Advices needed in choosing a digital system!

[mct1976]

Hello,

I decided to buy a digital system (thanks to all your advices) and did some researches tonight. I eliminated all SONY digicams (expensive) and focused on cameras with anti-shake function. The following five cameras are my results:

Canon S1 IS
Canon IXUS 800 IS
Canon A710 IS
Panasonic FX01
Panasonic FX07

Here comes the question: It is hard to determine whether they are expandable with external strobes by just reviewing specifications. If you guys happen to be familiar with these cameras and their housings, please let me know whether they can have strobes.

Thank you so much for the advices in advance.

 

[alcina]

Pretty sure any of those will accept an external strobe. External strobes have a couple of ways to be connected to the housing: hard wired synch cord and fibre optic. Many compact systems use fibre optic. I've used it with Inon strobes and Canon & Olympus housings with no problems. I believe the Ikelite housings have hard wired synch cord attachments.

When you decide on your rig, contact a reputable dealer (ryan@reefphoto.com) and ask which parts you will need and what would be recommended based on your rig and your needs.

 

[liberato]

mct1976, image stabilization is of minimal value underwater. It is intended mainly for the telephoto range of the lens. Underwater you will mainly be doing wide angle shots and macro closeups.

I am a Canon fan and even have an S1 IS but it would not be the best choice for an underwater camera (lousy auto focus under low light conditions). The others I am unfamiliar with.

You have lots of options. I recommend you continue reading through the underwater photography threads here for a while to find out what will work best for you (everything is compromise). I have found that the more experienced photograpers (such as Alcina) here are amazingly generous with valuable information.

I am retrograding from a DSLR back to a point-and-shoot for underwater. I just got an Olympus SP-350 but can't really comment on it directly yet because I haven't taken it under yet. It had the features I needed (Ikelite support, hot shoe, and RAW processing) which are now rare commodities in the p-&-s models. I based my decision on information I got here.

 

[bladephotog]

I actually think IS would be of value shooting wrecks. At least where I shoot them. It's can be pretty dark on some of the wrecks here in the Great Lakes and IS could let me get away with a slower ISO.

That said, I just finished editing some photos for a friend of mine from her trip to Bonaire with an SP-350 and I'm pretty impressed with the files from that camera. They are very nice and it's a huge plus to be able to shoot RAW with a P&S.

Good luck in your decision.

 

[mct1976]

mct1976, image stabilization is of minimal value underwater. It is intended mainly for the telephoto range of the lens. Underwater you will mainly be doing wide angle shots and macro closeups.

I am a Canon fan and even have an S1 IS but it would not be the best choice for an underwater camera (lousy auto focus under low light conditions). The others I am unfamiliar with.

(...deleted)

Liberato, thanks for your advice. Besides auto-focus in low light, what factor should I count in when choosing my uw digicam?

 

[kapula]

mct1976: You propably will find a bunch of answers to your questions going through the pink link in alcinas reply. Basically your camera should have excellent optics (you can never have too much light), manual controls (you'll end up using manual mode while diving), manual white balance (if you don't have an external strobe you'll be using it quite a bit). Other good things to have are hot shoe connector and a housing supporting it and raw. You can edit your shots more thoroughly if you can shoot in raw. Jpegs are compressed and you loose picture information. In raw mode nothing is wasted and you get all the info your ccd gets. That is why raw pics take more space. All p/s cameras have enough pixels but some of them have tiny ccds making picture quality worse. The bigger the better is an easy thumb rule for ccds. Don't know wether this reply gave you any answers but it sure raised a few more questions in your mind
There are many good cameras out there it's just the matter of how much you're willing to invest in this hobby and what are your needs.