Good Little Digital Cameras

[Fondueset]

The s80 has several programmable or manual modes - including shutter and aperture priority, manual white balance etc as well as manual control over those functions. You acces the various modes - which can be pre-programmed - via a labeled wheel on the side - which the housing allows access too via an easy- to use wheel on the right side. You can setup up pre-programmed modes accessible via the wheel - in addition to the ap/sp modes that are built in. (movie mode is also on the wheel)

On the small casios a few of these options are also available - including white balance - but they are strictly menu driven which is awkward underwater. I'm just starting to get with these features - now that I have a camera with a little more jazz. In addition to being able to do alot on the fly manually - it's nice that you can pre-program modes and switch to them just by turning the wheel instead of fiddling with the menu underwater (esp for freediving). The housing also has a nice rubber shade for the LCD - which is a huge help. I also like the way the buttons on the back are staggered - this makes it way easier to access them with gloves on and by feel.

I don't like the built in underwater white balance setting on the canon - I'll tweak it in photoshop instead until I come up with my own.

The older model of the s80 - the s70 - will shoot in raw mode - but I wanted the digicII processor and better movie mode, battery life, lcd etc in the s80.

The s80 also has a larger sensor than the small casios. I would like to see housings for those higher end casios though. I had a exz600 in hand and thought the focus was quite slow compared to the earlier ones. May have been defective.

The little Casios I've used do do a great job right out of the box with no fiddling. The housing is good, but not as good as the Canon. (the combination of menu driven programmable presets and a manual wheel to access them is really nice!) I have the WPDC1 - no idea what the diff is.

 

[Geo]

Hi Fondueset,

Thanks for the feedback on the S80, that is sure good to know and I don't know why I got it wrong on the S80 about the manual settings - think I have been looking at just too many camera lately

I also agree and glad that you also highlighted that those manual functions should have dedicated buttons/controls instead of running through menus as this is no good underwater.

One of the article I have read suggested that all 8mg camera suffer from bad video quality, what your findings with the Canon, it might be that the article was referring to all camera using a specific make of processor.

Also on the video function, how is the 1Gig limit applied for example say you have a 4Gig card in the camera can you then make 2 1Gig recordings during that dive or it the total maximum length of all video clips on the card limited to 1Gig?

Lastly, how many dives have you done so far with the Canon housing. The canon housings I have handle in the past felt very flimsy. Like there was quite a bit of play with the back door once opened and the buttons did feel solid. How do you find it?

 

[Fondueset]

I've only done two dives - and a couple of movies on land. Movie quality seems quite good at 640x480x30fps - but I'll need to test that underwater. There are a couple of videos from my casio on my site - they are not too good - choppy and not real sharp.

The housing is quite solid. The buttons have good resistance - with care I am able to press the shutter button halfway for focus with 6.5 mil gloves on. The housing is larger than for the Casio but no larger than it needs to be. Overall design and button layout - is superior and there is full access to all functions. The Casio housing, because the camera is so small, is actually about the right size - it adds some stability and makes it easier to hold the casio steady - The Casio is a good one to take along spearfishing or something because of it's small size. The Canon housing isn't huge - you can let it hang off your wrist and do other stuff.

I've no complaints about the Casio housing - but I'd say the Canon is definitely better designed and, if anything, more heavy duty.

I plan to shoot a short movie with it this weekend and I'll upload it as soon as I do.

Just to reiterate - so far the only thing I could fault the Canon on is being slower to focus - but I may be able to tweak that so we'll see. Oh yeah - battery life. The Canon goes 200 plus shots with no flash - which certainly is no problem. I've taken probably several hundred shots with it. I dove with the casio for two weeks before I even remembered it had a battery!

 

[Mr. X]

Regarding strobes, for those of you unaware, you can get external strobes which sync (fire) without any wires or connections when your on-camera flash goes. They sync by the external strobe being triggered with light given off by the camera.

I used cave as a teenager. One of the guys used to use a slave flash unit, triggered by the main camera-mounted flash (I could be wrong but I don't think "pre-flash", for red-eye, existed in those days). His pictures were incredibly good, especially considered the conditions (pitch dark!).

 

[sunfishtuba]

I use the olympus C-750. not bad underwater with the housing, esp low light conditions using the flash. i do mostly close up with it on scuba. only major con is lack of adaptability, ie no other lenses can really be used that i know, and it can be a bit bulky at times. however, i do like the 10x optical zoom on the surface, and the 40X zoom when using a cheap mini tripod ($10). good system, batteries are just AAA, so no worry about needing special ones if out on a trip.

 

[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/productos/images/Nikon/984m.jpg

and this housing
http://aka.fotovista.com/dev/1/5/40350151/l_40350151.jpg

This photos realized with this camera:

http://wordream.sytes.net/Galeria/cpg146/albums/userpics/10001/normal_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. rofl 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-and-sea-dx8000g-review/

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

 

[tylerz]

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:
[ame="http://forums.deeperblue.net/showpost.php?p=566161&postcount=20"]DeeperBlue Forums - View Single Post - Digital camera[/ame]

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.