The guys over at Aquatech put together a great tutorial video on how to shoot your underwater housing ports for surf. It’s really worth a watch for every surf photographer out there.
I use all the techniques mentioned in the video with my ZEN (dome) port and Olympus (flat) port and find that these work great.
Additionally to this the ZEN and Olympus ports are actually made of glass and there are chemicals out there that wouldn’t harm the glass as much as they do on acrylic ports. However I think I’d rather avoid using chemicals and stick with the classic methods to shoot my ports (as mentioned in the video).
I do find that the ZEN dome port needs more regular spitting and licking to keep it wet (compared to acrylic ports) as the glass has a smother surface than acrylic and therefor doesn’t hold the film of spit for quite as long as acrylic ports do. Good thing it’s a tiny port and re-applying a film of spit takes about 2 seconds.
An additional tip: attach the kitchen squeegee to your housing with a piece of string (or straight to the leash) so you can’t lose it once you start getting bashed around by some bigger waves.
