Help a newbie find a good "first" dive camera!

[sylpha]

Good advice & certainly worth taking on board, but ask yourself a few questions first.

1) do you want something to bring memories back with or something to start learning to take professional photos with?

2) what's your budget? are you prepared to spend a fortune or do you want something to tide you over or do you want to start building a set up (camera, housing, strobe, arm, second strobe ad infinitum).

3) how do you dive? are you prepared to spend a whole dive waiting for the creature to pop it's head out of a hole? do you have a buddy to tolerate that?

4) a dslr is big, think size of camera & quadruple it, do you want to dive with something that size (and think what a new big box of air could do to your bouyancy) or do you want something off the shelf complete with housing you can stick in your pocket.


those are 4 to start with i'm sure you can come up with others, you can save yourself a fortune & lots of frustration if you decide what you want from a camera first. what you want is important.

 

[Valadian]

1) Just personal memories, if everything goes well I'll be starting medschool next fall so definitely not going the professional route............if I ever were to upgrade to an DSLR it would be many years down the road when I had some spare time that I could commit to things like a proper photo course and give it the attention it deserves. For now just pictures to look back on and say "hey that was a great dive" and to share with friends and family.

2) Trying to keep it around $1200 and under, hence why I was excited to find the Oly for $170. Now if I can just learn enough to get all the other parts at a decent price without skimping on quality...

3) Dive with my brother and father usually, I'm the type that will hang around a spot and just look at an animal for a long time and just basically study it. My brother is usually pretty good for staying close by and being tolerant, usually he joins in with watching the object/animal. My dad is more of a crapshoot on whether he wants to keep moving or will sit and watch.

4) No, dont want to go the DSLR route, maybe one day in the future but not atm and not for quite some time. Being what would essentially be a photo newbie means that I dont need something with outrageous controls that I wont have time to master. Plus the simple fact that DSLR cameras cost ridiculous amounts of money put them pretty much out of my price range anyhow.

Honestly I'd like something that I can take with me on a dive and get decent photos with. Now some dives I'll go down with the intention of being a photo dork and snapping tons of pictures left and right (obviously with prior notification to fellow divers and dive buddy). Then on other dives I'd like to have the camera there and be able to have it readily at hand in the event that I do spy something that would make for a good shot, while not having to make the whole dive center around the camera.

I usually dive with a group of about 8-10 different friends. Of these people there are 2 who carry cameras with them on just about every dive. The first one is a guy who we jokingly refer to as "Big Rig" due to his having a large SLR camera with the whole dual strobe setup. It basically occupies his whole time as he's either fiddling with it on the boat before or after the dive, and while underwater he's pretty much engrossed in just swimming about and taking pictures and I have to say that I think he ends up missing out on alot of the diving experience that way. Suffice it to say that I dont want to be like him.

The other person is a woman who carries something much closer to what Larry was suggesting, a good little digital camera with a strobe, she swims about getting great pictures and still enjoying the dive as she's able to put the camera aside and doesnt have to worry about it as much as Mr. Big Rig does. So yea, I'd like to be more like her with a setup like that.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Hmm another possibility! That Canon gets good reviews, yet the housing they sell for it is apparently only worth around a hundred dives before the O-rings give out.........and then you gotta buy a new one Ikelite has a housing for it but it's 400 bucks ouch. Upon further review seems that Ikelite is expensive as all getout......

Just like with any other gear, o-rings suffer wear and tear and need to be replaced periodically. You can get replacement o-rings without buying a new housing. The Canon A510/520 sell for about $170 and the housing is about $220. A memory card should run you about $50. That's all you really need for what you are looking for. Of course, the strobes will come later...

 

[Valadian]

Sorry, to clarify, according to what I read on an Amazon review, the guy claimed that the main o-ring through which the camera is placed in the housing requires periodic lubing and maitenance, along with possible replacement. However he said that there are several other "non-servicable" o-rings on the housing that would have to be sent in to the manufacturer for replacement, and that for the cost and hassle of sending them in it would be better to just buy a new housing as they retail for $169.

That all being said, I'm still wary of buying a housing that I cant work on myself and that is essentially a ticking timebomb as far as "hey kids, will this be the lucky dive that it floods and your camera goes to the big photo shoot in the sky?!". So that has me holding off on the Canon A620....unless I decide to go the route of getting the Ikelite housing, but that's pretty costly.

Currently what I'm looking into is the Oly Sp-350, I can get it for $170 to $209 depending on where I buy it online. Then it's just a matter of the housing, the arm, and the strobe. Plus whatever other things I'll need like batteries, mem card, etc...

Backscatter has this package http://tinyurl.com/z7f89 however it's still rather expensive, so I'm trying to find out if I could assemble something cheaper for the Oly, or if I should just bite the bullet and get that package.....

Edit: Missed what you said about strobes, do you really think I dont need one? After diving with that Reefmaster 35mm and having the pictures be awful, I'm really wondering if a strobe is just the thing I need as I've been on dives with people who had the Reefmaster and an attached strobe and their pictures came out quite a bit better than miine. That all being said....in my limited experience it seems that the flash on a compact digital camera really isnt anything to write home about.........or do the canon/oly/fuji happen to have really good flashes?

I own a Sony Cybershot DSC-T1 and while it's a good little point and shoot camera for land, it's got a very wimpy flash and overall I'd have to say I probably regret buying it.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Most camera housings have the non-servicable o-rings. Those are the ones one the buttons. It's doubtful you would need to replace all of them at the same time. The one that's used the most is the shutter button. If you're going to have that replaced, you might want to replace a couple more o-rings that are used on a regular basis. But I don't think you'll need all 12 or so replaced at the same time. Also, there are other places that can service the housing without having to send it to the manufacturer, and they charge a little less.

The strobe is a nice addition. It does really bring out the color. Something else you can try is MS Picture It. It has a function called Levels auto fix that cleans up UW photos very nicely.

 

[Valadian]

Ah, thanks for the info. So essentially that guy who wrote the review on Amazon wasn't too knowledgable?

Do you prefer the Canon A620 over the Olympus Sp-350?

 

[Dive-aholic]

I don't know how knowledgeable he was. I haven't read his review. It just seems like he was fed the bait and took it. I've had my Sea & Sea housing for 2 years now. It's been on at least 150 dives and I'm still using the original main o-ring. My flooding of that housing occurred with the latch popping open, not the o-rings. I've taken my Canon on about 50 dives or so and haven't had any problems either. I store the housings open so the o-rings aren't compressed when they don't need to be and clean and lube them every time I open the housing. I can't comment on the Olympus. I haven't seen one or used it. When I did my research and decided on the Canon camera, it had the best reviews and a housing available for it. The Olympus cameras available at the time all had some problems mentioned in the reviews. I'm talking about the cameras, not the housings.

 

[AWMDiver]

I've been taking underwater photos for over 20 years. I have also been an avid land photograher for about 38 years (not to give my age away). I teach U/W ptograhy, film, digital and video. While for many years I used heavy, equipment intensive Nikonos systems, I now personally use Sealife Reefmaster cameras. Presently including a DC500 with at least one strobe and often two. I use it on land as well for my "day time job" (not diving related). I also still use my older DC250 both on land and underwater. I love these cameras. They are simple to use, easy to obtain service if necessary ( most dive equipment needs service sooner or later). Trust me, it was very difficult abandoning the quality shots I got with the Nikonos, but I have been very impressed and happy with these inexpensive cameras.

 

[Bbarnes]

I have the dc500 elite set and love it. You will be amazed at the difference a strobe makes in the colors in your pictures! Most of the issues that people have complained about with the camera (intermittent flash firing etc) were solved with the upgrade of the firmware to the PIE.5 version. I had the dc310 and loved it except that I couldn't crop and enlarge very much with only 3.3 megapixels and I didn't enjoy having to snap on different lenses for macro work. The upgrade to the digital strobe also helped alot with getting appropriate lighting on your subject. If you are in Grand Cayman you could go to the shop at the Sunset House and buy from Cathy Church. She, or someone in her shop, will help you with the ins and outs of your camera. My husband bought his Oly 5060 set up from her a couple of years ago and really enjoys it. That being said , I usually wind up with the better pictures with my Dc500. By the way, are you planning on going to med school at OU? My husband is the medical director in the Emergency Department there. If you ever rotate through there drop by and take a look at his office. It is decorated with photos from our various dive trips. Good luck!

 

[Valadian]

Hey Bbarnes! Ya Im applying to OU and hopefully I'll get in! That's really cool to hear about your husband =) My dad works over at St. Anthony

Anywho, it's good to hear about both your experience with the DC500 elite set and the things AWM said about the Reefmaster. Unfortunately my Reefmaster is quite dead and gone. =D

So I guess I've come full circle sorta. I started out thinking the DC500 would be a good choice, but kinda ended up thinking about other options as it seemed to get alot of negative opinions on this board and others, but good to hear it's working out for you and that they've updated it.......decisions decisions!