NEWS
October 2010
Press Release: Aquatica AN-5 housing for
the Sony NEX-5 camera
The
Aquatica Team is proud to announce the release of the Aquatica AN-5
housing for the Sony
NEX-5 camera. Sony has once again pushed the boundaries with this
camera, yielding the punch of the DSLR sensor and the size of a compact
camera; this flexible camera with its interchangeable lens and after
market accessories will fill the needs of many underwater photographers
seeking a high level of imaging performance in an easy to pack travel
system.
With the recent upgrade of the Camera firmware, Sony has made the
NEX-5 even better for the task of underwater imaging, namely, access
to a larger selection of Sony lenses is now possible, better focusing
in both still and video, improvement in the aperture priority mode
while video recording, even the difficult task of manual focusing
has been addressed with an upgraded method.
As for the housing, 28 years of designing
and constructing underwater housings was the starting block on
which we built this Aquatica AN-5 housing, while sporting a state
of the art high tech look it nonetheless features time proven methods
of construction and sound optical principles. We, as usual, only
use the highest grade of corrosion resistant materials for its
construction and is has been designed and built by an experienced
team at our Canadian based headquarters, a country know for the ruggedness
of its diving condition. The housing shell is anodized and powder
coated to a smooth finish that will resist years of extensive use,
all controls are double sealed in order to face the 300ft/90 meter
depth rating assign to this housing, every shaft and push button
is manufactured to a mirror smooth surface and is made of the finest
grade stainless steel, Montreal is the third largest aeronautically
industrialized city in the world, this strategically give us access
to the best raw tools available on this planet. Bottom line is; if
the material used is good enough to trust your life to it, then it’s
good enough to protect your camera from the harsh environment it
will be faced with.
Special care has been taken to locate every control at their best
possible positions and the basic layout of the camera has been reproduced
externally to retain the visual comfort of not having to search for
a relocated controls. Even with the extremely small size of this
housing, AQUATICA has managed to built in a quick access lever to
bring the internal flash up and down allowing for quickly alternating
between strobe illuminated and ambient light, plus a pair of built-in
dual optical strobe connectors are provided, this features is not
an optional accessory and is included in the Aquatica AN5 housing
price, aside from assuring a sure fire exposure every time, it maintains
the housings at its original compact size and it is unlikely to come
loose, be lost or forgotten like an external adapter would.
To accommodate the Sony Nex-5 lenses a series
of compact port were designed for its range of optics as well as
an adapter that will allow the mounting of our current line of
ports, this will be appreciated in light of the extended range
lenses now available via the various camera mount adapters available
for this already popular camera.
And finally given the absence of a regular view finder our design
staff integrated a 15 degree of angle to the rear LCD screen; this
was done to give the user a much more comfortable position for viewing
in diving conditions.
A very compact housing at just 165mm /6.5” of width, a height
of 141mm /5.5” (including optical bulkhead) and a mere thickness
of 84mm/3.3”, the production model should tip the scale without
the camera at less than 1Kg/2.2lbs.,
Priced at just 1,349.00 USD Retail, it is the most economical and
best made of its category. It will be unveiled at the DEMA show (November
17-20) at our Aquatica booth # 3742 in the IMAGE RESOURCE CENTER
section of the show.
For more information, please contact us at info@aquatica.ca
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