First shots with my new S70

[seastarr2]

I got my S70 in September, before a trip around the world. I dove in Mauritius, Phuket, Great Barrier Reef, and Fiji. I had an amazing trip and was so glad that I had the camera to document my first clownfish! I am happy with my pictures but am always up for learning how to get better. I head to Cozumel in a couple weeks to try again.

I just used the underwater setting for the camera and shot in jpg format. I touched some of the photos in iPhoto with the "Enhance" magic wand.

http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/21042

 

[alcina]

Looks like a great holiday and you have some great images to remember it by!

I don't want to take anything at all away from what you have already accomplished, but since you are headed to Coz soon here are a couple of things you might want to play with:

1 - change to RAW. This will allow you to white balance etc AFTER the dive - great for those reef scenes that are just too much for the internal flash. You'll be able to get some colour and better detail in those schooling fish for example. It isn't hard to shoot - works exactly the same way as jpeg...just a bigger file with more information and more room to work on at the other end. PS Elements 3 has a RAW converter...not sure which program you are using, but this would be the only reason NOT to shoot RAW (If you don't have a converter).

2 - forget the uw setting. Try manual instead. UW setting (or any of the program modes) usually does a couple of things: it opens the aperture way up giving a fuzzy or soft look to the photo and/or it slows the shutter way way down and this can give you motion blur. It works great sometimes, but in other situations it produces very disappointing shots when only a little tweak would have given a great result!

I would start, in Coz, with M mode 1/160 and f5.6. Get close and use your internal flash for light. If you are shooting with natural light, I would change your shutter to 1/100 or so...it's digital, experiment! If it's really bright out, you might need to keep it on 1/160 or even faster to get a nice blue instead of a washed out blue.

If you get a nice slow dive instead of lots of current, you can experiment with getting close to your subject and changing the aperture to f8 or so - this is great for things like small crabs, nudibranchs, urchins, sea stars and the like.

3 - shoot lots!! We want to see

 

[seastarr2]

Thanks for the advice alcina! I will definately try your suggestions. I did start shooting RAW, but after the first dive realized that I had not loaded the converter software on the computer so I had to switch back the jpg. I have loaded it now and will be able to shoot in RAW for Coz. Thanks again

 

[msav]

Great pictures, Seastarr2!
I was just looking at an S70 this afternoon - now I'm going to look harder! (I'm sick of disposables and developing a roll of film with one or 2 good shots that would have been grat shots with some post processing.)
Can you tell me what your setup is - housing, flash?
Thanks!

 

[seastarr2]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the pictures. I have the Canon WP-DC40 housing. THe buttons on the housing are easy to use and from what I read on the board before I bought it most people are very happy with the canon housing performance. I havent taken it that deep yet, only 90-100fsw, but I probably will some time. You are able to attach strobes to this housing, but for my pictures I use the internal flash or nothing. I was lucky enough to be in clear, bright water most of the time. I have been very happy with the camera. I have the Digital Rebel XT for land shots, but I have also been happy with the s70 on land. I like a little bulk to my cameras...some of the really small ones, just seem like I would break them too easily! So for me the s70 was also and ideal choice for a camera to leave in my purse for those whenever shots. Both cameras were my transition from film to digital and I dont know why I waited so long!

 

[msav]

transition from film to digital and I dont know why I waited so long!

Boy, I know what you mean! I just got an Olympus E-500 as a replacement for my 30 year old Konica SLR (was considering the Rebel XT but the 2 lens deal I found on the Oly was too good to pass up) and it's great - can shoot off 200 pictures and not worry about paying to develop 185 lousy ones!

Back to topic: I'm so glad to hear that you were just using the built-in flash. I've used a number of (cheap) 35mm underwater cameras snorkeling (with and without built in flash) and found them pretty much useless. The problem is my wife and I are just starting out with scuba and want to get reg/octo/BCD. Adding the expense of a flash unit just isn't realistic at this time so I'd pretty much given up on the idea - until now!

 

[alcina]

Internal flash works quite well as long as you stay within it's limits! And when you are outside of the limits of your flash, switching to manual white balance can help a lot.

So can shooting RAW if your camera supports it. Have fun!

 

[pakman]

seastar2, wow sounds and looks like you had a great trip. Just noticed looking at the EXIF info, you have your exposure set at -1. Was that done on purpose?

As a happy S70 owner, I fully agree with Alcina's recommendation on using RAW (although I'm still trying to remember to set the manual white balance once I get in the water). But that's the beauty of it, you can adjust the WB postdive! Flash memory is cheap enough nowadays that you can get a good performance 1-2ig CF card to fit all those RAW files and the S70 process time on RAW is pretty good unlike some other brands.

Also I would suggest, once you start getting used the camera to use the custom setting (C) to save your preference (in M mode - select your fstop/shutter/zoom/macro/flash, etc and then select save from the menu button). I usually have it set to what I use for macro shots (f8,etc...) so that if I come across a nice macro shot during the dive, I just switch to C mode and it will pull out all those setting you saved instead of fumbling around with all the buttons.

Also, the S70 autofocus is a bit temperamental as you'll find using the zoom can be frustrating to get an autofocus lock.

 

[seastarr2]

Thanks for the advice pakman! I am not sure why the EXIF was -1. I was using the automatic setting for underwater, but for my next pictures I am going to play around with some of the other manual settings. I like the idea for having different custom settings for macro shots. I will have to dig out the manual and play around with that too. I enjoyed viewing the pictures in your gallery.