Better Digital Camera

Some days the weather was good , some days bad, but one aspect I had not anticipated was working so much out of Zodiacs. If there is any wind at all it's quite common to get splashed as you move about, so I needed a way to keep my camera dry, in particular my 300f2.8 lens.

Adeal kindly sent me both the 702 cape and the 704 extension and I used both. They are very well made, the transparent parts of the cape are crystal clear and the rest is made of a flexible but robust waterproof fabric which easily kept out the water. The basic design is quite clever with a central zipped access slit to insert the camera and two hand sleeves with drawstrings to tighten around one's arms as you can see in the above picture. The lens ring is made of a more rigid plastic panel which is covered with velcro for attachment of the lens extension sleeve.

I found the cape very effective at keeping the rain off, but somewhat fiddly to get the camera into - maybe practice will make perfect. The plastic lens ring is a bit too wide to sit easily over wide angle lenses like the Canon 16-35mm but is fine with lenses with decent sized lens hoods. One issue I had with the cape (on its own) was that the velcro around the lens ring is the 'hook' part not the 'loop' part of the pair. Consequently, if you put the assembly into a camera bag it's rather hard to get out again as the velcro grabs the lining of the bag. Using a bag with a smooth liner is advisable.

I found the combination of cape and extension less than ideal for the sort of handheld work I was doing, but it would be awesome on a tripod at a sports event when you did not have the put the camera away frequently. I'd also like to see a cutout for the eyepiece rather than having to look through the plastic. No matter how clear the material it necessarily gets covered in water and tends to fog up.

I'm sounding a bit negative here but once I had experimented a bit I found that the lens extension on it's own was fabulous. The leading image shows me using the 300f2.8 lens with only the extension sleeve and not the cape. It's long enough and roomy enough so that you can pull one end over the entire camera, and simply peel it back when you want to shoot. This was ideal when it was not actually raining hard but there was a clear danger of salt water splashing around. After I discovered this technique the sleeve stayed on the lens permanently. Not only does it keep the lens and camera dry when in use but if you take it off the camera you can wrap the sleeve over the lens mount and put it down out of harms way. As long as the open end faces away for splashing it's pretty much impervious to the salt water.

Verdict: Cape 702, a well made and robust product, ideal for static shooting like sports or bird hides. Some aspects of the design could be improved upon. The lens extension 704 was incredibly useful when shooting from the moving platform - would be perfect for yachting photography, or in this case, photographing penguins from a bucking Zodiac. 

www.adeal.com.au

www.kata-bags.com 

.