I took my Canon 7D and the Aquatica A7D housing for its first dive today. I can say without question that the combination of the two certainly didn’t disappoint. Upgrading from a Canon 40D/50D and Aquatica housing, the immediate thing to hit me was the brightness and size of the 7D viewfinder through the AquaView. The second thing was the autofocus – it’s damm fast! The internals of the housing are a thing of beauty with the camera fitting precisely. My only negative comment is that it would have been nice to have the moisture alarm fitting at the factory, rather than doing it myself.

As has been reported in other reviews the Aquatica housing is small and feels light when compared to it’s predecessors. Shooting with my old lenses, strobes and ports the experience was seamless for still photography. Aperture, shutter speed and release are all where you want and expect them. The dials are easier to manipulate too when compared to my 50D housing as I presume they have bolder edges which grip nicely even with thin temperate water gloves.

The 7D’s beautiful LCD is shown off well. One of my minor gripes with the 50D was that the top of the screen was blocked at certain angles and the AquaView didn’t help things. The A7D seems to address this with a nicely positioned LCD window and even with the AquaView, viewing the screen was no issue at all. Several people have questioned the omission of the top LCD window, but I have no issue with this as I never used it on the 40D housing. The Canon information screen makes the top LCD redundant in my view.

I primarily focused on stills today though curiosity forced me to enter video mode. Using a 60mm lens in murky water left me few options. I got close and opened the lens up to f/2.8 (and I paid the penalty for it). My less than steady hand meant the video was almost useless, so I think I’ll need a tripod for macro video. I say almost useless as I could see glimpses of awesome definition when things were in focus. Stay tuned for wider angle footage using the Canon 28mm f/1.8 and Tokina 10-17mm as I think it’s going to be great for wrecks and large animals.

I’m leaving this review incomplete as I need more time in the water to understand the camera and housing more. More from me in the coming days, though thanks to Peter from Scubapix and Jean and the crew at Aquatica for getting the housing to me for a timely birthday present!