first time in saltwater with new sp350

[ianw2]

Litehedded:
Your photos just make me feel like I made the right decision! They’re terrific photos for a first or tenth time in salt water.

I have spent ages doing research into which camera to get. So many people on this board have given me really great advice. I went with the Oly SP-350 and the PT-030 housing, too. Unfortunately, the housing won’t arrive until this week. :shakehead

I missed out shooting a trio of beautiful Flabellina iodinea (Spanish shawl) on the stern of the Ruby Lee at Wreck Alley off San Diego, this morning. I also missed pictures of a Chromodoris macfarlandi (MacFarland’s Chromodorid) at the Valiant in Avalon Harbor yesterday. (Doesn’t it sound like I know what I’m doing when I use the scientific names?)

Ah well, I’ll be back at Avalon next Sunday…with my new Sp-350 in my new PT-030 housing! Any other photogs planning to be at the dive park next Sunday? We’ll be to the north side of the steps. Come on by!

 

[LiteHedded]

You got some nice blues there! If you want to experiment a bit more you could try manual white balance instead of just using internal flash. Not that those pictures have very nice light.

you mean not using a flash at all?
i have my white balance set to cloudy but I could use a slate I suppose
would I get any color without the flash?

 

[kapula]

Yup not using flash at all. You do get colors if you manually set the white balance using a slate. Obviously you'd need to have some light. In depths over 20 metres manual w/b starts to loose all reds as there just isn't any red light anymore. This ofcourse varys with visibility. But give it a shot and see for yourself. I use internal flash very rarely eventhough it's quite good in c-8080.

 

[LiteHedded]

Yup not using flash at all. You do get colors if you manually set the white balance using a slate. Obviously you'd need to have some light. In depths over 20 metres manual w/b starts to loose all reds as there just isn't any red light anymore. This ofcourse varys with visibility. But give it a shot and see for yourself. I use internal flash very rarely eventhough it's quite good in c-8080.

I'll try that on my next dive
i had my white balance set to "cloudy" and everything looked blue when I didn't get close and use the flash. but I was below 20 meters

 

[Rick Murchison]

this was my first time taking my new toy in saltwater. I was down to about 90' and it didn't flood....so I got that going for me

Sweet! You're going to have lots of fun with that toy!
Remember to share
Rick

 

[sunkarm]

Crawl79, u can also use ikelite's housing for the sp350. There was a thread by me sometimes ago asking our kind scubababoard members of advises which housing is better to use. Hope u bought the most suitable one for you.

 

[torrey]

They don't do too bad with video either for such an inexpensive camera. Here's a quick video I did after a Cozumel trip a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't expecting to take any video...just did it on a whim. I didn't realize at the time that I could set the white balance for video too, so some video is colorful where I had set it for stills. I'll remember that next time. Keep in mind, this is low-resolution for sake of file-size.

My first video - right-click, save as

 

[LiteHedded]

I took a video on that dive too but youtube really crapped up the quality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF-HGJHMOnA

 

[torrey]

Boy, you're not kidding. Do you remember what resolution you had the camera set at?

 

[LiteHedded]

Boy, you're not kidding. Do you remember what resolution you had the camera set at?

I think it's set at the default
either that or I ramped it up to the highest quality when I got the camera
the file is about 30 megs