I bought a Ricoh Theta TW-2 underwater housing for my Ricoh Theta X camera and it showed up in the mail today. So I went onto the lake and tested it by shooting a video of my pedal-powered kayak’s propeller.

I also took a static photo:

Our lake is really murky and it’s almost impossible to see anything beyond a foot or two. So I figured the boat’s prop was about the only interesting thing I could shoot with the camera for quick test without driving all the way to the sea. Also, there’s something misaligned in that boat, so I thought I could use the camera to try and diagnose the problem while pedaling.

I don’t really want to do underwater photography, but I want to be able to leave the camera sitting outside in the rain to shoot very long 360° timelapse videos, and it turns out the TW-2 underwater housing yields much higher quality images than the water-resistant (but not waterproof)Ricoh Theta TH-3 hardcase.

In fact, the camera’s firmware has settings specifically for the TW-2 housing, so the stitching is correct either in air or in water, whereas it has no specific settings for the TH-3. You can even see the effect of those settings in the video: the camera was set for underwater image correction, and the stitching is clearly wrong when the camera is out of the water.

So my plan is to modify the TW-2 case to power the camera externally. Hopefully I’ll manage to fit a USB-C plug in there without compromising the watertightness, but I doubt it - which is a shame considering the price of this housing.

But before I do that, I’ll use it normally to shoot underwater pictures - and I’m hoping to catch some fish on camera under the ice this winter.