Opinions from experience please

[herbdb]

Yes, unless you have a high end camera, manually adjusting the strobe level and/or exposure takes a lot of my attention unless shooting at the same distance and lighting conditions. One of the reasons that I like shooting RAW is the level of adjustment it allows if me to process the image and get something useable if Imess it up.

This may not be a factor for someone more experienced.

 

[spoolin01]

Whether you want a dedicated marine camera over a housed land camera is I suppose a matter of weighing the pros and cons for yourself. I like the housed approach for the modularity and choice of mainstream consumer goods. Since it's for use underwater I prefer to buy second hand for the enormous savings. As perhaps a minor consideration, with the typical housed setup, you can see a leak before it ruins your camera (if you're watching!). The small P&S cams with the manufacturer's housing can be pretty compact.

One observation - I'm sure the DC1200 package is quite capable (don't know enough about Sea Life's quality reputation) - but one thing I've found valuable is manual focus. Auto focus works well for most use, but for close-ups I've found with the two housed units I have (Canon S70 and Oly SP-350) that the auto-focus isn't very good underwater at ranges that are closer than about 12-15". I don't know if this is peculiar to a housed setup, or those cameras, but manual focus gets me at least 6" closer focus than using auto.

For sunlit shallow reef shooting, a strobe is nice for close fill, but not crucial that I've found. It does make those ledge/pocket/cave shots better lit, but it also introduces backscatter (and uneven lighting) into a lot of shots where the exposure would have otherwise been manageable w/o the strobe.

By the way, if you want raw (other than it being 'the thing to have for U/W') because you expect to enjoy spending a lot of time tweaking your shots post-production for improvement, many of the Canon P&S cameras that aren't sold with RAW-capable firmware can be hacked to provide RAW, from what I've seen reported.

Oh yeah, don't let the task loading kill you... You might even find that the deliberate pace and distraction of photography actually improve your comfort level.

 

[Larry C]

If you're just recording memories, the SeaLife will work fine. I know several divers (not photographers) who have them and they take quite decent macro and fish/diver portraits. Most people want to get the big picture that they see, the big wide angle reefscape, teeming with life. You can't. Your eyes can put a picture together by scanning and adjust to the ambient light. The camera can only focus in a certain range, and use the light it's given. With an add on wide angle lens, you can do OK, but you lose most all color except blue beyond about 5 feet and the water interferes with the view beyond that anyway. Shooting RAW or using manual white balance, adjusted every few feet of depth will bring back some color, but mostly you're going to shoot what's closest to you and the challenge is getting close enough without scaring it away.
The other challenge, as mentioned by previous posters, is to remember to watch your air, not kick the coral and keep an eye on your buddy with one eye while you check your composition with the other.

 

[Osric]

I am an inexperienced diver with 48 dives. Most on wrecks in south Florida and in the Gulf with half a dozen drift dives on reefs and a couple in quarries.

I personally have found that shooting RAW gives you the ability to fix photos and avoid needing to deal with a flash/strobe. If your dive sites are shallow, this works great:

I took the above snorkeling with a Canon Digital Rebel SLR in a fantasea enclosure. I took the one below on a resort course:

I think these days the outlay for an older canon body plus a suitable enclosure should be about $1000, and you can set up the camera before diving for ISO 800 and post-process afterwards without too much task loading.

It'd be ideal if you're diving with a DM who can keep an eye on you and don't have to focus on a buddy yourself for first dives with photos.

Osric

 

[diver 85]

Just wondering what you find the extra workload to be. I never used my camera without the strobe, jus turned it on after I jumped in, and then I didn't really think about it for the rest of the dive. I did have to play with it as far as if I was to close, I would get washed out pictures and such. Is that what your referring to?

Not him/her but maybe the different angles needed/available for good shots??..---but I'm like you, not a whole lot to them....

 

[Puffer Fish]

Recommending a higher end P&S is not just because it would neat to have all those features, it is because, if you want to learn, one needs a certain level of technology.

Raw on land is an ok, nice thing to have. Raw for underwater shots is actually really important (after one gets by just taking snap shots). Underwater strobes are almost never the correct color temperature for the camera. So even with a good strobe, there will be a small amount of color correction, if one wants accurate images. Also, say you see that big thing swimming by and want to go to taking pictures without the strobe. Normally one does not have the time to do a white balance adjustment.

Adjustments to raw do not damage the image quality, adjustments to JPG's do, does not matter who's software one uses.

Posting small images on the internet, it does not matter, making prints it does.

Getting that higher end camera also means it focuses faster, and has more focus options. I don't normally post images on SB that have commercial value, but the following pictures were taken with the camera in auto focus, using the smallest spot, for spot focus:

Note: Ok there is a bit of trick used here, as both these fish are very fast moving.

No one I know could manually focus fast enough to get these images.

Once you get to the P&S's that shoots raw, you can learn any type of underwater photography, You may choose to go the DSLR route later, but not because you cannot take the pictures.

Oh, and sorry for the large images, they are actually down sized. These happen to be for a Calendar, and they wanted 2000 x 1500 images. The backscatter in the chromis image is actually a small school of really tiny somethings.

Whether you want a dedicated marine camera over a housed land camera is I suppose a matter of weighing the pros and cons for yourself. I like the housed approach for the modularity and choice of mainstream consumer goods. Since it's for use underwater I prefer to buy second hand for the enormous savings. As perhaps a minor consideration, with the typical housed setup, you can see a leak before it ruins your camera (if you're watching!). The small P&S cams with the manufacturer's housing can be pretty compact.

One observation - I'm sure the DC1200 package is quite capable (don't know enough about Sea Life's quality reputation) - but one thing I've found valuable is manual focus. Auto focus works well for most use, but for close-ups I've found with the two housed units I have (Canon S70 and Oly SP-350) that the auto-focus isn't very good underwater at ranges that are closer than about 12-15". I don't know if this is peculiar to a housed setup, or those cameras, but manual focus gets me at least 6" closer focus than using auto.

For sunlit shallow reef shooting, a strobe is nice for close fill, but not crucial that I've found. It does make those ledge/pocket/cave shots better lit, but it also introduces backscatter (and uneven lighting) into a lot of shots where the exposure would have otherwise been manageable w/o the strobe.

By the way, if you want raw (other than it being 'the thing to have for U/W') because you expect to enjoy spending a lot of time tweaking your shots post-production for improvement, many of the Canon P&S cameras that aren't sold with RAW-capable firmware can be hacked to provide RAW, from what I've seen reported.

Oh yeah, don't let the task loading kill you... You might even find that the deliberate pace and distraction of photography actually improve your comfort level.

 

[spoolin01]

Puffer - nice pics! My observation was simply that with some or many typical housed P&S cameras, you may be able to obtain closer focus reliably with a manual option in addition to auto focus (I was also wondering if that were an artifact of the housed lens vs wet lens setup). The benefits of auto focus otherwise are not in dispute.

I've haven't tried a current high-end P&S, are you saying the shutter lag is less now with a high-end cam in auto focus mode, than with a typical consumer cam with manual focus (assuming the focus is already set for the needed distance)? Anyone who's used a consumer digicam for action shots is well aware of how frustrating auto-focus lag usually is.

It's easy to get a couple of impressions from this thread that I think bear clarification. I'm just a hack, so the better photogs can correct this if it's wrong, but I don't think it's clearly the case that:

1- RAW shooting is necessary or even noticeably (note that word...) better than shooting JPEG, for post-shoot image adjustment. I don't think there's any processing that RAW uniquely permits, is there? Though as pointed out the effect of the processing on absolute (vs perceptible) image quality is a difference. Whether one notices or cares about the difference depends on a variety of factors, and is worth pointing out for the difference in camera selection, effort, and cost involved.

2- improvement and/or enjoyment will be predicated on how high-end your camera gear is. Many, probably most, U/W hobbyists won't care about most of the technical post-processing stuff, or even many of the camera control intricacies. Exposure control and composition seem largely divorced from any particular camera technology. Whether you find importance to quality in the margin beyond that is very much a personal assessment. It just depends on what you want to use the camera for, I'd say.

 

[Osric]

1- RAW shooting is necessary or even noticeably (note that word...) better than shooting JPEG, for post-shoot image adjustment. I don't think there's any processing that RAW uniquely permits, is there? Though as pointed out the effect of the processing on absolute (vs perceptible) image quality is a difference. Whether one notices or cares about the difference depends on a variety of factors, and is worth pointing out for the difference in camera selection, effort, and cost involved.

RAW images on my camera have 12 bits per channel. This is the single biggest reason to shoot RAW in my opinion - the extra 4 bits of precision means the red histogram is still present even if invisible before processing. I have tried to process JPG images people have sent me and the red channel just isn't there and you have to resort to hacks like using channel mixer to invent red light out of nothing. I find it a lot easier to work with a true red channel.

Aside from colour, all digital cameras apply some sharpening and contrast adjustments before saving the JPG. If you plan to crop your image you can get significantly better detail starting from RAW and applying contrast and sharpening after the crop.

Osric

 

[Puffer Fish]

Spoolin01, Thanks, don't usually post any of them. I hope you double clicked on them (and then once more) to see in the size I downloaded. Those tiny animals around the Chromis can then be seen.

Regarding raw, Osric has it dead on, Raw data contains information that is simply not there in a Jpeg. The difference can be quite amazing. In addition to white balance correction, typically there is at least one stop's worth of unseen information to the dark side and around 1/2 to the light side, allowing an image a little off to be corrected, no such information is present in a JPEG.

Note: One can also use this information to increase the dynamic range of the image, another thing that a JPEG cannot do.

Oh, and it is easier than you think. I typically use the free software, look at the curves and adjust if needed, then do a save as a JPEG. I own lightroom, and if the image is worth it, will use that. I print with Paint shop pro, as I have everything (work flow for those into it) calibrated from monitor to final print.

Regarding focus, well that spotted drum (or jacknife as they look the same at this age) was shot with a P&S, and that is one ADD fish. You can usually tell P&S images of fish, because there will not be any fast moving, nervous fish close ups.

The LX-5 I am currently using, for example, once focus and exposure is set is under .1 seconds, much faster than a human is. This is obviously not the case with a lot of other point and shoots.


Of note is that all the evil camera's are roughly the same speed, so using one of them over several high end point and shoots would not make a lot of difference.

Puffer - nice pics! My observation was simply that with some or many typical housed P&S cameras, you may be able to obtain closer focus reliably with a manual option in addition to auto focus (I was also wondering if that were an artifact of the housed lens vs wet lens setup). The benefits of auto focus otherwise are not in dispute.

I've haven't tried a current high-end P&S, are you saying the shutter lag is less now with a high-end cam in auto focus mode, than with a typical consumer cam with manual focus (assuming the focus is already set for the needed distance)? Anyone who's used a consumer digicam for action shots is well aware of how frustrating auto-focus lag usually is.

It's easy to get a couple of impressions from this thread that I think bear clarification. I'm just a hack, so the better photogs can correct this if it's wrong, but I don't think it's clearly the case that:

1- RAW shooting is necessary or even noticeably (note that word...) better than shooting JPEG, for post-shoot image adjustment. I don't think there's any processing that RAW uniquely permits, is there? Though as pointed out the effect of the processing on absolute (vs perceptible) image quality is a difference. Whether one notices or cares about the difference depends on a variety of factors, and is worth pointing out for the difference in camera selection, effort, and cost involved.

2- improvement and/or enjoyment will be predicated on how high-end your camera gear is. Many, probably most, U/W hobbyists won't care about most of the technical post-processing stuff, or even many of the camera control intricacies. Exposure control and composition seem largely divorced from any particular camera technology. Whether you find importance to quality in the margin beyond that is very much a personal assessment. It just depends on what you want to use the camera for, I'd say.

 

[slowhands]

I am an inexperienced diver with 48 dives. .... I have wished on several occasions that I had some type of camera on some of my dives and I can't imagine going to a place like Bonaire without one. ....

I have almost decided to get the SeaLife DC1200 Elite package since it has the external flash and wide angle lens included at a reasonable price. I realize this is not the most high speed rig but I guess I am wondering if this set up will last me several years as I learn and gain experience or if there are other options I have not discovered.

FYI. My digital camera experience is limited to a Nikon 3000 I have to use at work, a Nikon CoolPix at home and a HD Flip Slide video at home. I am by NO means good a taking photos but I am dying to take pics on my dives.

.....

Buck

Sure, it's fun. Definitely for a trip to Bonaire, you want the memories.

I'd suggest keeping your rig simple so you can work it and stay safe too. Practice your buoyancy skills, because for a lot of shots you are the tripod. Make sure your buddy is comfortable with your longer stops for pics, some are not.

About cameras, I'm not wild about the SeaLife, but for a price it is OK. On my last dive trip, I ran into a Belgian who had bought the SeaLife 1200 and decided to return it, in favor of a Canon G11 in an Ikelite housing with Ike strobe. She said the images just were not good enough. So that's all the first hand knowledge I have of SeaLife. I had the misfortune of trying a Sea&Sea 1200HD and being unable to get service for it when it immediately broke, so I'll just never consider that brand for cameras (strobes yes).

I frankly think you get a better camera from a real camera maker like Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic or Sony. They just win in quality and features.

At the very bottom of the price range you have the Nikon L22 and Canon A495. These are really amazing cameras for the money. Both are powered by AA batteries, which you can get anywhere. They are limited, but good value for price. They cost under $100, and housings are available from Fantasea for both at around $150.

You don't absolutely need a strobe, but it will really improve your close up pictures. The least expensive seems to be the Intova ISS2000 with tray and fiber cord for about $175. That would be a workable low priced setup (under $500).

For a little more, you can pick up a Canon SD1200 and DC29 case used. This uses a lithium battery and recharges the flash faster, and shoots easier. The case is nicer too. Or get the current model Canon SD1300 and DC36 case, new, for a bit more in price, but negligible improvement in quality but with a warranty.

These are just some entry level suggestions. Any of these are easy to use and to afford. The sky is the limit on underwater cameras, but I'd suggest trying one of the entry level cameras and seeing where it leads you.