New Sea Life DC500 - By Review

[LavaSurfer]

This will be a living thread while I review this camera.
Right now my level of impressed sits at these levels

Scale 1-5 (1= POS, 5 = Great)
East of use - 5
Picture Quality W/O Flash - 5
Shutter Lag Shark Mode - 5 (Instantaneous)
Shutter Lag W/O SM - 2 (About 1/2 to 1 second)
Housing - 5
Battery life - TBD
Wide Angle - 2 (More testing needed)
Support - TBD
Overall - 3

I purchased a new DC500 last week. The camera seems fine for what it is and the housing is certainly good enough. The biggest problem I can see is that this camera was designed to use an external flash. The lens port of the housing blocks the entire lower left side of the internal flash field so all pictures taken with the flash have a shadow in the lower left quadrant.

Examples from SeaLife Web Site of Shadow
http://www.sealife-cameras.com/galle...s/dc500_21.jpg
http://www.sealife-cameras.com/galle...s/dc500_22.jpg
http://www.sealife-cameras.com/galle...s/dc500_23.jpg
Notice that all the examples have a shadow in the bottom left quadrant of the photo. This is a shadow produced from the lense port blocking the flash.

The wide angle lens gets a nasty Glare Ring effect when using the flash.
I have emailed Support yet but have not heard back yet. They reported this being a problem with the Macro Lenses as they were not designed for the DC500 but the Macro should certainly work as it’s sold with the camera in the Elite Set. Without a flash, the lens vignettes very badly when the zoom is in all the way to macro on the camera.

Here is a link to an example of the Glare Ring from their web site and it’s just as bad with the Wide angle as with the Macro.
http://www.sealife-cameras.com/servi...tml#question19

What I can’t figure out is why I get a glare ring when using the flash. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious reason. It will be interesting to hear what support has to say.

So far I have taken over 50 pictures and turned the camera on and off many times as well as leaving it on for 20 minutes at a time and I still show 100% battery so battery wise it seems OK. I did purchase the additional battery just in case.

Ciao for now
Scooter

 

[dherbman]

So far I have taken over 50 pictures and turned the camera on and off many times as well as leaving it on for 20 minutes at a time and I still show 100% battery so battery wise it seems OK. I did purchase the additional battery just in case.


Scooter

Battery life is 1.5 dives if you are shooting a lot. If you are using the flash much, you can get one dive out of the batery. I consider battery life to be the biggest shortfall of the camera. These pics were edited for size, but no enhancements were made.

 

[Bbarnes]

Nice shots. I love the round bubble effect in the first frame. Did you take your pics with or without the strobe? One other piece of advice I got from Sealife is to completely drain and recharge the battery after the initial charging. They say that you only need to do this once and it will help with battery life.

 

[LavaSurfer]

dherbman

The bubble ring shot is awesome.
I could sit on the bottom and blow bubbles all day long.

The pictures are great and it seems the colors are very nice and realistic. White [FONT=&quot]Balance [/FONT]looked to be good on most. I took the liberty to adjust the Coral Polyp shot and it cleaned up very nicely with superb detail.

The Flash Shadow is my only big concern. In my original post I included three links to Sealife shots from their web site that demonstrate the shadow. I did not get the external flash as I did not want to lug it around all the time but maybe I will have to break down and get it.

Ciao for Now!

 

[alcina]

I'm confused - you've taken 50 shots and are happy about them but they aren't in your report! In order to add value to your so far great start, please add your photos so the rest of us can determine "great" and where the shots fall on 1-5 scale.

FWIW - the shots so far in this thread do not acheive a 5 for me for quality...(though I quite like some of them)!

 

[dherbman]

FWIW - the shots so far in this thread do not acheive a 5 for me for quality...(though I quite like some of them)!

A '5' with a DC500? I don't think so.

 

[alcina]

A '5' with a DC500? I don't think so.

I should maybe be clear that I was referencing the original poster's Picture Quality W/O Flash - 5 and comparing it to my own experience with various Canon, Oly and Fuji compact digitals. Sorry if I created any confusion!

And I like the bubble ring shot

 

[Bbarnes]

The sealife strobe isn't very large and the head can be folded down so it really is pretty compact. If you buy the strobe, be sure to get the balast weight (or rig your own) so that your system won't be positive. I would think that the strobe would take care of the shadow problem. You will be amazed at the diffence a strobe makes in your pictures. Not only does it make your colors more vivid, it also helps with getting sharper focus and less blur with moving fish. It is definitley worth the inconvenience of lugging one more piece of equipment.

 

[Lake Mead Tony]

dherbman,
Great pictures. I could only wish to get that kind of quality with my DC310.

Lake Mead Tony

 

[LavaSurfer]

I'm confused - you've taken 50 shots and are happy about them but they aren't in your report! In order to add value to your so far great start, please add your photos so the rest of us can determine "great" and where the shots fall on 1-5 scale.

FWIW - the shots so far in this thread do not acheive a 5 for me for quality...(though I quite like some of them)!

First off I was rating them a 5 for a compact P&S camera. They are not in the class of a 8MP dSLR. dherbman photos aren't that bad. some WB issues but over all they can be cleaned up. Most the shots I have are of figurines, My Yard and the sky. Test stuff but nothing under water yet. I changed the rating to TBD as I will know more after some more shooting.