A good underwater rig is rarely just the housing. It's the housing plus the small pieces that solve the everyday annoyances — carrying the rig on a rolling boat, working a touchscreen with cold hands, holding a phone steady on the sand for a macro shot, or swapping a wide-angle lens for a macro lens without dropping either one into the blue.
In a recent rundown of the DIVEVOLK accessory lineup, underwater filmmaker Matthias Lebo of the Underwater Filmmaking School walked through seven of these add-ons — none of them flashy on their own, but each one aimed at a real problem divers run into. Below, we've collected his picks and the reasoning behind each, so you can decide which ones belong in your own kit. If you're still choosing the housing they bolt onto, start with our overview of DIVEVOLK underwater phone housings.
1. Double clip lanyard — carry and hand off the whole rig
The double clip lanyard is the least exciting item on the list, Lebo admits, but one of the most genuinely useful. It's the same idea you'll have seen on larger mirrorless camera housings: two strong metal clips that snap onto either side of the DIVEVOLK double handle tray so you can lift and carry the entire rig with one hand — even when it's loaded with lights and other accessories.
Where it really earns its place is the boat. Clipped on, the rig is easy to pass to the crew after a dive, or to have someone hand down to you at the start. If it gets in the way once you're in the water, you simply unclip it and attach it to a D-ring on your BCD, then reattach it to the tray on the surface when it's time to pass the housing back up. It's a small piece of insurance against the most common way expensive gear gets damaged — the awkward boat handoff.
2. Finger cot — for cold-water divers in dry gloves
This one isn't brand new, and Lebo notes that a lot of divers don't realize it exists. It's aimed squarely at cold-water shooters who dive in dry gloves. DIVEVOLK housings keep full touchscreen control through a flexible membrane, but how well that membrane responds can depend on the material and thickness of the glove pressing against it. Some gloves work fine; others fight you.
If you're in the second group, the finger cot is the fix. You slip it over a finger of your dry glove, and use that finger to drive the touchscreen — the response is much more reliable than glove-on-membrane alone. Lebo says his own dry gloves happen to work well with the membrane, but for divers who've struggled with it, he calls this "a little accessory for all my cold-water friends." If you mostly dive warm water in thin gloves or bare hands, you can skip it.
3. Flexible tripod — a macro-shooting must-have
Of everything in the lineup, the flexible tripod is the one Lebo singles out as a personal favorite — and close to a no-brainer if you shoot macro. It's been around for a couple of years, but the detail that sets it apart from land tripods used underwater is a small screw-in weight at the base. That added mass is what makes it genuinely stable down on the sand or a rocky bottom, instead of drifting with every surge.
The legs are fully flexible, so you can wrap or bend them to whatever surface you've got. Lebo keeps one in a BCD pocket whenever he knows he'll be shooting macro: if he finds a subject worth setting up on, he clips the tripod on in seconds (easy if you're running an expansion clamp on your housing) and goes to work. It won't hold up a full loaded rig, he's clear about that — but for a housing, a macro lens, and a small macro light, it's perfectly capable. He also uses it on land for action cameras, which is a nice bonus.
4. Action camera conversion mount — shoot two cameras at once
Plenty of divers want to run an action camera alongside their phone — a wide POV record rolling while they line up the phone for the shot they actually care about. The action camera conversion mount makes that pairing simple. You attach your action cam's housing to the adapter, which gives you a cold-shoe fitting on the other end.
From there, if you've got a clamp on your housing — or you're using the Platinum version with its included cold shoe — the mount slides straight in and tightens down on top. Your action camera is now sitting securely above the DIVEVOLK housing, and you're filming both angles at once. (If you're weighing which housing gives you the most mounting flexibility, the SeaTouch 4 Max Platinum ships with that cold shoe built in.)
5. Filter hood — kill the reflections when shooting with filters
The filter hood borrows its design from DIVEVOLK's wide-angle conversion lens, minus the optical element — it's purely a shade. It's for divers using color-correction filters underwater. You attach the hood on top of the filter, with the filter mounted on your housing's filter holder.
Why bother? Because when you're shooting with a filter and you point the camera toward the sun at certain angles, light passing through the two glass surfaces can bounce back as odd reflections in the frame. The hood blocks light coming in from those off-angles and minimizes the problem — not perfectly, but noticeably. It's the same reason wide-angle lenses on big camera systems wear hoods. Whether you're running a magenta or a red filter, Lebo says, clipping the hood on makes those unwanted reflections much easier to avoid. (New to why filters matter at all? Our 2026 underwater photography goals guide covers the basics of color loss with depth.)
6. Coil lanyard — keep the rig tethered to you
Where the double clip lanyard is about carrying, the coil lanyard is about not losing. It's a simple way to secure your DIVEVOLK rig to yourself for the whole dive. One end clips to a D-ring on your BCD; the other end attaches to the housing — Lebo finds the easiest method is to loop and tighten it directly over one of the handles on the double handle tray.
A small clip lets you open the coil up so you get plenty of reach when you're actually shooting, then stow it again when you're not. Depending on your buoyancy, it'll hang below you or drift just above — either way the rig stays attached. It's an easy, low-cost habit that keeps a phone-in-housing from becoming a story about the one that got away. For more on securing and articulating a rig, our guide to ball-joint clamps is a good companion read.
7. Overhead cage extension clamp — swap lenses underwater, fast
Lebo saves the most versatile piece for last. The overhead cage extension clamp is, again, an idea lifted from bigger mirrorless housings, which usually carry a bar like this across the top for extra attachment points. This version is designed specifically for the DIVEVOLK dual handle tray: you remove the ball mounts, seat the bar between the ball mounts and the top of the handles, and lock it back down. It's a tight fit, he notes, but it holds well — and once it's on, it opens up a row of mounting options across the top of your rig.
His favorite use is carrying spare lenses. With a couple of spare lens holders, you can park a wide-angle lens on one side of the bar and a macro lens on the other. Then, when you come across a subject that calls for a different lens, you unscrew the one on the front of the housing, stash it up on the bar, grab the other, and screw it into place — no digging through pockets, no juggling two lenses in your hands mid-water. You can also use the bar as a carry handle, much like the double clip lanyard. For divers running the dual handle tray, it's a genuinely smart bit of kit.
Building your kit
None of these accessories reinvents underwater photography. What they do is remove friction — the dropped lens, the unreadable touchscreen, the shaky macro shot, the nerve-wracking boat handoff. Lebo's rundown is a reminder that the difference between a frustrating dive and a productive one is often a $20 part you didn't know existed.
If you're assembling a setup from scratch, the bundled SeaTouch 4 Max Kits are the simplest way to cover the essentials, and our getting-started guide breaks down which pieces matter first. Coming from a dedicated camera system? Our take on the switch from camera to smartphone housing covers what changes — and what gets easier. You can watch Matthias Lebo's full walkthrough on YouTube, and browse the complete range of housings, lenses and filters, and dive lights to round out your rig.
