Advice on Sea and Sea DX-1G Camera

[john cootes]

I am the proud owner of a new Sea and Sea DX-1G digitial camera. It takes wonderful photos, but at depths greater than, say, ten metres the LCD monitor is so dark that I can barely see any prospective subjects. I literally point and shoot. Even when I put my eye hard up against the monitor, I am unable to distinguish details of my surrounds.
The glass is smoky grey, and I thought this may have been the reason for my difficulty. I am also a "senior" diver in my early sixties ... hope this isn't the sole reason for my "problem". I have maximised the brightness for the monitor, but still can't see properly. Has anyone else had this problem? Regards.

 

[f3nikon]

Treat the camera as if it were a video camera because the electronics is about the same and use a wide beam light source to light up the subject. I use an U/W video light from my video days. You can test this in a totally darken room, shine a strong flashlight at the subject the look at the subject via the LCD monitor on the camera. Also is there a shroud that limits the light from hitting the LCD monitor?

 

[john cootes]

Thank you, f3Nikon, for your suggestion. I will affix my (very good) torch to the side of the strobe and use it to improve the view.
There is no shroud as such on the monitor, but it does have a small rubber surround (supposedly to improve the image quality).

It's just that when I was doing my Underwater Digital Photography course on the Great Barrier Reef, I used a camera supplied by the instructor - and the viewfinder/monitor gave me a much clearer image of the subject.

I'm looking forward to trying your suggestion, Thanks again and regards, JOHN

 

[f3nikon]

You're Welcome

Its like seeing a live performance on stage, the light is illuminating the actors and the audience is in the dark. The same goes for any camera, the subject in front of the camera should have much more light than the viewing area or the back of the camera.

This is the reason why photographers cover themselves with a dark cloth when viewing the back viewfinder of a large format camera.

Also the camera you borrowed during your dive trip may have had a much brighter TFT (Thin Film Transistor) display than the display on your Sea and Sea.

So at all possible try and shoot in an upward angle so the lens is pointing towards (doesn’t have to be directly) the light source and the LCD will be kept on the dark side. Good Luck

Regards, Al

 

[Eskasi]

May I ask if it is at all possible to slap on other add on lenses for Macro use? I see some photos taken by G9 and G7 users who have attached double stacked Inon Macro lenses for incredible macro zooms..... can we do with with the DX-1G? Perhaps there are adaptors?

 

[hammerhead man]

Eskasi, I have the DX-1G and have not problem using the LCD monitor. I believe that you can adjust the brightness of the monitor in setup. I used mine on a trip to the Galapagos and took pics at 100' with no problems viewing the monitor. I will check my manual tonight about adjusting the brightness but like I said my LCD monitor is bright at 10' and 100'.

Regards,

Bill

 

[gustele]

This problem is one of the known issues with this rather new camera. When put on manual Sea & Sea decided to use the brightness of the LCD-panel as a visual indication of under or over exposure. Being under water there is almost always insufficient ambient light so the LCD-panel shows this by being rather dark. There is as far as I know no solution for this yet. A firmware upgrade should be able to solve this.
When put in one of the other modes there is no problem with the brightness of the LCD-panel because then you can set it at maximum brightness. But all the other modes don't work very well with a flash. Automatic will use a very long shutter time and this can give ghost images in combination with the flash. Aperture priority has the same problem because also there the camera tries to compensate for the lack of sufficient light with a long shutter time. Probably the best results will be with the camera on automatic and the flash also on automatic. As far as I have seen the shutter speed will not go under 1/30 sec with these settings and if there is insufficient light the flash should trigger. I didn't try that yet. The problem that I can see with this setting is that the aperture will open as wide as possible and that could give over exposure unless you reduce the output of the strobe or is you are using a TTL-flash.
Apart from that it is a great camera, but it has a bit of a long learning curve before you get good results. One of the nice things of this camera is that you can take good pictures of large sections of the reef with ambient light. The image stabilization is great for this. I was never able to show others "the big picture" of the underwater scene and with this camera I am able to do that.

Regards

Gustele