So, anybody hear anything bad, good indifferent about the Sealife DC500?

[darylm74]

Take a look around more. I have a Canon A95 with the housing. I bought the camera through Dell and the housing on Ebay (from a reputable camera shop). I think I have about $400 in it and I have a 1GB card. If you're getting a strobe I would say that $500 or so isn't a bad price for a sealife but I'm betting you can have so much more camera along with the housing for the same price and the Canons, Nikons and Oly's are going to be more versatile on land too. The A95 has a lot of functionality but I am a Nikon guy at heart, at least with respect to 35mm SLR. As with any piece of dive gear, do your research. Jonnythan helped me make my mind up and he had a lesser camera than what I bought (but along the same line).

 

[fairybasslet]

It's a dive trip. What do you need an iPod for?

For the plane ride. To drown out the crying babies.

 

[bet63]

But is the sea-life digital CAMERA still a cheap Vivatar?

Thats what the DC310 used, you can buy the 3 meg pixel camera for like $120 at Walmart.

I had a DC310 that took horrible photo's even on the surface, didn't even bother trying a dive with it......

RockyHeap,

Thanks! I thinks you just saved me quite a bit of cash, My DC310 flooded a couple of months past warennty and sealife wanted lots to replace it. Found the vivitar 3715 on Amazon.

Brian

 

[mack50md]

One more thing. I hope the new DC500 "writes" to the memory faster. After the picture preview on the DC310, it writes pretty slooooooooow if you want to take a quick second pic. One solution to this is I know buying a ultra-fast SD memory chip, which I'm prob gonna do. Of course we still have to wait for the flash to cycle back to charged.

BTW.... the new camera, does it use SD memory? (I'm assuming it does).

mike

Mike,

Have you downloaded Sealife's upgraded firmware latest version? They claim the patch shortens the cycle time.

The website said it still uses SD cards.

 

[mike_s]

Mike,

Have you downloaded Sealife's upgraded firmware latest version? They claim the patch shortens the cycle time.

The website said it still uses SD cards.

Mack.

Thanks for the link to the firmware. I'll download it and check it
out. I just bought my DC310 in April, so I think it'd be up to date.
But I'll check it out anyway.

-Mike

 

[*Floater*]

Mack.

Thanks for the link to the firmware. I'll download it and check it
out. I just bought my DC310 in April, so I think it'd be up to date.
But I'll check it out anyway.

-Mike

Note, however, that you either need Sealife's power adaptor, or some device for clearing info from SD cards, in order to use the card again after you've uploaded the firmware. My friend had some type of palm pilot device I used to wipe out my SD card after I updated the firmware with it.

 

[WolfyWho]

Anyone have any sample images from this new camera? You'd think SeaLife's website would have some samples, but they don't. Thanks!

 

[WolfyWho]

I found the user manual on SeaLife's website last night for the DC500. Overall it looks like a cool camera. Its seems to let you make every manual adjustment you would need, *except* aperture and shutter speed. They have a bunch of preprogrammed settings for these two items, like portrait, landscape, under the sea, under the sea with external flash, but no manual setting for aperture and shutterspeed. Weird. It seems it can x-sync all the way up to 1/1000th of a second with their external strobes, which is cool. And in certain modes you can get shutter lag down to about 1/10th of a second. Why no manual settings of aperture and shutterspeed though? Hopefully I missed that part of the manual, but I don't think so.

 

[*Floater*]

FWIW, I just got the DC500 Pro Kit via Fed Ex yesterday and went through the entire package contents and manual last night.

...

Taking it to Coz next week so I'll be able to give better comments after I see my photos.[/COLOR][/B] :bfish:

Bumbing for feedback. Anyone have any pics from this camera? Sealife's gallery still has no pics up there.

Also, did anyone try the macro lenses with this model? Sealife's people told me the macro lenses aren't compatible with DC500 (in the email I posted here), but the lenses should still physically fit the camera since the wide-angle lense fits it, so I'm wondering what happens if you clip one on and take some pics?

 

[mike_s]

I don't know how well a "snap on" macro would work. The reason I say this is that the DC500 has a zoom lens and the DC310 didn't The zoom will cause the lens to move in/out which will most likely distort the macro. Of course this is all assumption as I haven't tried it.