Good Little Digital Cameras

[Fondueset]

Beautiful dive today - heavy overcast, fog - dense particulate (probably pollen) near the surface - but outstanding visibility low. Great test for a camera in low light. I did a couple of movies at 640x480x30 - converted them for the web - they are at the bottom of my site.

[unirdna]

Very nice. Watching those carp swim over was like a cat watching a canary. I'm off to Cayman now with cdavis. There will be much video soon . Adios.

[dream69]

I buy this camera:
NIkon 7900
http://www.quesabesde.com/camdig/pro...Nikon/984m.jpg

and this housing
http://aka.fotovista.com/dev/1/5/403...l_40350151.jpg

This photos realized with this camera:

http://wordream.sytes.net/Galeria/cp...Imagen_011.jpg

[Geo]

But it has no apeture or shutter priority controls?

[dream69]

the priority controls are white balance, flash and more. Control with shut and view the images or videos are you realized.

sorry for my English ;-)

[Jon]

Ted and I went out a couple of weeks ago and shot some video to compare my Olympus 5050 with his new Cannon S80. His camera was, hands down, the winner in all video catagories- it was just like watching something shot off of a dedicated video camera.

My father-in-law just picked up a new Sea&Sea DX8000 and the video quality of it is so good that he rarely drags out his video camera system any more since it's so much bigger- as in it's mounted on a Gavin scooter along with his HID lights and he needs a crane to get it back on the boat. The DX8000 is VERY similar to the S80 from what I have seen- size and feature wise, but with a deeper depth rating on the housings.

The other thing that is really nice about the S80, which the casio dosn't have, is a rapid fire mode. When your down taking your pictures by freediving this mode really helps to get the best shot- you can always delete the crap later on.

There are also add-on lenses that go onto the Cannon housings, made by sea&sea. A wide angle lens makes much more of a difference than a flash in my opinion- especially in the age of digitial cameras and photoshop! Not having to drag the strobes around makes it a lot easier to freedive with as well.

I'm still holding off on anew camera, as I have toomuch invested into my 5050 and am happy with most of the results so far. When I do, finally, decide to buy something new I will be looking for a camera the size of the casio with the video features of the S80- that will make it worth the hassle of selling off what I have now and upgrading.

Jon

[Fondueset]

The s80 in the housing is actually a little better size than the Casio with respect to holding the camera steady. In it's housing the Casio is still pretty small and light - which makes it difficult to hold still. Of course the new ones have the anti-shake technology - which may help with that. The Canon is still small enough for one-handed operation. The other day - when it fogged up for the first hour or so due to 90 degree air, 80% humidity and 50F water (optimistically) I just let it hang off my wrist for most of the dive and hardly knew it was there.

I've worked out the focus issue I was having - by default the s80 chooses it's focal points from a pretty wide area - a little button - accessible through the housing - lets you change this to the center - which works alot better for me underwater. The other issues - where I dive among rocks - with alot of shadows and lighting changes - is exposure compensation - I haven't found a way to access this setting on the fly in the housing - so it needs to be preset before the dive - right now I have it at minus 1/3 - I think I'll be going to minus 2/3 though - at least for bright days. As I mentioned previously - I don't care for the default underwater white balance mode - at shallower depths it puts too much red in.

Casio has some new ones that look great - 8 and 10 megapixel with the larger CCD. They don't have housings for them however. I'm not sure what the logic with that is.

I'm sure we'll also see another upgrade for the S80 series in the next year or so.

[Geo]

Hi Jon,

With regards to the Sea&Sea DX8000, the one spec I read say that its battery is only good for 80 photos. Will you check with your Father-in-Law if that is so, seems to be awfully limiting.

[Fondueset]

The 8000 looks good - though I haven't figured out exactly how shutter lag is measured for the Canon - it lists .3 in manual, and .1 in pre-focus - the latter would be the same as the 8000. The 8000 has a smaller lcd - 1.7 vs 2.5 in the canon. I think battery life with an Li battery might be comparable.

I've found the Sea and Sea stuff - in general - to be fairly pricey and had the sense you are paying a premium for the packaging. I looked at one of their 5 mp models and the housing was well designed and very solid - though not as nice as the one I have for the Canon.

[Geo]

Hi Fondueset

I am still trying to figure out, what you qualify as nice and I am saying that with no negative intention.

To me, sturdy i.e. solidly build would be the most important factor for an underwater housing and the ses&sea does have the deepest depth rating so they must feel confident in their built quality.

As I mentioned before I haven't hold the S80 housing yet, but the previous Canon housing I looked at felt very flimsy compared to my ex Oly housing.

The fact that all the function for the camera is available and a screen over the lcd display is "nice" but I would like to see them on the housing, but they aren't going to protect the camera.

Never used the Sea&Sea camera, but it does seem that they try to provide a camera more suited for underwater, for example the lens zoom range the Sea&Sea provide is much more useful underwater.

I am not flaming the S80, but there are a few things which I don't like about it and therefore I am still in the market, which I find very frustrating as there as so many photo opportunities going wasted.

[Fondueset]

The Sea and Sea housings generally have some rubber on them - which is nice for grip and shock absorbtion. The one I saw was comparable to what I have for my Casio. I've done hundreds of dives with the casio housing - all 60 feet or less - but have had no problems. (also in surface temps ranging from 22F to 98f - water from 33f to around 70f)

As I mentioned the Canon housing seems quite solid and very well designed.
By nice I mean the housing is very solidly built and has easily accessible and well-laid out controls to access all the relevant functions on the camera while wearing thick gloves. To this end the Canon housing is superior in design to both the Casio housing and the comparable Sea and Sea housing I checked out. That is - the Canon housing has more controls and the close buttons on the back have variable heights and are readily workable even in 6.5mm cold water gloves. The o-ring seal on the canon is wider than on either the Casio or the small Sea and Sea I saw. The closure clip is comparable and, if anything, more difficult to accidentally release. Hinges on all three are pretty much the same.

Not sure what issues you have with the S80. I would say it has a tad more shutter lag than I'd like - and tends toward overexposure in default mode with high contrast conditions - the latter is correctable - and the former could be due to my not having figured out how to change the focus area - my more recent shots are much better.

I went with the S80 because of the bulk of reviews I saw, and because it was recommended to me in the digideep forums (actually they like the s70 because it does raw mode - but I wanted the digicII processor, increased battery, better video and larger lcd) There are not alot of opinions of the Sea and Sea cameras on there - which gave me the impression they are not particularly favored.

[Fondueset]

Found a review of the DX8000 on wetpixel.com. Looks pretty good - the reviewer says it is the fastest non-slr he's used (shutter lag) which is key. Also found out how to manually change the shutter or aperture on the s80 while it's in the housing! Interesting since I thought this was a missing feature.

Here's the review of the dx8000 - it's actually a Ricoh camera.

http://wetpixel.com/i.php/full/sea-a...x8000g-review/

Quite a few on there seem to be using the s80 as well.

[tylerz]

Originally Posted by Fondueset

The other issues - where I dive among rocks - with alot of shadows and lighting changes - is exposure compensation - I haven't found a way to access this setting on the fly in the housing - so it needs to be preset before the dive - right now I have it at minus 1/3 - I think I'll be going to minus 2/3 though - at least for bright days. As I mentioned previously - I don't care for the default underwater white balance mode - at shallower depths it puts too much red in.

Are you saying that the housing does not give access to the four buttons surrounding the wheel? In all modes other than Auto, the exposure setting is set by the upper-right button of the four.

White balance is a digital operation, therefore it is not necessary to be performed by the camera. The same functionality can be done in software at a later time without a difference in quality.

[Fondueset]

Still work in progress figuring all the buttons out - remember - I'm used to the Casio - and just jumping in in full blonde mode and taking whatever it gives me

The Ricoh Seah and Sea is using does seem to be blazingly fast .

[tylerz]

I have purchased the Ikelite housing for the S80.
http://www.ikelite.com/web_two/can_s80.html

Rated for 200 feet and all camera functions accessible. I am intending to get a wide angle lens for the housing as well. Anybody bought these Epoque underwater lenses before?

I did extensive research on digital cameras back in October, looking for something with strict requirements, as explained in this post:
http://forums.deeperblue.net/showpos...1&postcount=20

The Canon S80 was the only camera that satisfied the wish list. The Samsung V800 was my preferred wish, if it had a housing.

The S80 downfalls were:
- battery life
- shutter lag
- odd wheel control (when using out of a housing it can easily be accidentally bumped, and I find it finicky; it should have been a little less sensitive and then it seems like a great idea).
- had some quality concerns in dpreview.com reviews.
- no raw mode

But all those concerns were less than perfect but not bad in comparison to what is out there. So, that is what I ended up with, after waiting for it to be released and finally testing it at a shop.