Last December I flew over to Ireland on a chance and ended up filming the biggest waves ever surfed.

Once I had returned and downloaded the footage I was a little disappointed that I wasn't able to capture the full enormity of waves and the feeling you get when you're there watching.  As you can see from the footage it was still an impressive day, but it was even so much more impressive then it looks.

One of the reasons for this was the angle I was shooting from, high on the cliff and behind the peak of the wave.

This position didn't allow me to see deep into the barrel, catch the lip throwing over the crazy surfers that were surfing there, or catch the deafening roar of that much water moving into itself.

This prompted me to start the search for a water housing for the Canon HV20.

I consulted a water photographer that was also at the Mullaghmore session, Tony Plant, and he pointed me in the direction of SPL Housings.

The owner of SPL Housings, Sean Labrie, was a pleasure to deal and replied to my novice queries quickly with suggestions on the requirements for water videography and this particular water housing.

Overall I'm very happy with the housing, however I would suggest one change on future housings.

The variable zoom control.

The Canon HV20 is a great camera with an amazing picture quality, however it is still a consumer camera and has the very small and fiddly zoom toggle control.

The lever that controls the zoom has about one inch range of movement, however the zoom only requires a 5mm range of movement.  By including two pins inside the housing to restrict the movement it would be much easier to control zoom movement while in the water.

For now I frame shot once I reach the peak and hope that it doesn't get knocked around too much after I go over the falls the first time ;)