c8080/c7070 versus c5050

[Wolverine]

Great lighting balancing on the blue water. Did you use the add-on lens on all your close ups?

Yeap, on everyone of them. Depending on the shot, one or 2 stacked.

 

[f3nikon]

Yeap, on everyone of them. Depending on the shot, one or 2 stacked.

Thanks, how was the weather in the Philippines? Heavy rains yet?

Dive Safe

 

[Wolverine]

Thanks, how was the weather in the Philippines? Heavy rains yet?

Dive Safe

Actually, the weather was quite hot and very little rain. Little wind too. So diving was generally calm surface with small current. Pity the water was warm (ard 29-30 deg celsius) so some of the more interesting stuff went to deeper waters.

 

[gaulloa]

8 Mpix gives you a much better printable area... and this camera, wich is optical 5x zoom, has more range than the 7mpix model. Price is around us$450... If it was my case.. I ´d go for the C-8080.

besides, you´ll find a whole bunch of flashes and accesories in many places. I recommend you buy the largest XD memory card you can and a 4-6 GB microdrive... you ´ll make about 200 pictures on a single inmersion! (8 mpix gives you 63 photos on a 256MB card at hires JPGs)

I also recommend you get a larger capacity secondary battery, and if you dive in cold waters, try to get a third batt and a rapid charger.... don´t miss any picture taken opportunities!

 

[DrSteve]

8 Mpix gives you a much better printable area... and this camera, wich is optical 5x zoom, has more range than the 7mpix model. Price is around us$450... If it was my case.. I ´d go for the C-8080.

What kind of housing do you have? I've heard some dubious reports about the quality of the Oly housing.

 

[Hammerhead]

Heading to Puerto Galera myself in September & looking at getting the 8080 to replace my dying Sony DSCP9, searching on the web, all I could find on the 8080 regarding white balance was the following: -

" iESP2 auto TTL, Pre-set manual (Daylight, Overcast, Tungsten and Fluorescent)"

Alright, I admit my ignorance on whatever TTL means (and I'm sure someone can educate me...), but does this mean I cannot calibrate at depth? Surely not!

Hoping for some advice for a part-time snapper

 

[DrSteve]

TTL - Through The Lens metering. It's a way for the camera to determine exposure directly through the lens so you have a better "What you seeis what you get" as opposed to an external light meter. Any decent camera should be able to do that.

Not sure if you can custom white balance though.

Check out this site for reviews:
http://www.dpreview.com/

 

[Dan Yuchnovicz]

The Oly 5060 and 7070 will trigger the _external flash_ in macro and smacro. It doesn't make sense to trigger the camera flash in smacro due to the parallax (distance between the flash axis and the lens optical axis). The flash is too far above the subject for proper illumination. And besides, internal flashes have ruined more u/w pictures that they have helped (just a guess) unless in very clear water due to backscatter.

I have used both the 5060 and 7070 in the same Ike housing with dual DS125 Ikelite strobes. A very nice setup with great results. Full TTL/manual control. Didn't go for the oly housing after looking at it. Looked kind of fragile compared to the near bullet-proof ikelites plus couldn't get a flash with the power appropraite for even modest wideangle shots. The smaller flash units are OK for macro if they can be properly positioned. While the Ike housing is about 2-3 x the $ of oly housings, floods in Ikelites are very rare and typically due to user error.