About the Author: Michelle Attard
Michelle Attard is the founder of Coconut Odyssey, a dive travel blog and social media channel where she shares expert dive travel advice, destination guides and underwater photography tips to help divers discover the world’s best underwater destinations.
With over two decades of diving experience and more than 1,000 dives around the world, she collaborates with dive brands, tourism boards and resorts to create authentic content that inspires others to explore beneath the surface, especially those who have never tried scuba diving. Michelle couldn’t swim until just a month before learning to dive, so she’s passionate about encouraging others to overcome their fears.
Having explored underwater environments everywhere from the Galápagos and the Maldives to Indonesia, South Africa and the Philippines, she’s passionate about showing that you don’t need an expensive camera setup to capture amazing underwater content.
As a DIVEVOLK ambassador, Michelle has been using the SeaTouch 4 Max for several years and only recommends products she genuinely enjoys using and trusts underwater. It’s become a permanent fixture in her dive bag.
Travel Blog: coconutodyssey.com
Instagram: @coconutodyssey
A guest blog by dive travel creator and DIVEVOLK ambassador Michelle Attard.
These days I create video content for tourism boards, dive resorts and luxury travel brands, so having a reliable setup that’s quick and easy to use is incredibly important. I love that I can simply use the smartphone I already own.
Field-Tested from Tanzania to the Philippines
Over the years I’ve put the SeaTouch 4 Max and now its accessories through their paces in destinations including Tanzania, the Maldives and, most recently, during two weeks of muck diving in the Philippines, where I tested some of DIVEVOLK’s newest accessories.
What Impressed Me First: The Touchscreen
What first impressed me about the housing is how intuitive it is. Your phone sits securely inside a tray designed specifically for your model, and once the housing is sealed you’re ready to dive. Unlike many smartphone housings that rely on awkward external buttons and companion apps, the SeaTouch 4 Max gives you full access to your phone’s touchscreen underwater. That means I can switch effortlessly between photo and video, zoom in on tiny critters and use my iPhone’s camera features exactly as I would on land.
An Unexpected Favourite: Typing Notes to My Dive Buddy
One feature I didn’t expect to use so often is the Notes app. Being able to type simple messages underwater has actually been surprisingly useful when hand signals weren’t quite enough to communicate with my dive buddy.
The Kit: Lights, Filters and a Macro Lens
Every frame in this article was shot on a phone sealed inside a SeaTouch housing. These are some of the accessories I tested along the way — each one clamps or screws onto the same underwater phone housing, so the setup grows without changing the way you shoot.
A single SL20 video light on a flex arm — the lightest way to put colour back into close subjects. More options live in dive lights.
Water strips out red light first — NOAA’s National Ocean Service explains how far light travels in the ocean. A screw-on red filter puts some of it back in ambient light.
The same shell, same seagrass bed, minutes apart: without a filter (top) and with one (bottom). Both frames are straight out of the phone.
The Macro Lens PRO +18 on a flip mount — swing it in for a nudibranch, swing it out for the next wide shot. The full range sits under lenses and filters.
If You Know Your Phone, You Already Know the Housing
Whether you’re new to underwater photography or you’ve been diving for years, I think one of the biggest advantages is how little there is to learn. If you know how to use your smartphone, you already know how to use the SeaTouch 4 Max. Simply place your phone into the tray, slide it into the housing, lock it closed and you’re ready to start capturing your dive.
See More from Coconut Odyssey
If you’d like to see more examples of what I’ve captured with the SeaTouch 4 Max, you can find plenty of footage from my recent dive trips across my Instagram and blog.
Michelle’s point — that the barrier to underwater imaging is lower than most divers assume — is one we hear from ambassadors again and again. UK marine biologist Martin Stevens reached the same conclusion from a very different starting point in his own guest blog. And if you have never breathed underwater at all, that part is easier to fix than the camera gear — start with a PADI Open Water Diver course.
Questions about which tray fits your phone, or which accessories work with your housing? Our technical support team can match the right setup to the phone already in your pocket.
