First I should say that I consider myself to be a good marine wildlife photographer, but by no means an equipment expert. I have owned several underwater housings and many camera systems over the past twenty something years. From past experience I’ve learned what works for me and what I want in a system. I can say that the Nikon D200 teamed with the Nexus Housing is by far, the best underwater system I have owned to date.

The housing is a compact, well thought out design that provides ready access to basically every control on the camera. All primary controls such as the command/shutter speed, aperture and zoom control knobs are well positioned, allowing the palms to remain on the handles while making setting changes. The AF/AE lock button is a bit of a reach but still quite usable. Even with the wide-angle dome and extension ring added the system is still compact and easy to swim through the water. This is something I really take notice of as much of my photography is done while freediving.

There are two controls which are not provided that I would have liked to have had. The first is a focus mode switch for switching between auto and manual focus modes. There are provisions in the front casting for this control but the housing is not shipping with it installed. As a confirmed old dog, I guess I just need to get over it. The other is the AF-ON button on the back of the camera. This could have been quite handy for certain tough focus situations. The D200 can be setup to focus only by pressing the AF-ON button, then multiple images can be captured by pressing the shutter release without triggering a re-focus.

The housing back incorporates a large view window, which provides an unobstructed view of the D200’s LCD display. Having the LCD buttons and other control buttons on the camera back placed through the back view window, make them easy to access with no guessing about which is which. When I first saw this design I had wondered if stray light coming in from the back window could interfere with the view through the finder. After in water tests with the sun coming from numerous angles from the back and over my shoulders I have yet to see an instance of any flaring or other unwanted stray light through the finder.

The viewfinder was an area which had concerned me prior to the release of the Nexus housing. After looking at several other manufacturer’s housings for digital SLR cameras such as the Nikon D100 and Canon 20D, I was not at all impressed with their viewfinder optics. Most produced a tunnel like view that required moving the head and/or eye from side to side to see the full image frame from edge to edge. This is partly due to the smaller finders provided with mid-range D-SLRS which includes the D200. But it seemed that little effort had been made to provide housing optics that maximized their finder views. Nexus did a great job of addressing this issue with their D200 housing. Two interchangeable viewfinder lenses are provided. One for wide-angle and the other for macro photography. The wide-angle optic provides a very acceptable view of the complete image frame and viewfinder displays. The macro optic is more of the tunnel vision view, but does provide much needed magnification for confirming critical fine focus details when shooting closeups.

I shoot primarily larger animals such as marine mammals that require the use of wide-angle lenses. My current standard setup is to use the Nikon 12-24mm ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom Lens. To accomadate this lens, the Nexus Dome Port FP-170-3 and Port Extension Ring PE-40-5 are required along with a zoom gear ZG-NAF12-28F28.

This combination provides beautiful tack sharp results with no noticeable light-falloff at the frame edges, at either end of the zoom range. When in the ocean, the housing, camera and dome port combination results in a slightly positively buoyant system if used without strobes.

I’ve been told that when using the 12-24mm lens, adding a 4X diopter will provide the best possible results. After initial pool tests and many real world shots in the ocean I’ve yet to see any need to add the extra glass, which would up the odds of lens flare. Most likely adding the diopter would improve the close-focus ability of the lens, which in most cases is not an issue for me. I do plan to test this setup and will update this page with the results.

When using the dome port, I would consider the Lens Hood LH-170 to be required rather than an option. In addition to preventing stray light from striking the dome, it helps protect the dome from getting scratched and with the provided rubber port cover installed, the housing can set securely on its nose for easy removal of the housing back and access to the camera.

Mounting the camera in the housing when using zoom lenses, can be a bit tricky. The required zoom gear tends to put the camera slightly out of alignment when installed. Everything looks to be good but the command/shutter control wheel and aperture control wheel can in fact be out of alignment and refuse to function. I found that by simply pressing slightly down and in on the upper right hand corner of the camera back while tightening the camera tray mounting screw will prevent this issue.

With the housing back removed the Compact Flash card slot is accessible and CF cards are easily swapped without removing the camera from the housing. Changing the battery does require camera removal. It would have been nice if this could have been incorporated into the design, but I have not found it to be an issue.

I've been using a Nikon D2X for all of my land based photography for well over a year now. The D2X is an incredible camera and will continue to be my go-to system for topside photography. But between its size and cost it was just not the digital camera for me underwater. With the release of the Nikon D200 and Nexus housing, it was clear my film days were over. To date this system has met or exceeded all initial expectations and I expect many years of use from this compact, well-designed tool.

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