Sony Handycam sports housing
 

Just picked up one pretty cheap (ebay) and I want to test it before I throw the HV20 in.

is there a particular grease or sealant to use on the seal?

is there anything (litmus paper?) that will change colour or clearly show in some way if there has been a leak? I intend to put some weight in and sit in on the bottom of the pool for a few hours to test.

thanks

I would suggest non-petroleum based grease and you can pick it up in different types of shops, but the expensive ones are in dive shops. But try to googel a manual to your housing, it should say in there what type of grease you need.
Pick the o-ring away from the housing and check it for bakes or cuts. If it’s looks ok, clean it and put a thin layer of grease on it. Check the housing for dost or sand and clean it, put the o-ring back and make sure you seal it properly. Check the looks (Exenter looks I guess, excuse my spelling) so that are working right, if you don’t got the Exenter look with looking on (a small piece of metal that you need to push down before you can opened it) I would suggest you to change to them. After that I think you can jump in the water and see if it leaks.
If you got a leak you will se it, as long as you don’t se any water inside you should me safe. With the small housings I have hade some problem with condensation ‘cause of the heat from the LCD screen. You can get rid of the problem if you put bags of Silica Gel (I think that spell that way) inside and that will suck up the moisture. I’m not sure about how deep you can go with that housing but I guess just a couple of meters (5-6 meters) check the manual…

Good luck and hope it works out Paul

/Markus