SD870IS and Auto Magic Filter

[bliew]

Hi everyone,

We're here in beautiful Belize (arrived yesterday) and I thought I'd use the limited Internet access here to post some photos from our first day of diving using our new SD870IS in combination with the Auto Magic Filter.

Here are some preliminary photos (marginal post production on them), I think you can tell the difference between my SD870 with filter and my wife's A620 without:

TravelPhotos.in: Travel Photos » Central America » Turneffe Flats, Belize (Monday)

I have learned a few things after only 3 dives:

1) the SD870 is a great little camera with its large screen and one-button video record (once programmed). The 28mm WA also seems to work well, as does the Image Stabilization.

2) the battery life I found deceptively short - I fully charged the battery pack, and while I did keep the camera and LCD on most of the time, I actually ran out of juice towards the end of the 3rd dive, which surprised me, especially since my wife's A620 is still going strong. Of course, my battery died literally moments before a large hawksbill turtle began opening and devouring a sponge coral!

3) the Auto Magic Filter didn't work for me in Auto mode at all. I found the blue was marginally less of a problem than my wife's, but essentially I found no difference. On the second dive, I experimented with Manual White Balance and found a huge difference - only now the red was just a little too hot, possibly too much to reduce in Photoshop. So tomorrow I will reduce the red in-camera, reduce the exposure a touch and see how it goes.

Overall I found the combination wasn't nearly as effective out-of-the-box as I was expecting and hoping - but hopefully tweaking the settings will help a bit...

If my photos improve, I'll post more in the coming days (if people want), along with what I tried/learned. Also, any advice/criticisms you want to throw my way is more than welcome!

 

[ShagMan]

OK, gonna show my naiivette here... what the heck is an Auto Magic Filter??

I just swapped up from a SD550 to a SD870IS, so I'm curious to hear about the techniques you like using. The SD550 would take a picture that was blue/green saturated a lot of the time, which I had a tough time correcting for. I didn't use flash for daylight shots, which was probably not a good idea. I'm thinking maybe I should carry a blank slate to do a manual WB each dive??

Here's a few examples I got from my SD550 (corrected with PSP as best I could)
scrapbook/events/200705-GrandCayman/20070506-condo-snorkeling

 

[bliew]

Hi Shagman,

The Auto Magic Filter (or Magic Filter) are little square materials that you cut out and literally tape across the top of your lens - with the SD870IS, it's a small piece that requires nimble hands to cut and tape to allow the lens to extend and retract. Just do a search on Magic Filter, their web site will come up.

Now having done 2 more days of diving, I have become better at white balancing, which I still find necessary, I just use a dive slate. I found white balancing without the filter was a bit better than nothing, but still very blue - much like I found the filter without white balancing was better than nothing, but still very blue!

I have now added more photos from Monday and Tuesday, and still the difference between with filter and without is huge. My wife got a few great shots (like the spotted toadfish) with the A620 and flash, but otherwise all the colourful ones are with the SD870IS, Auto Magic Filter and white balancing.

Limited Internet here so gotta run - hope that helps!
Bryan

OK, gonna show my naiivette here... what the heck is an Auto Magic Filter??

I just swapped up from a SD550 to a SD870IS, so I'm curious to hear about the techniques you like using. The SD550 would take a picture that was blue/green saturated a lot of the time, which I had a tough time correcting for. I didn't use flash for daylight shots, which was probably not a good idea. I'm thinking maybe I should carry a blank slate to do a manual WB each dive??

Here's a few examples I got from my SD550 (corrected with PSP as best I could)
scrapbook/events/200705-GrandCayman/20070506-condo-snorkeling

 

[ShagMan]

OK, another dumb question then, since the primary purpose/need for this color filter would be for diving... couldn't you just tape/mount it inside the dive case?

 

[bliew]

Hi Josh,

Yes you could, and that's an approach that the Magic Filter guys offer as an alternative - you'd just have to find a way to secure it inside using some form of adhesive or that stacky stuff for posters on walls...

I've also posted more dive photos, you can use the same link and go up a level for other dives from the past few days. Again, there are some without the Magic Filter (those that are marked as from my wife Elizabeth), all other underwater ones are with the filter...

Cheers!
Bryan

OK, another dumb question then, since the primary purpose/need for this color filter would be for diving... couldn't you just tape/mount it inside the dive case?

 

[bliew]

Okay, now that I've been back for a few days and have had a chance to reflect and review photos/videos, here's more points on my thoughts on the SD870IS and Magic Filter combination. First though, I do want to thank everyone on the forum with their experiences and suggestions, which I found really helpful. I learned so much here prior to our trip, that I think really made a difference with our underwater photos this time around.

SD870IS
- a great little convenient camera underwater - the large screen is fantastic to use, and I found the one-button video record *extremely* handy underwater; it was really easy to instantly start videoing when I saw something interesting, rather than having to toggle modes first.

- the 28mm wide angle works extremely well, I found I could take nice photos of the reef and my wife quite easily; while it was a major selling point to me, I was still skeptical that I would notice it that much in the real work, but I did. The downside is that on land, the distortion is quite noticeable with outdoor panoramic shots - but that doesn't matter on this forum!

- the Image Stabilization also works really well, particularly when doing video - even swimming in current the IS helps make video look quite smooth.

- the battery life I found deceptively short - I fully charged the battery pack, and while I did keep the camera and LCD on most of the time, I actually ran out of juice towards the end of the 3rd dive, which surprised me; this was without using the flash at all.

- I wish the camera would keep the macro mode setting - since I had to start turning my camera off during the dive to preserve battery life, I had to remember to switch to macro mode each time I turned it on. It became a bit of a habit, but an annoying one to have to adopt.

- the manual controls are quite limited - essentially, exposure control, some customizing of sharpness, contrast, saturation but that's it. Meaning for experienced divers/photographers, the lack of focus, aperture, shutter, etc. might be limiting - for me I found it just fine ;-)

- the manual white balance was very easy to use, for most of the dive I just kept the function screen on and only had to press the [DISP.] button to white balance whenever I needed to.

- the ability to take SDHC cards was really nice, since an 8 GB card can go a long way underwater (unless you decide to video your entire dive from entry to exit!).

MAGIC FILTER

- the Auto Magic Filter didn't work for me in Auto mode at all, I still had to manually white balance at anything deeper than about 10-15 feet

- for the most part, my underwater photos were too red - I reduced the in-camera red and also had to reduce it a bit in Photoshop afterwards. Perhaps the regular Magic Filter (designed for manual white balance) would have worked better since I was white balancing anyways

- the filter works really well with good available light, which is how they advertise it. However, that really means that at any significant depth (70 feet or below), or even in any type of crevice where interesting creatures can be lurking, it's almost unusable since you can't use the flash. If possible, have a dive partner with another camera+flash for those situations.

- having the filter also means that video clips look surprisingly good too, one of the biggest benefits (IMO) of this filter. The built-in flash or external strobe lights are great for stills, but don't do anything for video clips, so this was a huge bonus.

- on a small camera like the SD870, it was a little tricky taping the Filter to the lens - so much so that I just left it on the entire week of diving, so I'm glad we had other cameras for land shots.

- overall, this filter, despite its limitations, was probably the single biggest breakthrough on our dive trip. We'll still always dive with one camera using a flash just for those deep/crevice shots that require an additional light source. But I really enjoyed this combination setup...

Hope this helps!
Bryan

 

[moeronn]

^ Nice write-up. Thanks for your impressions on the SD870.

 

[themango69]

Bliew -

Loved your write-ups on the SD870IS. We just purchased this camera and are looking to take it with us on any dives we go on. I was curious based off of your observations on the difficulty of putting the magic filter on, if you ever tried ShagMan's suggestion of putting this in the water case? If this worked, this would solve your problems of land pictures later - but of course wouldn't solve the deep waters/crevices. I am particularly interested in this as we only have one camera and don't want to purchase this Magic Filter and have difficulties switching it on and off. We don't dive deeper than 60ft (at the moment), so our only limitation would be the dark crevices.

Also, if anyone else has any experience with putting the filter in water case, I would be very interested in hearing their thoughts.

Love these threads!

~Brandon

 

[bliew]

Hi Brandon,

Perhaps I overstated the complexity of putting the filter on the lens. Really all you need is a sharp pair of scissors, some scotch tape and a moderately steady hand. What you can do is do a quick test at home using some blank paper - if you can easily cut small strips of tape around a small rectangle that covers the lens in such a way that you can turn the camera on and off, that's all you'll need to do. Really it's just that it's so "inelegant" - I'd prefer a ready-made size but understand that's impossible given the diversity of cameras. FWIW, I cut a little piece for another diver on the last 2 days since he was enthralled with it, and as my second effort it took a grand total of about 3-4 minutes, including the cutting of the filter, the scotch tape and applying it to the camera.

Regarding placing the filter inside the case, I'm skeptical, even though the Magic Filter people list this as an option too. IMO this would be much harder to physically do, with a much lower degree of accuracy. We had the luxury of bringing 3 cameras so it wasn't worth the time to remove the filter then replace it, especially between dives if you're on a smaller boat without a dedicated camera table - but I think if you're reasonably careful, there should be no problem. Also, the square is large enough that you can even precut squares and just tape a new one on if you need the camera for land shots between dives and mess up removing the original piece of filter.

Another thing to keep in mind - since you're going to have to learn to white balance with the filter anyways, if you don't want to remove/add the filter between dives, you can also white balance on land and just keep the filter on. I actually did test this for fun, and it worked fine...

As for the crevices, I don't really have a solution - since my wife had the A620 and flash, I just ended up taking video inside the crevices, which still isn't that bad a scenario. Also, if you do get really good, you can always try increasing the exposure and upping the ISO setting for darker scenes - I was just too lazy!

Also, here's a link to the first scuba video I've done from our trip - since the first portion is the Blue Hole (Belize) and sharks in shallow waters, you can't really see too much benefit of the filter until the second half of the video - I'll post more reef and critter videos once I sort through more of our vids:

visitBelize.cn : visit Belize - Blue Hole and Lighthouse Reef - scuba diving in Belize

Here's are two stills of a shark and Christmas Tree worms from that day:

Cheers!
Bryan

 

[alcina]

bliew - embed a little selection of photos from your experiences with this little camera and I'll add this to the Sticky

If you're not sure how to embed them, please go to the Sticky (pink link in my sig) and there are some tips. Thanks.