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Good Little Digital Cameras

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
Hey,

I went out and bought one of the few S80s remaining in Vancouver. Price was $649 CAD plus taxes. The salesclerk tried to sell me 2GB of memory for $120. I politely refused his advances... Thank you Ebay! :duh

Chris, I'd like to take you up on your offer for the accessories and talk to you about your housing. I'll email you tomorrow.

It's 2am and I'm going to work in a few hours. Eek.

Can't wait to try out the new camera. :inlove

Tyler, did you manage to find any cheap memory cards locally or did you resort to ebay?

Pete
 
Thanks Jon,

My tenative forays into strobehood have failed to impress me. Partly, no doubt, because I'm not diving in a terribly colorful environment but also because I like my pictures to look like they were taken underwater. I have seen some really cool effects from skillful use of strobes - and it would be cool for shots in really dark areas - but as you said it's a pretty clunky unit to lug around freediving.

The water here has cleared up in a big way. It is also very cold - much colder than last year at this time when I was still in my 3 mil suit. Vis on the bottom is in the 60 foot range - with schools of Lake Trout and carp. From the face hit I'm guessing upper 40s at the surface - down around 15 feet it's pretty radical.
 
Jon said:
SEA&Sea makes ab adaptor that fits onto the front of the cannon housing so that you can use their conversin lenses.
Click to expand...

Hi Jon,

Can you point to a reference for this. I'm very interested, but can't find it anywhere !

Thanks,

Fabrice
 
Check out the Sea&Sea site: http://www.seaandsea.com/

I see that they also have an adaptor for the Casio housing, not the exact mdel that I hve but it may work, which is great since I already have the adaptor lens.

There is also another route to go if you want to add on a lens to your digital camera. You could buy the Ikelite housing and mate an INON lens to it. This is a bit bulkier, and more expenisve, but it would work and you would greatly increase your depth range.

Jon
 
Here is a question I have been procrastinating on resolving for ages... what do people use to clean the camera lens? Mine always seems to end up with some sticky substances or marks.
 
I've been using lense cleaner from DOC with some foam tipped sticks used for cleaning computer stuff. Also a special lense cloth.
 
Re: Good Little Digital Cameras - Canon A620

This a little bit off-topic, but I thought I would add it to this thread.

I would recommend the
Canon A620 to anybody considering entry-level underwater photography at this time.

I gave my girlfriend an A620 for her Birthday in May and my work gave me a Canon SD550 (aka Ixus750 for Europeans)

They are the same Internal electronics, both use SD memory. The A620 is cheaper, they are both 7.1 Mega Pixel Cameras with no raw format, and a built in underwater mode for color correction. Both do "unlimited" 640x480 video

The A620 does better in low-light, it focuses faster, it has a bigger zoom (not of much use for underwater photography), and it can zoom while doing video. I suspect most of those differences are because of the larger physical lens.

The only real advantage of the SD550/Ixus750 is the smaller size, and Fancier battery. But getting high-end rechargeable double-AA give the A620 a good amount of battery life, and once you add the underwater housing the size difference between the two really dissapears.

I have used other compact Canons and Nikons underwater and have been very pleased with the current generation of Canons.

The lack of Raw format is not really an issue with Fine-mode with this number of Mega-Pixels and the size of lenses you are talking about.

The "Underwater mode" does a good job of reducing the use of flash, and basic color correction enough to make pictures viewable without post-processing (If you really want to show off details doing color normalization aftward will help)

I also think the "weight kit" is useless, even the A620 in its case that is suppose to have need 3 weights does not have much pull in Salt Water, and honestly I like have a camera that floats upwards.

I don't use strobes, I do use a flashlight at times, the flash is very weak (way too close to the lens, not enough lighting power) except for a few macro shots.

The video is surprisingly good, but you don't get any color correction with it.

With that said I generally use the SD550/Ixus750 because it is "mine"

Here are some sample pictures.

http://flickr.com/photos/robinslomkowski/tags/underwater
 
I’m thinking to buy a camera for shallow (snorkeling/freediving) water photography and video recording.
After reading tons of articles and reviews my choice narrowed to the next 3 Canon cameras:

G7

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_g7-review/

http://www.canon.co.uk/for_home/compare_products/loadcomparator.asp?prod=1285B009;&lang=UK&country=UK&dir=/for_home/product_finder/cameras/digital_camera/powershot/

S80

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_s80-review/

SD800 IS Digital ELPH (IXUS 850 IS)

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_sd800-review/

http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Cameras/Digital_Camera/IXUS/Digital_IXUS_850_IS/index.asp

I’ll be really happy to hear any comments and suggestions.
 
JimDoe2U has the G7. Considering it's the latest and greatest - and has a higher native iso setting (80 vs 50 for the S80 - means maybe better in low light) it would probably be my choice if I were just getting a camera - however I don't think it's worth the upgrade from the S80. The G7 as S80 are both hi-end - which means they have a lot of 'SLR-ish' features. For U/w pics - particularly in low-light - you will want to go beyond 'point and shoot' and work out some good presets. It really depends on what you want to do with it which one you get and how much you spend. One nice thing about the G7 and the Ixus 850 (which I believe is lower end than the other two) is Canon's image stabilization. Instead of doing it digitally they use actual tiny gyros to stabilize the lens. I wish the S80 had that. I have friends who have the Canon 640 and love it too.
Honorable mention goes to the little casio exz series cameras. I know Jon has the exz1000. The ones i used focused very quickly for digital cameras - faster than the canons - though the image was not as good as my S80. That said I never tweaked the settings on the Casios - except to turn off the flash. Considering that the quality is pretty amazing. (on my site all of the pics from the top down to where it says 'new camera' were taken with a casio exz57 - those below 'new camera' with the S80)

Here is a review of the G7 from dpreview.
Review of G7 at Dpreview.com

If it were me I might go for the G7 - should be about the same as the s80 with maybe a few improvements - image stabilization - higher ISO. I wouldn't upgrade because it still has the same size sensor. You need to way the expenditure against your use though. If you are doing mostly movies you could probably go cheaper. You can see on my site the very inexpensive little casios do a great job - as do the cheaper canons.

I recommend grabbing a copy of photoshop too - it's a big help particularly if you prefer not to use the flash. Here are a couple of images I took the other day - we got playing around with black and white and sepia type stuff.
 
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Reactions: unirdna
I plan both, photo and video.

I personally prefer G7 but I like wide angle, and G7 has no wide angle lens.

Also as I’ve understood from description the focusing is slower than on other cameras.

That’s not so good.

What is good, bigger lens size – I like it.

Also I have Speedlite flash from my EOS5 – I could use it with G7 for land photos.

Hard to make right decision.



I have no problems with Photoshop – any tricks, any filters. I have few hundred extra filters. But I don’t have much time to spend on Photoshop…
 
Hi Garett,

Michel Loup site is great - really amazing pictures... If you have specific questions for him I can translate them to french if you need.

Fabrice
 
fabrice said:
Hi Garett,

Michel Loup site is great - really amazing pictures... If you have specific questions for him I can translate them to french if you need.

Fabrice
Click to expand...

Thanks Fabrice.

I just tried to find what camera he used. But maybe it's his professional secret?
 
No secret, he shows the camera on his website. You can see the camera on this photo:
​
It is without doubts Nikonos V with a UW Nikkor 15mm (wide angle) lenses. Hence no digital camera, but a classical film.
 
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Thanks.
It's hard to see clearly, but I hope you’re right.

http://nikonimaging.com/global/products/filmcamera/underwater/5/index.htm

http://www.underwaterphotography.com/articles/equipment/f.asp?page=/articles/Equipment/Nikon/NikonosV.asp

So, what is your opinion: his pictures are so good because of camera?
It will be interesting to see same pictures taken with digital camera.


But any way I don’t want underwater film camera even if it’s really good.

Two more questions to G7 and S80 users:
- Can these cameras create a still image from a movie frame? Like Casio Exilim EX-Z750 for example (see review) http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/casio/exilim_z750-review/
- Has anybody tried to use a wide angle external lens with G7?
 
Yes - and the 1025x768 15fps mode is pretty good for that. I haven't actually done it with the camera - I used software to capture the frames - but I think they do it. DPreview seems to think the s80 is the better camera - at least at the time it came out they were much more enthusiastic about it. The S80 does have a fairly large lense. Slow focus would be a deal breaker for me on an underwater camera but I am not sure if they mean the zoom is slow or the focus. On re-reading that review the G7 did not compare all that favoreably with the much cheaper a640. Several of us here on DB have the s80 and it's been a pretty happy unit I think for all of us. I look forward to seeing what Canon does by way of an upgrade in the next year or so.
 
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