We went to the Keys over Thanksgiving for our first ocean dives. On the first one, I found myself wishing I had a camera, on the second and third I took a disposable, and for the next day I rented the dive shop's 35mm film camera and shot 4 more rolls.
I'm reasonably proficient with digital. I've done some stuff with film, but the learning curve always seemed awfully steep - you take a picture, but it's days later before it gets developed, and by then you've forgotten what did and didn't work. I finally bought a digital camera after I found The Perfect Shot, tried half a dozen settings, then got the film developed to discover none of them turned out.
I currently have a Olympus 3040 that I love. It looks like most people are using a 5050. I'm probably going to take the LDS underwater photography course, but I'm a bit worried that it will end up slanted to whatever the LDS owner prefers, not really what will work best for me.
Questions:
Anyone want to recommend a good book for someone getting started? Looking at my first roll (the other 4 are still out being developed), I have some ideas of what I was doing wrong (I seemed to alternate between "too far away" and "washed out the colors with the flash"), but...
Are there advantages to film (over digital) that would offset the greatly-increased learning curve?
I see housings for the 3040 (thanks for the pointers!). How does warrenty stuff work on things like that - if it floods, do they replace my camera?
Some of the setups seem big. How do you manage to end up in the water without losing pieces?
(and, if anyone wants a laugh: http://pictures.tinastoys.org/Scuba/Disposable/ is the roll from the disposable camera, developed at Eckerd)
(and, yes, I did read http://kayakdiver.com/camera/gettingstarted.pdf first)
I'm reasonably proficient with digital. I've done some stuff with film, but the learning curve always seemed awfully steep - you take a picture, but it's days later before it gets developed, and by then you've forgotten what did and didn't work. I finally bought a digital camera after I found The Perfect Shot, tried half a dozen settings, then got the film developed to discover none of them turned out.
I currently have a Olympus 3040 that I love. It looks like most people are using a 5050. I'm probably going to take the LDS underwater photography course, but I'm a bit worried that it will end up slanted to whatever the LDS owner prefers, not really what will work best for me.
Questions:
Anyone want to recommend a good book for someone getting started? Looking at my first roll (the other 4 are still out being developed), I have some ideas of what I was doing wrong (I seemed to alternate between "too far away" and "washed out the colors with the flash"), but...
Are there advantages to film (over digital) that would offset the greatly-increased learning curve?
I see housings for the 3040 (thanks for the pointers!). How does warrenty stuff work on things like that - if it floods, do they replace my camera?
Some of the setups seem big. How do you manage to end up in the water without losing pieces?
(and, if anyone wants a laugh: http://pictures.tinastoys.org/Scuba/Disposable/ is the roll from the disposable camera, developed at Eckerd)
(and, yes, I did read http://kayakdiver.com/camera/gettingstarted.pdf first)