Not sure about the battery life, but he seems happy with it. I know it lasted him all day during our ice dives this past winter and we were also in the water shooting fish shots for over an hour in February. The nice part is that it can use the full range of Sea&Sea lenses and strobes without any adaptors.
I've always considered Sea&sea to be much more affordable than other camera companies out there- Nikonos, amphibico, Nexus, Light and Motion, ect. Only the Ikelite housings seem to be cheaper- for scuba stuff.
I've used the sea&sea and the S80 and the sea & sea housing is a LOT more robust and can handle deeper depths- but for freediving that it kind of a mute point. The cannon housing feels like much more of a toy than the others mentioned, but then again, so does my PT-015 housing for my Olympus.
When it comes to depth I've found that you can push them all if your carefull with the O-rings. My last film camera was rated to 165' but I had it down to 220' plenty of times without a leak. The PT-015 is rated to 132' but I've heard of guys taking them to 250' without a problem. For freediving any of these would work.
I have RAW mode on my 5050 but never use it as it takes 8-9 seconds to write a single image to disk. With a DSLR I could do 4-5 frames a second- but my wife won't let me take out a second mortage to buy one. :chatup
The one thing that RAW would be good for is just shooting what you see and then going back later to fix it up since all of the information has already been recorded. I'm just not willing to put up with the lag time on my 5050 to take advantage of that.
The initial shot on the Casio was fine, but the recharge time for additional shots seemed WAY too long for my liking. I know it has low shurrter lag initially, but when your trying to do multiple shots on a freedive it becomes a pain.
The enhanced video modes look a lot more interesting to me and the higher resolution still settings, without going to RAW, seem to have worked just fine. If your just using your shots to post on the net, or make smaller prints from, the Motion JPEG format is pretty nice because you can just shoot video and use any frame for a still- which at 30 per second is a lot of choice!
I had thought about the S-80 with an Ikelite housing because they use a standard 67mmm thread port on the front- which means I could still use my INON wide angle lens and Dome port. It's a bulkier system than the Cannon housing, but much more robust and I could use my expensive lens on it. Even with the larger nature of the housing I understand it to be smaller than my PT-015 housing.
Ted has mentioned that there are certain features of his camera that he cannot access with his Cannon housing for the S-80. Since he's in Cayman this week he can't comment on it right now- bastard.
I've never used the Epoque lens, but I would swear by my Inon. I know that Cliff has been using an Inon wide angle, without the dome, for a pretty long time- and, thus, convinced me to buy one as well a few years ago.
jon
I've always considered Sea&sea to be much more affordable than other camera companies out there- Nikonos, amphibico, Nexus, Light and Motion, ect. Only the Ikelite housings seem to be cheaper- for scuba stuff.
I've used the sea&sea and the S80 and the sea & sea housing is a LOT more robust and can handle deeper depths- but for freediving that it kind of a mute point. The cannon housing feels like much more of a toy than the others mentioned, but then again, so does my PT-015 housing for my Olympus.
When it comes to depth I've found that you can push them all if your carefull with the O-rings. My last film camera was rated to 165' but I had it down to 220' plenty of times without a leak. The PT-015 is rated to 132' but I've heard of guys taking them to 250' without a problem. For freediving any of these would work.
I have RAW mode on my 5050 but never use it as it takes 8-9 seconds to write a single image to disk. With a DSLR I could do 4-5 frames a second- but my wife won't let me take out a second mortage to buy one. :chatup
The one thing that RAW would be good for is just shooting what you see and then going back later to fix it up since all of the information has already been recorded. I'm just not willing to put up with the lag time on my 5050 to take advantage of that.
The initial shot on the Casio was fine, but the recharge time for additional shots seemed WAY too long for my liking. I know it has low shurrter lag initially, but when your trying to do multiple shots on a freedive it becomes a pain.
The enhanced video modes look a lot more interesting to me and the higher resolution still settings, without going to RAW, seem to have worked just fine. If your just using your shots to post on the net, or make smaller prints from, the Motion JPEG format is pretty nice because you can just shoot video and use any frame for a still- which at 30 per second is a lot of choice!
I had thought about the S-80 with an Ikelite housing because they use a standard 67mmm thread port on the front- which means I could still use my INON wide angle lens and Dome port. It's a bulkier system than the Cannon housing, but much more robust and I could use my expensive lens on it. Even with the larger nature of the housing I understand it to be smaller than my PT-015 housing.
Ted has mentioned that there are certain features of his camera that he cannot access with his Cannon housing for the S-80. Since he's in Cayman this week he can't comment on it right now- bastard.
I've never used the Epoque lens, but I would swear by my Inon. I know that Cliff has been using an Inon wide angle, without the dome, for a pretty long time- and, thus, convinced me to buy one as well a few years ago.
jon
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