Any reviews/opinions on a good starter camera?

[notabob]

I've seen them go for about $180 on eBay (for the S30/S40/S45). Canon sells them on their site for $240

http://www.canoncompanystore.com/cgi-bin/annex.storefront?ProductDetail=7301A001AA&CategoryNo=1734

-Roman.

 

[Scubamedicjoe]

notabob once bubbled...
Not to sound too presumptuous, but going digital might not be as expensive as you think. A nice setup (including camera & housing) can be had for <$600. A strobe will be more, but you can at least get started. Digital, in my opinion, allows you to take better shots quicker, since you get instant feedback and can adjust on the fly. Also, digitial will be cheaper in the long run. Don't forget to take the cost of film and development into account. They can rack up very quickly. For instance, you can get a 3MP Canon S30 for <$400 and a Canon-made housing for it (rated to 100ft) for <$200. That's not too much more than a reefmaster 35mm with macro lens and the cost of a few developed rolls of film. And the digital camera will give you much more flexibility than a reefmaster can. Last I checked, Reefmaster did not have built-in zoom or a macro mode, among many other features that digital gives you in addition to a simple point'n'shoot mode, without buying add-on lenses.

-Roman.

remember they are asking this .
Any reviews/opinions on a good starter camera

I agree going digital is the way to go and would recommend getting strobe’s too.
But to be honest the reef master pro set up can get for under $400 yes film developing has to taken into account but to get started its one way!!!!
But for now get the best you can afford.
If you right on the budget line and can afford the digital then please make yourself happy and do it!!!! I have the reef master pro it takes ok pictures and hope some day to move up to digital like hopefully the Olympus 5000 with strobe but want case that can go deeper than 150 feet if possible.

 

[chris_b]

If you don't already have a laptop and plan to take pictures on trips, you'll need some means of storing your shots. You can either buy a lot of flash memory or a laptop; either can increase the price quite a bit. There's also the hassle of one more piece of luggage if you bring a laptop on trips, one more expensive thing to lose/have stolen, and another device that will need its batteries recharged from time to time.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

I currently have a fairly high investment in film, with 2 Nikonos II's and a Canon F1N in an Ikelite housing. I have taken some pretty nice photos with the Canon system, and my real questions about digital are two-fold:

1. You don't have an original, so how do you document real life in a way that can be proven? Elsewhere I have a photo that I took of a starry flounder in fresh water, many many miles from the ocean. How do you prove that without film?

2. I now have photos that are over 40 years old, and underwater photos from 25-35 years ago. These slides are still in good shape, and I can scan them whenever I want. What happens to the electronic photo, how are they preserved, and what happens when their media become out-of-date. Will we have the ability to play CD's, get these off flash memory, etc., in 25 years? About 5 years ago, Scientific American stated that this was a big, very troubling question concerning much of the knowledge being produced today. Any suggestions here?

SeaRat

 

[blacknet]

Hello,

As for storage you have cd's, I doubt that will change over the next several years. The conversations goes that cd's may be replaced like the old 8 track tapes.

The original on digital is the first download you do and technically there is no 'originals'. The original would be the unaltered image. The only person you have to prove anything to is yourself. As for the lifespan you would have to convert the images from whatever storage media to the latest media and format.

Ed

 

[notabob]

As blacknet said, original is the unaltered image. When a digital camera takes an image, it will embed a timestamp in the file (not in the image itself, just file's internal structure) and many newer cameras will also record the shooting parameters for each frame, called EXIF data (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, numerous others values) in the file as well. As long as you don't make changes to the file (Photoshop, resizing, etc.) that's your original.

Storage can come in many forms. The beauty of digital is that a file can be copied and moved from one media to another unaltered. CDs, DVDs, or flash media today, then moved to some future storage media, all the while preserving the file's initial attributes.

-Roman.

 

[raxafarian]

John C. Ratliff once bubbled...

1. You don't have an original, so how do you document real life in a way that can be proven? Elsewhere I have a photo that I took of a starry flounder in fresh water, many many miles from the ocean. How do you prove that without film?

How do you prove your film is "original"?
Scan the negative or transparency. Do what you wish to the image. Make a new negative or transparency. So film doesn't "prove" anything.

 

[Titletowndiver]

Amazon.com has great prices on the Canon Housings...

Here

or here

 

[John C. Ratliff]

In reply to rexafarian above, there are many reasons to have a provable original.

In my work, I many times document incidents and accidents. This documentation can potentially be used in litigation. It must be original, undoctored images that I have.

In my avocation as an underwater naturalist, I again document things others rarely see. If I documented those with digital images, and had original observations of unusual behavior of the animals I'm documenting, then my observations cannot be sustained by my photographs.

For instance, I've documented in the 1970's sculpins using anemone tentacles for shelter. This is not unusual for some tropical fish, but this was in Newport, Oregon. I documented other symbiotic relationships with this anemone (then known as Tealia coreacia, but the name has been changed about 10 years ago, and I don't recall it right now--you may know it as the rose anemone).

An amphipod then unknown to science was found to colonize this anemone. It is a very interesting creature, with a distinct, "white," "V" on its back and gold strips going down its back on a purple background. I put the "white" it quotes because, under a dissecting scope, it wasn't white at all, it was transparent. What we were seeing was the white insides of the amphipod, and a close inspection revealed that we could see its beating heart, through the amphipod's back carapace! I've always thought this amphipod would be a great subject for some graduate student to study the effects of pollutents in the water, because we could actually see and count the beating of its heart without intrumentation. But I'm about the only one who knows (or used to know) where they live.

Also, a copepod was found to use the tentacles for shelter. This was not known in cold salt water environments, only the tropics and with different species. The copepod photo was published by Dr. Wim Vader of Norway in one of his papers.

These are two examples of where unmanipulatable images can be used to further science.

But if I came up with some startling observation, and brought only electronic images, the immediate question in everyone's minds would be, "How proficient is this guy in PhotoShop?".

So for the immediate future, until I've reconciled myself with this problem, I'll simply stick with film for my images. The original slide is there, and there are ways to determine whether it has or has not been manipulated.

I will use these in books/articles/papers in the future, and with scanned images too. But I will have an original to back them up. Now I need to get a slide scanner to do it, and luckily their prices are coming down.

SeaRat

 

[ScubaSista]

Hi there! Just wanted to put my 2 cents in on the digitals...I have a canon powershot A40 with a housing. This camera and housing combo was inexpensive (as cameras and housings go) and though it's only a 2 megapixel camera, I've gotten some phenominal photos AND have enlarged them up to 16x20 prints. The price point makes this a good starter camera. Plus, it's small (though positively buoyant without a strobe), and very easy to use. Also, all the features are still available even when it's in the housing. Hope this helps!