Would you rent an A640 or buy housing for SD800IS?

[littleguppie]

This is a related post to my earlier question about our dive boating renting a A650IS for $105 per day! I've since found a local company in Cairns that rents the A640 for $35/day...much more reasonable. I do own the SD800IS though. So, the question is should I rent the A640 for 4 days for $140 or purchase the canon housing for $140 on Amazon. Obviously from a cost stand point it makes sense to purchase our own housing, BUT if others feel the A640 is a far superior camera to the SD800 then I'd rather just rent the better camera.

Background on me ...to help with deciding what is 'better' for me.

- This will be my first liveaboard trip, hence my first time using a camera underwater
- We will be diving 4 days in Australia...so trip of a lifetime and would be sad if pictures were only 'ok'.
- Have read that you can reassign the <print> button on some cameras to be a custom white balance button when underwater. is that true for the SD800?
- If I go the SD800 route, will I have difficulty taking pictures of things that are not extremely close up? Is this better on the A640?

Does anyone have a link to pics they've taken using the SD800? I've seen pics with the A640 and they looked great! Not sure if the person had an additional flash or strobe though?

Help! Of course I want to save money and make the most cost efficient decision, but not at the expense of poor pictures.

 

[almightys]

this is a hard call because if you cant use your camera to take good pictures how do you think that using a different one will?
I say buy a housing for yours and start practicing taking pics.

 

[bperrybap]

I looked at the manual for the SD800/IXUS850 and it appears that you cannot
re-assign the print button.

It looks like button is not on the WP-DC9 housing anyway.
see photo: sd900 & WD-DC9 photos

But it doesn't look like you can do it on the A640 either.

I don't really know anything about the A640.
(I've got a SeaLife DC-500 and recently bought a Canon sd850)

The sd800 is a nice little camera.
(Very similar to the sd850 that my wife and I have)
Here is a link to some photos my wife took with her sd850 first time out.
Bill and Terrie's StCroix photos
All but a few of these were taken with the sd850 -- the slightly bluer
ones were a SeaLife DC-500.
(Most of these used manual/custom white balance - a few had the flash)
The sd800 should be able to get similar results.

The sd800 has a wider angle than most other cameras including the A640.
This will allow you to get closer to the subject and still keep it within
the frame, which means more light for better exposure.

Looks like the CHDK firmware is also available for the sd800.
This will give you RAW capability.
It takes some playing around to get it working so you will have to read up on it
and play around with it a bit to get it working.

The sd800 also has image stabilization. This can help.
But keep in mind that image stabilization is for steadying your hands not
for steadying moving objects in the photo. i.e. it will not keep fish that are swimming
from blurring.

If you shoot with the flash you don't have to worry about white balance.
The flash will light up with the full spectrum.
The flash diffuser on the sd series work really well.
So you should easily be able to get some nice closeups and macro shots
using the flash without having to even mess with custom white balance.

It's kind of tough the first few times out with a camera.
There is extra task loading, plus it takes a while to learn how to really
work the camera with all its settings underwater.
You need really steady hands. The best tip I can offer is to initially use
both hands. When using 1 hand, the tendency is to tip the camera while pushing
the shutter button and you can end up with a blurry photos.

With either of these 2 cameras you are looking at,
I think the photographer will make a bigger
difference in the pictures than the actual camera.

It's a tossup. If you plan on taking more photos and like your sd800, I'd get the
housing - the next trip would be $0.

If you do decide to get the housing. Make sure to get at least 1 extra battery
(they are cheap on e-bay)
so you can have a spare charging while you are diving.


--- bill

 

[littleguppie]

thanks for all the great info, Bill. I think I'm leaning towards the housing for my camera. We do a lot of kayaking, waterfall rappelling, rafting, and many other activities that involve water. I think getting the housing will be a good idea for us.

Can you elaborate a little more on what 'RAW' means?

 

[bperrybap]

As for RAW. (This may be a bit more info than you wanted)

There is a CCD sensor inside the camera that picks up the image and converts the light
into digital information.
The camera then processes this digital information and saves it into a file.

During the image processing the camera will perform some conversions/transformations
on the image data in an attempt to make the image look "better".
One of those transformations is white balance.
The camera s/w will modify certain colors by increasing their intensity or reducing
their intensity to attempt to balance the overall color mix to make whites look
well white. Hence the name white balance.

A white balance transformation is always done on every picture.
The camera has built in rules for how to perform white balance
for certain conditions. Unfortuntely, when underwater, those built in rules
tend to not work as well as up on land since the depth underwater has
such a dramatic affect on the red color.
That is why a manual white balance tends work better than a canned
"underwater" white balance.


Another one of the transformations is jpeg compression.
This takes the image data and compresses it to make the image smaller.
It takes into consideration many factors and you can somewhat control
how it works. The algorithm can tune between smaller size and better quality.
i.e. higher the quality, the bigger the file will tend to be.

So "RAW" mode refers to the ability to save the image data *before* any
transformations are done to the data. It is a "RAW" image of what the
CCD saw.

Jpeg has 8 bits of color resolution for each color, red/green/blue.
The CCD has more, like 10 bits.
So there is more color information in the original RAW image than the
final jpeg.

Since jpeg loses some color information when converting to jpeg format,
it is important to get the white balance color information correctly transformed
during the white balance correction.
If the white balance correction is off by too much,
depending on how far off the white balance was,
you may not ever be able to tweak the photo to look "right" because the
information simply isn't there after the image is saved.

The value of "RAW" is that no transformations on the image data is done
inside the camera. You run s/w on your laptop/PC/MAC... to do it.
When shooting RAW you don't have to worry about white balance because
you do it later topside. Also since you have the full color information available
you can sometimes correct for other things that may have been not quite
right like exposure. There is alot more adjustment capability when using raw.

The downside to RAW is that the images are much larger. On the sd850 they are
10mb per image. While the jpeg is around 1.5mb.
Hope that helps.

--- bill

 

[Adriaan557]

I think buying a housing for yours wil be the best option.

I've got a SD800(IXUS850) and a G9. The SD800 takes decent pictures with the internal flash, and if you set the manual white balance it will take nice UW photos. Very nice camera to go snorkling with as well.

Obviously not as advanced and with manual controls at the A640 or G9, but a first time user your SD800 would do nicely. If you get the A640 you'll probably find that you get lost with all the setting, maybe choose the wrong one and end up with rubish photos. Best to stick with a camera you know. If you use the macro setting with the internal flash and diffuser, you can take really nice close up shots of nudi's and small stuff. the wide angle lens of the SD800 is also an added bonus.

As for RAW... I think Bill has said it all, my 5cents would be that from a practical point of view you do not have to worry about setting the white balance manually, and can set it later on your computer. It makes a huge difference to your photos, and less hassle with resetting the white balance for every metre your depth changes.

I used the CHDK hack (RAW capabilities)on my last trip to Egypt, and if work very well if you set it to load automatically.

Hope this helps,

 

[jaybombs25]

my 2 cents

A 640 GREAT camera... mine died a few days ago..however, it has taken sum fantastic shots and was more than worth its price... upgrading to the G9 now though