Canon S70

[kirkryan]

Hey guys!! I used to shoot an old powershot A20 with the canon underwater housing and have taken some real awesome shots. My bro is big into land photography and always gets new cameras. My luck is that the hand-me-downs are pretty sweet, at least to me. Anyway, my newest aquisition is a two year old S70. I have yet to purchase the WP housing due to lack of funds but will get it soon. Does anyone have any experience shooting this camera underwater? If so, do you find the Underwater mode worth using or do you enhance photos via a computer program. I use Photoshop 7 with my old pics. The auto-correction feature really makes it easy for a greenie to get good pictures. I look forward to hearing about it!!

 

[HowardE]

The S70 works great underwater.

Get the WP-DC40 housing from canon ($150)

The UW mode works fine if you're shooting in JPEG mode. I recommend shooting in RAW.

Most of the photos (before May 2006) in my SB gallery were taken on a S70.

 

[fishballer]

howdy from gaithersburg.

i just bought the WP-DC40 for my last trip to the flower gardens, so i'm an extreme newbie.

initially, i used the u/w setting, and all the pics didn't come up as well. all blurry and just blue.

so i just stuck with portrait mode and set flash to always go off. somewhat decent pics, i suppose.

what kills me is that their maco mode is pretty crappy. even my buddy's sony t1 had a way way better macro mode. i guess its time to fork out for the inon fish eye and macro lens.

maybe we should get plan a quarry trip together just to figure out how the s70 works best.

 

[kirkryan]

Those are some really nice shots howarde. I only looked at a handful of the April shots but they look like they have great color and clarity. How much knowledge of photoshop do you need to really manipulate a Raw image? I am only familiar with the basics and have only used photoshop on JPEG since this is the first camera that I have had that will take Raw images. Cheers fishballer. I gotta get that housing first before I get it wet, ya know:no . Anyway, I am still trying to figure the thing out on land. I'll let you know how that goes! I have found that when using macro, any movement blurrs the image. I got one of those small protable flexible tripods for up close inanimate's to elliminate that.

 

[CompuDude]

The S70 is a fantastic camera with quite a following among the better photographers on this board, in no small part due to it's RAW support.

If your pictures are not coming out well, there is either something wrong with your camera requiring repair, or you need to learn how to shoot underwater better... there's no problem inherent with the camera.

Read up here on SB and you should find tons of tips that will dramatically improve your shots.

 

[CompuDude]

Those are some really nice shots howarde. I only looked at a handful of the April shots but they look like they have great color and clarity. How much knowledge of photoshop do you need to really manipulate a Raw image? I am only familiar with the basics and have only used photoshop on JPEG since this is the first camera that I have had that will take Raw images. Cheers fishballer. I gotta get that housing first before I get it wet, ya know:no . Anyway, I am still trying to figure the thing out on land. I'll let you know how that goes! I have found that when using macro, any movement blurrs the image. I got one of those small protable flexible tripods for up close inanimate's to elliminate that.

You will definitely need to have good buoyancy skills shooting underwater, but you should not need a tripod.

You'll need a more current version of Photoshop (CS or CS2) to take full advantage of the RAW format, although there are some third-party external programs you could use to pre-process the photos first. If you are just starting out, however, you might want to hold off on shooting RAW, and wait until your skills catch up to your hardware before taking on the added complexity (and file sizes) RAW brings.

 

[Erik Il Rosso]

Check my gallery, all pics taken with a S70, I love that camera !!!

Ciao Erik Il Rosso

 

[HowardE]

Those are some really nice shots howarde. I only looked at a handful of the April shots but they look like they have great color and clarity. How much knowledge of photoshop do you need to really manipulate a Raw image? I am only familiar with the basics and have only used photoshop on JPEG since this is the first camera that I have had that will take Raw images. Cheers fishballer. I gotta get that housing first before I get it wet, ya know:no . Anyway, I am still trying to figure the thing out on land. I'll let you know how that goes! I have found that when using macro, any movement blurrs the image. I got one of those small protable flexible tripods for up close inanimate's to elliminate that.

RAW files aren't that hard. but they o need manipulation and convertion to JPEG. Try a few test shots on land and play around. You shouldn't need a tripod... just good buoyancy skills are all you'll need for that.

 

[fishballer]

yup, like they all said. the camera's good. it's the user that has issues. i totally suck at it, but i'm going up to dutch springs in 2 weeks to take more photos

oh, and the movie mode's cool too. load them up to youtube, and you've got yourself a whole video gallery

 

[kirkryan]

My bro did say it was dropped once so I may take it to the camera shop just to let them check it out, especially before I go take 200 shots on a dive and find them all to be out of focus. He shoots a Nikon D70 SLR and a Leica D-lux 2 point and shoot and used to develop his own prints before he went to digi so maybe I'll catch up with him for some pointers. Look forward to checking out your pics Erik. Let me know how it goes at dutch springs fishballer. Thanks guys.