One of my main reasons for attending boot this year was to get a look at various underwater video housings from different manufacturers, a handful of whom were present themselves besides being represented by several dealers eager to sell.
To name but the ones I had a quick look at: BS Kinetics, Light & Motion, Sealux, Silverfish, Subal and Top Dawg. Indeed, a quick look at their price tags, ranging from 1000 something to 3000 plus Euro, was usually enough to get me moving on without much of a second thought, nor much regret considering their rather bulky sizes and general tendency for being slightly overweight, e.g. from 3 to more than 4kg and that without camcorder. Still, there was some pretty cool engineering to be seen there.
Having casually blinked off each of the major-league contenders on my list, it didn't take long before I once more focused onto my one and only minor-league candidate: Epoque's EHS-1000HD. Its presence here at boot an unexpected surprise, as much so as the unexplained absence of its core companion, Sanyo's Xacti VPC-HD1000.
UW-Fotopartner's staff being rather clueless regarding photography in general as well as about their own products and their prices, I would have looked elsewhere but for the fact that nobody else already had this brand new Epoque housing on offer. So, after waiting several hours for Sanyo's supposedly-on-its-way Xacti and never getting a fair quote for the whole package, I just purchased the wanted EHS-1000HD. Together with a WAL of course. But without a VPC-HD1000.
Meaning I'm now the happy owner of an ultra-compact palm-sized light-weight affordably-priced video housing (76x124x143mm, 660g, 319€), without possessing the actual camcorder that fits into it yet. Actually, I haven't even tried, let alone seen, Sanyo's new Xacti! But then, it being that one or no one... and me absolutely wanting to make a movie... I had to play or get off the stage.
