Sealife DC 2000 Dive Camera Meets the Nearly Frozen Waters of Iceland's SILFRA

June marked my second year to celebrate summer solstice with 23 hour long days in beautiful, pristine Iceland.  

 

One of the thousands of must do activities in this perfect place is the Silfra dive.  This is a crack in the world. It is a separation of around 10m between two continental shelves. You were driving on water that is so pure and clear that it feels like you're floating through air. You can reach your right hand out and touch North America. Reach your left hand out and touch the Eurasian continental shelf. 

If you get thirsty mid dive-simply remove your regulator and take a gob of cold, clear, clean and tasty Icelandic water that has been filtered through volcanic rock for 30 years, since the time it melted from the glacier that is visible in the distance.

 

The water temperature remains constant at 1 or 2° above freezing.  This is a challenging environment for underwater photography. Extreme cold will discharge your battery very quickly.  

 

I brought my GoPro 5 & my Sealife DC2000 with me on this dive.  

 

After about 15 minutes-my GoPro is fully spent. 

 

In fact-at the end of this 45 minute dive, I still had half of my battery remaining. I couldn't take the chance of having it run dry so I did give it a little boost in between dives and it performed equally well for the second dive of the day. I decided to leave my GoPro behind since the DC2000 can do everything the GoPro does- and then some, with its color correcting firmware, giant WYSIWYG screen and very importantly- big, easy to use buttons to easily switch between video and stills and various other camera settings. All of this was next to impossible with 6mm virtual oven mitts as gloves with the GoPro.

 

I think one of the reasons that the Sealife camera was able to withstand the cold is the fact that you have a 40' watertight sealed camera that sits inside an outer housing. The camera is very attractive to me for this exact reason. It's nice to know that you have a little bit of extra insurance in the case of a housing flood.

 

I already loved my DC2000 but after this trip-I know that I will be packing my GoPro less and less often.