly, keep an eye out for the new housing for Canon G7X, coming at the end of January.

IKELITE - NEW HOUSINGS & VIEWFINDERS

Ikelite has always been known for making great quality polycarbonate housings here in the United States. In the past they've stuck to the compact or DSLR lines, but this year they announced that they'll be venturing into the mirrorless world and had to show the new housing for the Olympus OM-D E-M10. This is a great as so far only Nauticam has offered a housing for this camera. For the DSLR and mirrorless shooters exciting news from Ikelite comes with the announcement of new external viewfinders. With both a 180° and 45° viewfinder that fits in any housing with the SuperEye Viewfinder, the range of use on this new piece will be excellent. Ikelite also has new housings for the Nikon D810 and upcoming Canon 7DMKII cameras. 

ITORCH VIDEO LIGHTS

Always on the forefront with new lights, this year was no exception. iTorch has two new addtions to its new Venom line, the 3500 lumen iTorch Venom 35s - a scaled down version of the Venom38, with slightly less lumens and no UV mode at a nicer price point. The second, the Venom50 packs a punch with 5000 lumens and a very wide beam angle. The iTorch Venom50 has a flood, red, and UV light, along with an optional remote trigger.

On the high end video market is the new iTorch C92. We saw the prototype for this light which packs a high end LED to produce a 92 rating for CRI (Color Reflective Index). This warmer light creates excellent colors and contrast, in addition is a high powered light with 4000 lumens. 

LIGHT & MOTION - NEW SOLA LIGHTS

The Light & Motion Sola lights have been the best sellers for many years. Now with more lights available from different manufacturer's they have continued their tradition of excellence with several new lights to hit the market early next year. The high powered Sola 3000 light offers bright illumintaion with 3000 lumens and a wider 90° beam (underwater!). After stopping production on the Sola 4000 this year, they've now announced its replacement, a stunning 8000 lumens from the new Sola 8000 Pro video light that is the same size as the Sola 4000 was, and uses innovative venting to keep the light cool underwater.

NAUTICAM - LOTS OF NEW PRODUCTS

In addition to new housings such as the Nikon D810, Canon 7DMKII, Nikon D750, Canon G7X, Panasonic LX100 and more, Nauticam has a few new tricks up its sleeve this year. For the high end video a shooter, a new ,housing for excellent TV Logic monitor will be out soon.

In addition they've created a new diopter, the Compact Macro Converter designed specifically to create the best macro images with the most magnification for compact camera shooters (it also works great with the Nikon 60mm macro lens). New housings should be starting to roll out with in the next few weeks throughout the beginning of the new year, and expect the CMC in a few months.

POLAR PRO FILTERS

Adding to the line of quality filters for the GoPro Hero cameras, Polar Pro now offers a shallow water "Snorkel" Filter for GoPro. This filter is lighter in color allowing you to use it to correct for color loss at depths from 0-20ft without adding the red hue to your video and images. 

RECSEA - NEW HOUSINGS

It was great to see Recsea representing at DEMA this year! We were able to get our hands on some of the new CW housings that have not yet shipped like the RX100 III and Canon G7X housings. The aluminum version of the Canon G7X should be coming out mid December. In addition we got to see the Sony AX100 video housing all decked out with Recsea's new 7" monitor!

SEA & SEA - NEW STROBE & TTL CONVERTER

We've already got the new YS-03 Lighting System in stock, which we got another good look at during DEMA. This new strobe is a perfect entry level, auto only strobe package complete with basic tray, flex arm and fiber optic cable. Sea & Sea also had several new housings to show, such as the updated 5DMKIII housing - now with fiber optic ports to take advantage of their Optical TTL Converter and the new D810 housing. Sea & Sea wil also have a 7DMKII housing coming in early 2015.

In addition to new housings, comes more additions to the available cameras that can use the Optical TTL Converter, a useful tool that Sea & Sea debuted at DEMA last year. This year they had a live demo set up, so one can easily see the benefits and faster recycle rate of bypassing the onboard camera flash. We took a bit of video, so you can also see the difference!

SEALIFE - NEW SEALED CAMERA

The big news this year at SeaLife is the MicroHD camera. This new tiny camera can give a GoPro a run for its money in terms of video quality and is a fully sealed unit, including battery and memory, so you can never ever flood this camera. SeaLife even says, if you flood it, its probably our fault! This little camera pairs well with SeaLife accessories as well as a plethora of other video light options. Available in 16GB or 32GB versions.

ULTRALIGHT

It was great to see the folks at Ultralight again, who have consistently made great quality trays, arms, clamps and so many other useful accessories to create exactly the underwater system you need. This year they've added two new pieces to their long lineup, the AD-HS-GP - a GoPro attachment that fits directly onto the hotshoe mount and the AD-HS-YS - a YS mount for video lights that attaches directly to the hotshoe. 

WATERSHOT

Watershot has a nice new housing, perfect for the snorkeler or those just wanting waterproof protection when at the beach or lake, etc called the Splash housing. The great thing about this housing is that you can still use the touchscreen, giving you full camera / phone / etc functionality. Its not rated deep enough to go scuba diving, but is great for snorkelingn and other watersports. In addition watershot had the upcoming iPhone 6 housing available, and a neat large dome that can allow you to take over-undershots and other great wide angle images from your iPhone. 

XIT404

We are always amazed at the variety of gadgets found at XIT404. This year the piece that really caught our eye is their quad ball, a useful handle topper that allows for the attachment of up to four mounts. You can even mix and match, adding a ball mount, locline flex arm attachment, lanyard bracket and more!