Need advice on upgrading from Sealife DC1000 to something...

[SandyUT]

HI all,

I have a DC1000 I have used for a few years and have figured out how to get decent pics with it. I want to upgrade and think there may be better options than the new DC1400. I dont want fully manual settings, so this is all very new territory for me. Do I have an option for semi-auto or where should I go from here?

Thanks!

 

[RickyF]

You kind of left it wide open. What kind of budget are you looking at?

 

[SandyUT]

You kind of left it wide open. What kind of budget are you looking at?

thats a little wide open. the DC1400 upgrade is $500. I don't think I want to go in for more than 1K. I have considered a Go Pro as well, but i have no experience with vidiography.

sorry to be vague...I have used only the sealife for so long I have no idea where to start.

 

[RickyF]

I have the Sealife DC1400 and consider it so so. You are going to be hard pressed to get a really good camera for 1K. I have seen the Cannon G15 which seems to take some really good pictures and it shoots in RAW which opens a lot of editing capability.

 

[SandyUT]

A few recent reviews made it sound like quality may not be as good on newer SL cameras. Did you have one before the 1400?


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[Larry C]

You should be able to get the Canon S120 and the Canon underwater housing for it for about $750. It's small, light, will shoot in preset automatic modes, aperture priority, shutter priority or fully manual if you want. It will shoot nice wide angle, macro, portrait and has a very fast lens so the low light capability should be pretty good. Probably your best bang for the buck. You didn't mention if you have a strobe. If you have the SeaLife digital strobe, I'm pretty sure it will work OK with the Canon. If not, the Canon built in flash should be good for portraits and you should be able to turn it off for wide angle stuff.

 

[SandyUT]

Thanks for that info. I do have the sealife strobe i will need to see if I can hook up the fiber optic to the canon


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[Larry C]

Thanks for that info. I do have the sealife strobe i will need to see if I can hook up the fiber optic to the canon

The main question would be whether your Sea Life strobe will respond properly to the number of preflashes on the Canon. You can set the camera to slave flash to avoid the problem, but if the strobe does ttl, it would have to read the preflash or it would be out of sync.
Here's a thread that discussed using the SeaLife strobe with a Canon S95, which should have similar function to the newer S120.
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/canon-corner/364806-strobe-question-canon-s95-sealife-sl960d.html

 

[RickyF]

A few recent reviews made it sound like quality may not be as good on newer SL cameras. Did you have one before the 1400?


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I had a Sea&Sea prior to the DC1400. I thought the DC1400Pro would be a tremendous upgrade to what I had, but I have been somewhat disappointed with my results. Of course it could just be ME not being much of a photographer too!