Let's chat about DSLR vs Point and Shoot - looking for some wisdom / experience

[tursiops]

That's an amazing shot; much better than any of my efforts.

Thanks. I won't show the dozens of others that went along with it....

 

[Guitarcrazy]

No offence but the photo looks a bit too dark to me.

Wow, you are a tough crowd! That is one of the most beautiful macro shots I have seen.

 

[nanohawk]

That is certainly a possibility, but that's what you do when you want to shoot something super small, not the other way around. With the Olympus 60mm lens, you get 1:1 reproduction approximately 10cm in front of the port - this is already a 17x13mm frame size, comfortably framing a 1cm subject. If you want to shoot something larger, you need to step back. In my experience shooting a 90mm lens on APS-C, fitting something like a broadclub cuttlefish into the frame is possible, but really tough on the strobes, and I use Retra Pros with reflectors, which give a considerable reach. However, if you pair the 60mm with a CMC-1, your working distance goes down to 22-70mm - i.e. you can't focus closer than 22mm or further than 70mm from the front glass, and at 22mm, you get 2x magnification, filling the frame with a subject not much larger than your typical rice grain.

I'll keep this in mind. I like the idea of being able to go after the tiny stuff. How would this contrast to a TG-6 setup?

In one of the backscatter videos they said the TG-6 has to basically be on the subject for Macro and that with the 60mm lens you can be a couple inches from it . 22mm to 70mm is just under 1 inch to around 2.75"

That's irrelevant; LED triggers use their own batteries rather than being powered by the camera. Type and size of batteries vary - some have internal sealed batteries, others use coin cells (most often 2430, but my UWT model uses 1220), and Sea & Sea's latest trigger, which uses especially powerful LEDs to drive their less sensitive strobes, uses AAA cells as a result.

It's not irrelevant, it's precisely the point. I think camera batteries are too small to begin with. So anything you can do to get the load off them will pay dividends.

 

[Barmaglot]

I'll keep this in mind. I like the idea of being able to go after the tiny stuff. How would this contrast to a TG-6 setup?

In one of the backscatter videos they said the TG-6 has to basically be on the subject for Macro and that with the 60mm lens you can be a couple inches from it . 22mm to 70mm is just under 1 inch to around 2.75"

TG-6 has an equivalent focal length of 100mm on the long end, but is able to focus pretty much right down to the lens without add-on diopters, so it doesn't need as much magnification to fill its frame. A 6.17x4.55mm sensor at 1x magnification gives you a smaller subject size than M43 at 2x (60mm with CMC-1) or full-frame at 4x (100mm with SMC-2). On the upside, you don't have to flip diopters in and out and you get more depth of field, but on the downside, you don't get as much detail.

It's not irrelevant, it's precisely the point. I think camera batteries are too small to begin with. So anything you can do to get the load off them will pay dividends.

Not really, because the effect is generally too small to reliably get you one more dive out of a charge. For example, with my A6300, I can get 3 dives out of a battery with 16-50mm or 10-18mm lens, and 2 dives out of a battery with 90mm. With the LED trigger, I might finish that last dive with 15% battery left rather than 10%... this is irrelevant, because I'm changing the battery anyway, as it won't last through another dive regardless. On liveaboards, I dump the photos into my laptop and change the battery after each dive anyway. The true value of these triggers is in recycle time.

 

[nanohawk]

TG-6 has an equivalent focal length of 100mm on the long end, but is able to focus pretty much right down to the lens without add-on diopters, so it doesn't need as much magnification to fill its frame. A 6.17x4.55mm sensor at 1x magnification gives you a smaller subject size than M43 at 2x (60mm with CMC-1) or full-frame at 4x (100mm with SMC-2). On the upside, you don't have to flip diopters in and out and you get more depth of field, but on the downside, you don't get as much detail.

The TG-6 definitely stands out as a swiss-army knife of underwater photography. I think I'd be happy with one, but I think I could grow into a M4/3. I'm just not sure how much less expensive a M43 is than a DSLR rig by the time you hang strobes and a tray on it. Yes, it's easier to travel with.


In an unrelated note, what is a "snoot" and what is it used for? It seems like some sort of light/strobe accessory, but the name makes it sound like it should be in a Dr. Seuss book.

 

[Barmaglot]

The TG-6 definitely stands out as a swiss-army knife of underwater photography. I think I'd be happy with one, but I think I could grow into a M4/3. I'm just not sure how much less expensive a M43 is than a DSLR rig by the time you hang strobes and a tray on it. Yes, it's easier to travel with.

Again, DSLRs and mirrorless cameras come in all shapes and sizes. There actually used to be four thirds format DSLRs, although the last one (Olympus E-5) went out of production in 2013. The choices lie along three axis:

1. Sensor size - 1/2.3", 1", four thirds, APS-C, full-frame, medium format
2. Lens - fixed vs interchangeable
3. Viewfinder - electronic vs optical

In an unrelated note, what is a "snoot" and what is it used for? It seems like some sort of light/strobe accessory, but the name makes it sound like it should be in a Dr. Seuss book.

It is a strobe/light accessory that concentrates its output into a tight spot, highlighting a subject and eliminating or reducing background. Some examples, taken with a Retra Pro strobe with Retra LSD snoot. My first attempts, practicing on christmas tree worms:

Black-margin glossodoris, without a snoot and with one - not my best work, I couldn't get the light spot to completely exclude the sand.

Harlequin shrimp

Ornate ghost pipefish - here I had a snooted strobe pointing straight down, illuminating just the fish as it was hovering between coral branches.

Keep in mind that using a snoot is quite difficult; you need to line up five factors - camera angle, camera distance to subject, camera focus, strobe angle and strobe distance to subject, not to mention the strobe power and camera aperture and ISO settings, and all of them must be extremely precise. Miss by a couple millimeters and you get a bad shot like the nudibranch above.

 

[Blackcrusader]

No offence but the photo looks a bit too dark to me.

Well I was a bit away from the Mantis and did not want to over illuminate the sand and rubble in front so zoomed in. I also perhaps used the exposure dial to get this affect. As I have written I just take shots for my vacation memories and a lot of them I do not do any editing they are what they are. I do shoot in both RAW and Jpeg so if a jpeg is good enough I use it.

How about this one?

 

[Blackcrusader]

Mantis shrimp are tough to shoot; you get close and they immediately hide. My best attempts aren't much better... for instance, this one, at Richelieu Rock, I couldn't get low enough for a good angle: Same for this one, at Dauin coast: A rare opportunity with a peacock mantis out in the open, at Gato Island (north Cebu), and again I couldn't get low enough... Here, at Koh Tao, I got my perfect angle, but the shrimp itself was kinda bland and the background uninspiring: My favorite mantis shrimp shot thus far is actually of a pelagic juvenile on a blackwater dive, looks like a horror movie monster:

This on a dive in Panglao Bohol

 

[Blackcrusader]

Wow, you are a tough crowd! That is one of the most beautiful macro shots I have seen.

Thanks. Some of these photos are from my first efforts on the TG6. So I was learning to adjust the lighting from my big blue VL4200P video lights as well as using the exposure dial to darken the photos. I think my best photo for macro is this one of a sea moth. I had my lights down to 10% power, I focused on the eye of the sea moth, and as it was moving took a few shots and later a video.

It's fair to say the TG6 is far more capable than some of the users of it lol. Below is the first time of getting shots of mantis with my TG6 and they are over exposed. A wee bit too strong on the video light perhaps. I do like my darker photo though.

By the way I have just downloaded the free editing software from Olympus. The mantis shot I only took in jpeg as it was my second day of using the TG6. So I adjusted the exposure and contrast using the Olympus editing software. I don't adjust colours but did change the white balance slightly.

Software Download | OM Workspace | OM Digital Solutions

 

[Blackcrusader]

Mantis shrimp are tough to shoot; you get close and they immediately hide. My best attempts aren't much better... for instance, this one, at Richelieu Rock, I couldn't get low enough for a good angle:

What I do is sometimes just get close enough the Mantis wont hide. Take a shot from a meter or two away then zoom in.