Good Little Digital Cameras

[Fondueset]

I've said before - but the thread is long since then - canon s80 here - with the inon wide-angle wet lens

Michigan Freediving - Home Page

Hope to switch to a G9 soon - supposedly faster focus and raw mode. Canon housings are great.

 

[Jonny250]

Hey Fondueset, I've been looking at the G9 too. It looks like a pretty good camera.
You can get the Canon housing or the Ikelite housing - the ikelite allows for different 'lenses' fitted to the port = wide angle and more strobe options i think...
Raw mode is much better for setting white balance later.

Do you guys use a strobe with the camera and how fast can you take pics at say ISO400?

There's a good website (slow tho) at wetpixel.com for this kind of info. anyone on there?

my own debate is whether to go G9 + canon housing, or stay with my D30 with ikelite housing + strobe + Tokina 10-17 AT-X10 fish eye. i'll use it for surf pics too.

 

[Pav]

picked up a cheap vivitar 6200w for £56.
New you can get them for £99 from amazon.

6mp. and video, flash etc. no optical zoom
waterproof to 10m.

I'll feedback come the summer.

 

[Hugh.]

I'm torn between the Olympus 770 sw and the Canon G9. Both look like awesome cameras, but I just can't decide! Anyone know where I can find an Ilkelite housing for the g9?

 

[Fondueset]

I'll have a G9 probably in March and will post a review. I never use a strobe - all my pics are natural lighting. In my view the strobe is a whole art in itself - I like the feeling of natural light shots and this is harder to get with a strobe. Of course most of my shots are in fairly shallow water.
The canon housings are very compact - which is what I like about them for freediving. I have an Inon wide angle on the s80 because inon made an adapter for that housing - they don't for the G9 which is a problem but the Ikelite housings are really expensive and clunky.

 

[Jonny250]

I've made up my mind and ordered the G9. Your comment about the strobe/flash was useful thanks Fondueset.
Hugh, the 770SW doesn't have a RAW option - but is cheaper, personally as RAW allows adjustment of exposure I recon its well worth having. You could try backscatter in the us for Ikelite, not sure if they do it tho..

 

[WillUnderwater]

I just got the Nikon S510 & Fantasea Housing for Christmas. It is my first digital UW camera and I am liking it so far.

Heres the product link:
Fantasea Line | FS-510 Housing w/ Nikon CoolPix S510 | B&H Photo

Heres a sample image and video from the camera:
http://www.scubawill.com/Alexander011108/test.jpg
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRUsZZd0VVM]YouTube - Manatee Dive Clip[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhm_J1nyKB0]YouTube - Manatee Dive Sinkhole Freedive[/ame]

 

[tbgsub]

Re: Good Little NIKON

thats interesting it seems that the S-510 NIKON also has an audible hiss in the video background.

does your Nikon have the Expeed Processor? or is it Pre-Expeed, my Non Expeed P-5000 sounds almost identical as far as audio in the housing, but the video looks only slightly better. Did you have VR on? looks like you did, Nice vid of the manatee, I didnt know they were that docile, kind of like an old aunt. " they just Come over to you and guive you a HUG" simply amazing!!

I have heard of Napoleon Wrass doing the same.

best of luck with the point and shoot!

TBGSUB

 

[WillUnderwater]

Re: Good Little NIKON

thats interesting it seems that the S-510 NIKON also has an audible hiss in the video background.

does your Nikon have the Expeed Processor? or is it Pre-Expeed, my Non Expeed P-5000 sounds almost identical as far as audio in the housing, but the video looks only slightly better. Did you have VR on? looks like you did, Nice vid of the manatee, I didnt know they were that docile, kind of like an old aunt. " they just Come over to you and guive you a HUG" simply amazing!!

Does it? I can't hear it? Those videos were raw unedited right from the camera. This camera is brand new so I'm sure it has the first processor you talked about - but not sure. I believe VR was on. I am still very new with the camera and still experimenting. Going to take it to some clear waters this weekend for some more playing around.

Manatee are very curious and very gentle creatures. If yo just sit still they will come to you to play just like the one in the video. It is a must-do snorkel for anyone!

 

[Evita]

Does anyone have experience with the canon powershot a720is in underwater housing?

 

[tbgsub]

UW VIDEO NOTE: I have spoken at length with Mike Tripp, who does Underwater Video work in Saipan, who said that he does'nt use VR EVER! instead he makes wings and bouyancy compensators for his video housing to get smooth pan shots for his video footage, which is simply amazing!

If you shoot stills, however VR works fine (at the expense of much slower focus!) and you dont need to do anything special to the housing unless you are pushing into low light/slow shutter speeds/and using natural lighting, which is usually ruled out with the use of strobes to return colors from the blue hue of the ocean and capture fast moving subjects.

sorry no Canon experience at my end, but most point and shoot cameras excell with Macro photography because they allow you to get real close to the subject and have close focusing lenses built in.
MACRO TIP: use a cheap underwater flashlight taped or velcroed to your housing or on an arm aimed at your focus area to improve your focus! Your shots will be crisp and sharp!!
FOCUS LIGHT TIP:
LED focus lights are cool enough not to spook small sensitive animals like Christmas tree worms, while a hot incandescent bulb may make em dive for cover before you even get a shot.
FILTER:
Also a Blue Filter (it's red) is worth its weight in GOLD if you like natural light and colors near the surface, and the pink sunsplash against the blue background with (Close Focus Wide Angle) CFWA can be artful with reef life. but you would need a Wide angle lens to really capitalize on that, still a filter is a great thing to have if you dont use a synched strobe (often cost more than the camera and housing combined!), you will be amazed at the difference! and NO the underwater setting on a point and shoot camera doesnt really produce vibrant colors like a simple filter will; Neither will any post processing to enhance colors, Best to get good color from the start to work with and then desaturate and lower contrast to your liking. It is better to subtract detail and information than to try to add it to an image.

best of luck with the UW Point and shoot and the powershot.

TBGSUB

good luck.

TBGSUB.

 

[garett]

Here is some of my video clips recorded with my G7 - YouTube - underwaterireland's Channel
I have one big problem: G7 recording originally in AVI format and files have huge sizes... Quality is brilliant but no way to show videos in AVI format on the internet. Anybody knows how to convert from AVI to any other video format making files much smaller but same time not loosing significantly quality?

 

[Whopperhead]

garett - you could try convert it with DIVX - it's a free software- that keeps the quality but makes the pic size smaller. Then with it converted in Divx you can upload that version on Youtube.com

 

[trux]

Youtube will automatically convert and downsize uploaded videos, so the resulting quality will be crappy anyway. If you have your own server with decent bandwidth and enough room, the simplest is keeping the videos there. Otherwise, there are plenty of services similar to Youtube, and at some of them you can upload high quality videos too. Some of them are listed for example here, but you'll find many more (and possibly better) in Google.

As for converting - DivX is not bad, but some people won't be able watching the videos unless they download the codex (which they are not always able or willing to do). For direct viewing there is nothing wrong with the AVI format, but you can also use MS Windows Movie Maker to convert the video to a WMV format - you can choose the optimal size/quality ratio. There are also other free tools directly from Microsoft for video editing and converting: Windows Media Encoder

 

[Fondueset]

I use a Canon powershot S80 with an Inon wet-fisheye lens. Quite happy with it. It shoots very nice video and you can see my stills on my site. I think the Canons in general are good - and I like the housing they market for it - also quite inexpensive. Next step for me is an SLR.