1st Dive - Sealife DC2000 + Strobe & Auto Video Light

[flyingDiver75]

Just took delivery of the new DC2000 Pro Duo combo and had a chance to dive it today off Destin, Florida.

Very impressive resolution and dynamic range - this is going to be a fun camera!

Attached are some close crops from 2 of the better pictures of the day. If you're curious about just how much you gain by shooting RAW with this camera, I've posted a Flickr Album that has a set of ~25 images in their 'as taken' JPG format and then the processed version I created using Photoshop. Most adjustments were for exposure & contrast and little else.

I had some brain fade issues diving the camera for the 1st time and tried to include a representative sample of good and bad shots:

• I bumped the program dial early in dive one and put the camera in Manual mode instead of Underwater mode and didn't catch it until 1/2 through the dive. Most of the heavily blown-out photos are from that time
• To put the auto-light into 'auto' mode you have to tap through the brightness settings when it powers on. It would be great if auto mode was the default instead when the light is powered on. Some of the other blown-out photos are from not having the light set to auto when the flash fired

That said, as the RAW / Processed comparisons show, some pretty terrible shots were salvageable and the level of detail in the good shots is stunning to me.

 

[duncdiver]

So are the "processed" examples processed via Photoshop or other program, or are they internally processed via the camera's filtering software? It would be nice if the camera did a good enough job that post-processing is not required. Are these all taken with strobe?, i.e. were any taken with just the flood light on, no strobe?

 

[flyingDiver75]

Sorry for the slow reply - it's been a busy week. All of these were taken with the Sealife strobe and then I used the RAW photo processor in Photoshop Elements to make any required adjustments. The 'unprocessed' photos are the default JPGs that the camera produced. I've been using PE Elements for nearly 10 years -- so I haven't even checked to see what software Sealife makes available, if any to try.

I have been operating the flash in 'A' - auto mode with the auto-video light in auto mode as well. For the most part, this tends towards overexposed 'default' images so I either have some operator error in getting the light/strobe/camera working together better or it would really require manually adjusting the flash power (it has 10 settings that are adjusted by a big wheel on the strobe housing). I could try setting the EV down a couple notches as well. Fodder for more diving this weekend if weather cooperates.

I haven't tried shooting light-only yet. Our waters are fairly dark and the strobe helps significantly for still shots. I'm planning to have a weekend in Key Largo in early June where natural lighting will be much brighter and I'll experiment more with non-flash underwater modes. The downside of shooting RAW is the delay in follow-up shots while the file is written to disk -- so I'd like to be able to just shoot JPG when conditions are good enough.

 

[kelemvor]

I have been operating the flash in 'A' - auto mode with the auto-video light in auto mode as well. For the most part, this tends towards overexposed 'default' images so I either have some operator error in getting the light/strobe/camera working together better or it would really require manually adjusting the flash power (it has 10 settings that are adjusted by a big wheel on the strobe housing). I could try setting the EV down a couple notches as well. Fodder for more diving this weekend if weather cooperates.

That was my experience using sealife strobes on a dc1400 as well. Auto flash = overexposed images. I had to move to manually adjusting the strobes with the knob on the back of the strobe. I've always preferred an underexposed image to an overexposed one because I can salvage underexposure better in photoshop.

 

[duncdiver]

Did you check with SeaLife to see if there was a problem with the auto-dim?

 

[Pillpusher]

I always manually adjust my strobe strength as well. After a while, you can usually guess pretty close to what setting you'll need. Also, always bracket some shots if you have time. It may look perfect on the screen, but then will be underexposed once you get it on the computer. Better safe than sorry.