Urgent Review Required Dc500

[desiredbard]

Clear Water...... around 7-11 feet viz....I am pleasantly surprised with the benefits of an external flash.

Regarding the soft focus.... Yeah I know I messed up some more as well...The thing was quit inquisitive and kept moving towards the lens. so by the time I had focus......

Found that zoom to 3x even in poor viz with an external flash creates a great pic.
Have the difuser on order though.

Alcina.... you got 20-20 viz?... Me going through my pics here sharp...sharp... unsharp.... And you see unsharpness around the eyes LOL Maybe I need to clean my LCD screen. But now youve said it...... I see it too

 

[alcina]

LOL - I'm a little tough on images sometimes But eyes should always pop! If you look closely at an image - any image - you should be able to see areas that are just plain tack sharp. Sometimes we grab focus just a smidge off of where we want it to be. Another reason to take more than one shot of the same subject.

But if you haven't, you might want to try a tad of the Unsharp Mask or similar once you have resized your image. A little fooling there and you can often "trick" the eye on images that are a tad soft. And if you have the sharpening turned off in your camera you will need to manually sharpen anyway. If you don't know how or don't have the option of turning it off, you may still have to tweak it - cameras aren't very smart.

Exact focus is really hard to see underwater...your blenny is still very nice!

 

[Cecil]

Alcina I'm with you, I have yet to see a picture with a DC500 that "pops" some are very nice but I've yet to see a great one. I just do not get the appeal of these cameras, I see lots of rationalizing from people that have brought them. You know, I just take snapshots. I just don't get it, for less money you can buy a real camera (not a Ricoh) and case and be able to grow with the camera. A good Canon, Fuji or Olympus are all fully automatic and are not one bit harder to use than the Sealife, but way more room for growth.

Newbies I think you should listen to the other newbies and not the people that have been doing this a few years (all of which will tell you to avoid this camera).

 

[desiredbard]

Alcina Thanks for the tip
Well the blenny was curious and kept moving towards me and VIZ was poor. But for the fisrt session with this cam its not a bad result at all.

I use photoshop, and am proud to say that NO filters have been applied they are only resized....

Am I complete pain in the backside if I ask you to explain the sharpening tool a bit more explicit? Or even post the image back with adjustments and tell me how and what youve done

Cecil, My buddy had a much praised Canon with him... i just received his shots with the question to indentify the blenny...
Colours off ... way of ... weird discolouring gradient wise over the body

Now I am not going to slag my buddy, first time for him as well. and far less dives thn i've got.....So his attempts were not half bad at all.

Its not only the camera its the user as well
Reading the manual helps ... a lot

I see the cam the same as a car or a pc....... Its not the machinery that messes up its the driver or user whoo either does not maintain or uses properly

 

[Cecil]

No doubt, it is the photographer that maters most, but if you could get a BMW for less than a Yugo which would you get? I'm telling you the Sealife is a Yugo, except it is not inexpensive but it is cheap.

Following this analogy further, both cars will work fine for short trips on straight roads. Now lets take a long trip down a winding road and see which is better. By the same token which car will still be on the road ten years from now (which is two years in digital camera years).

Normally you get what you pay for, except in this case when you can get better for less.

 

[alcina]

Ok, here's a 30 second fix...maybe. I made the colours "more natural" and did a bit of sharpening so you could see the difference...sharpening is all about tweaking as it can look terrible if overdone...I used the simple tools in PS
auto colour, auto levels, then did a little tweak in curves
then filter -> unsharp mask and about 77%, .8 and 0 in the boxes
It's not perfect, but meant to show an example:
original and adjusted:

BTW - "out of camera" is a fallacy. most digital cameras to tricky things inside them when you take the photo. RAW lets you decide on those tricky things. For jpeg and other non-RAW your editing software is more or less the same as choosing your film and your processing for film - you don't take the film out of the camera and say viola!

 

[desiredbard]

Thanks Alcina...

C what you mean, thanks for your help about that

Now...

I drove a citroen VISA for many years...not a yugo but not a bmw either
Cheaper on gas, insurance, parts, faster on accelertion, with a .689 engine. And hey since ther is a max speed anyway...who cares, the car was comfortable.

Now the thing is: I did not need to compensate for impotency, bald spots, oversexist remarks and perverted looks and a small weener....so why by a BMW if you can spend the difference on wining and dining......

Now I would love to go into this analogy a bit deeper at 7 am in the morning.... but some peopple still need their breakfast.

But no offence ment ladies..... from a fish I'm 100% sure it does not care what camera you have. Which is great cause I dont swim around thinking and worrying "O gee what if a guy with a nikon swims along"

BTW since when are you using your BMW?

 

[alcina]

And it ain't the camera, it's the photographer - a great photographer can make a really cheapo camera sing!

Sorry about the PS work...it looked a lot better before I messed with it and then saved the wrong version LOL but you can see what just a tad of tweaking (white balance is your friend) can do (or do badly!)

 

[desiredbard]

Yeah I Got the drift...like the colours in between the original and the blue. But the sharpening does the trick to get it a bit more defined, its not the contrast butthigs are a little more defined (now i know what to look for)

Thanks so much for your help, now its back to practice with the cam its strobe and PSP where needed. (There is only so much you can do on a picture without being obvious