Olympus C-5050 UW Digital Q & A

[Adrian]

Some interesting link while searching tonight:


http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1008&message=6722864
on shooting in raw

great shots with the c5050 in indonesia
http://www.digitaldiver.net/trip_reports.php?reportID=93

adjustments of uw shots with photoshop
http://kayakdiver.com/divephotos/adjustments.htm

Adrian

 

[Jon]

Sequential shooting. It allows you to take shots in raipd succession and it also turns off the flash, unless you also have it set to night mode.

I had thought about turing the sharpness, and contrast, up to +2 or+3, but I see that others are doing just the opposite, turning it down to -2 or -3, becasue of the noise. In then end, maybe just leaving everything on auto-pilot might work out best?

Jon

 

[tylerz]

I am travelling at the moment for another week, so I do not have time to research the sharpness issue at the moment. However, I would warn you guys to ensure that you differentiate between what looks best at first and what is best to work with. This statement is regarding the issue of reducing the noise by setting the camera to a low-sharpness level. In my previous post about this I state "Sharpness on digital cameras is solely done by internal processing I believe." Maybe I should have elaborated on this.

Basically my assumption is that ALL digital cameras take the raw image picture at maximum sharpness. Maximum sharpness would equate to the resulting image composed of the values of each individual pixel sensor. Whereas any setting less than maximum sharpness would be software applying an anti-aliasing blur to smooth out the noise and rigidness of the picture. So the point is you see less noise on setting less than maximum because processing is occuring in the camera's internal software, to blur the image. Basically the noise is blended into the non-noise. So my previous point is that yes it will look better immediately but you are now working with less original information if you wanted to do further processing in software. If there is noise in some parts of the picture but not in others, then you will distort and lose sharpness in the area that does not have noise.

So, ideally I would want to get the original picture at maximum sharpness (even though it has noise) and have the control to process the picture as I wish and apply my own blur/softening/anti-aliasing as I see fit.

But the key is to determine whether I am correct in the assumption that maximum sharpness is the per pixel data. Whereas less than that is processed data. The -1 would suggest it is less than original sensor data.


Cheers,

Tyler

 

[Adrian]

Jon,
I found out that if you turn off your flash permanently (not leave it on "auto") you can use the night scene setting without setting off the flash.

Tyler: now I'm curious as to how digital cameras prccess the image!

Adrian

 

[SThompson]

I just took these in HQ with my 5060. The resolution isn't bad, but I can see some pixelization on the monitor so I am definitely going to start shooting in SHQ. For the record these are from Clearwater today (01/25/04). My girlfriend and I spent the day at the beach yesterday and today and I had a chance to play around with the camera a bit. The only alteration to the pics is the change in size, I am too much a noob to do anything else.

 

[SThompson]

Hmmmm....I changed the resolution to 800x600 and they still seem a bit big. I will post this one as is, but what is a good size for the boards?? Thanks in advance.

PS- It is days like this that I appreciate living in Florida. Mostly sunny, low 70's January day on the beach. Hard to believe that 3 years ago I was freezing my a$$ off in Chicago. If you have to cut holes in the water to swim in it, then you need to realize that it's natures way of telling you to migrate south.

 

[unirdna]

Scot,

Be aware that the pixilation may be created by your image viewing program....not the actual photo. If the image viewer is sizing the photo so that it fits on the desktop, this can sometimes happen. The solution: go to irfanview.com and download the FREE imaging program. This software wins freeware awards year after year. You can also monkey with color, gamma, size, file extensions, etc. I prefer to set this viewer "display only large images to desktop". Then, it only shrinks the big photos (and doesn't enlarge the small ones). Play with the options and choose somthing called 'high quality resizing' (or something on those lines). This will give you a clear image, no matter what size you view it.

Just a thought

Ted

ps. I usually post 640x480. Even the smaller monitor folks will see that just fine.

 

[tylerz]

Hey there,

I finally figured something out that assists at getting much better photos in the dark (ie. down in the deep) for those of us who do not have strobes but use the on-camera flash. This is rather obvious so I feel ashamed for not figuring it out earlier, but thought I would share it for all of us learning to get those good shots.

In the deep dark I was regularly confounded by the fact that the flash would white-wash the scene. Yet to take the shot without the flash only worked for specific shots (ones where I could set the camera on something), was brutally difficult, or impossible. So eventually what I began doing was staying further away from the subject and zooming in, so that the light of the flash would be less intense on the subject. Two problems with this are the auto-focus would often get thrown off by the distance and dark and the distance would cause a natural impedence of light to the subject, meaning the quality of the scene would degrade from the low quality of the medium (sea water with organic particles everywhere).

It suddenly became obvious! Reduce the light when the flash goes off. See an earlier post of mine in this thread. Basically, set an high shutter speed and set a high aperature setting. This causes the shutter to only receive a little light from the flash, you have a higher focus range, and you can move all you want! Well within reason. It worked wonders for me on my first couple tries. The only problem is still in the dark, the auto-focus is inhibited, so I have to set the focus range at the surface and when taking a picture attempt to accurately stick to the distance. The high aperature helps to overcome minor inaccuracies.

I will attatch my first shots I achieved with this technique. No software touch-ups.

Hope this helps!

Tyler

 

[tylerz]

By the way in the previous shot, if anybody recognizes that sack of what looks like tiny anemones, could you let me know what you think it is. I believe it is a type of coral, although it is a very soft sack and pulses like a heart-beat when the individuals get frightened. So far it matches the scientific explanation of coral, just can not find anything like it. The shots are not wonderous as far as composition since I was just testing this technique out and actually had trouble pointing in the correct direction in the dark.

I will have plenty of shots on my website soon.

 

[tylerz]

tube worms

 

[unirdna]

tyler,

Thanks for the tip/idea. I look forward to giving it a go. "Dark" photos seem to be my achilles heel.....or, more accurately, the worst of my evils :head .

Ted

 

[Adrian]

How deep were you Tyler? Are you using the C 5050? You can also moderate the flash output with the flash underexposure function. However I like your suggestion better as one can have more depth of field.

Can you post a cropped full size image only of the "anemone sack" I couldn't see what you were referring to.

Adrian

 

[tylerz]

Hey Adrian,

Good point!

A summary:

I believe what you are referring to with the underexposure feature, is performing exactly what I stated in the previous post, however, it bases the exposure relative to what the camera exposure is for a normal shot. It does this using an automatic metering system, which can be thrown off in very dark environments, therefore at some point if shots are failing, you can mimic what it is doing but better, by using the points I previously made.

Here are the details:

The shots were somewhere around 20m. I am not using the C 5050, I have a Samsung V4. However, the feature you mention, of flash underexposure, uses ISO settings for the flash in combination with automatic changes in shutter speed and aperature, no? If you are referring to the same thing then my camera as well you can set the ISO value to auto plus adjust a generalized automatic exposure setting. Which performs the exact same function as what I described above. The only problem... it is an automatic exposure setting, meaning even if you set it for darkest, that is still relative to the automatic setting for normal. So under water it uses metering to determine the exposure required. Since it is extremely dark, just like autofocus, the auto-metering could get horribly thrown off. Essentially it may not let you under expose the shot near as much as you require. The only way sometimes to get a shot is to manually set all the values.

What I found so far, is that I could not set the shutter speed and aperature values to anything that would underexpose the shots too much, at a proximity of <80cm from the subject. This is where I would rather not leave it up to the automatic metering if I know I am going to be dealing with dark shots prior to the dive. For those pictures I posted my shutter speed was set for 1/750, aperature f6.7, ISO 100. However, after I pressed the shutter release, the shutter speed reading would change to 1/250 for some reason; trying to figure this out (I had it on fully manual, not aperature priority).

That being said I have never tried underexposing with the automatic metering while diving.

 

[Adrian]

Hmmm...
Could it be that the camera was setting the 1/250 shutter speed to synchronize with the flash? Or are digital cameras flexible enough to synch at almost any speed? I don't know enough about that.

The Oly has a distinct flash under/over expusure function that seems to regulate only the amount of light emmitted without changing the f stop and shutter speed settings.

I can see though that in a very dark setting the auto expusure will adjust towards middle grey not allowing you to get the tones you want, and you'ld have to underexpose a lot to correct that. I can underexpose up to three f-stops in the non-flash "normal" automatic exposure settings plus two more with the variable flash settings. I think I'll make a dark underwater simulation test with flash to see how dark I can get.

Meanwhile here's a night shot, no flash, 16 seconds/tiff, white balance taken off the house, (otherwise it would have been pea green). This is a composite of 4 images stiched together, a horizontal and vertical panorama. you can see Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades. The house was pretty much ok as far as exposure and the night sky had to be retouched to get the stars brighter and the trees on the left to stand out more. There's a lot of juice to be squeezed out of these digital cameras!

Adrian

 

[tylerz]

Adrian thanks for thoughts,

My camera does have a settingn to sync flash to the shutter speed however, that is specified as being for when syncing the flash to slow shutter speeds. You would think it would sync for any speed but I wonder. So with it not turned on, I would hope it is not, but maybe the camera automatically syncs to high shuter speeds and it can not do so for anything less than 1/250.

It sounds like the camera you are referring to may have more automatic variable settings than mine. 16sec shutter speed! Nice. Mine goes to 15sec. What is the max on that camera? How much did you get the camera for?

Beautiful picture you took at night! How dark was it out? As in could you see the house well with you eyes? Well done on the shot/work, it is very mysterious and looming.

Anyhow be interesting to see what kind of dark underwater results you can get with that camera. Dark being relative of course, but basically meaning enough light to see with the eye, sort of dusk underwater.

Check out the latest shots I was able to get two days ago with using manual settings: http://quietdeep.com/pictures/tsowwin-feb4-2004_1.html

Especially the Sea Peach on the second page!

I seem to get a better ratio of nice pictures than previously. Still need some fine tuning and it was a little brighter at the depth where I took the Sea Pens, so they are still a little too bright.

Appreciate any feedback.

And lastly I am attatching the picture of the anemone?/coral?/bryozoan? sacks.

Cheers,
Tyler

 

[Jon]

I just got back from a little Ice(free)Diving. The snow cover this year has been much greater than in the past, so I had much darker conditions to work in the past few winters.

Here's a shot looking up at the hole- you can see how clear the ice is once you clear off the snow becasue my mono stands out quite well.

Jon

 

[Jon]

So, this is what I did to my camera:

1- Turn off flash

2- Set ASA to 400

3- Rapid fire shutter mode


After doing all of this I got some much better results than those few shots were I used automatic ASA. I also NEVER use the cameras internal flash because it sits too close to the lens and back scatter is a huge problem. I would rather touch up the brightness factor of the image later rather than try and brush out all of those little back scatter particles.

Here's a shot of some bubble blowers.

jon

 

[Jon]

Once I got down to the lake bottom I could see pretty well in most directions. I hope to get some shots back of me under the ice in the next few days.

Jon

 

[Adrian]

Originally posted by tylerz


...Mine goes to 15sec. What is the max on that camera? How much did you get the camera for?

Beautiful picture you took at night! How dark was it out? As in could you see the house well with you eyes? Well done on the shot/work, it is very mysterious and looming.

Check out the latest shots I was able to get two days ago with using manual settings: http://quietdeep.com/pictures/tsowwin-feb4-2004_1.html

Especially the Sea Peach on the second page!

Tyler

Hi Tyler,

The C 5050 Z max is 16 seconds. The lens is 1.7 I haven't tried underexposing with that setting though!

About the house, it was a very clear night, windy and there was a streetlamp about 4 meters away on the left, illuminating the front of the house so one could see the house very well.

I browsed your site, it's nice to see the stories you and Eric write being "illustrated" - both over and under the water!

I want diving the day before yesterday for the first time with the camera and it was a comedy of errors. First I was underweighted for shallow depths and had to do exhale dives, grab a rock to stop from floating and try to take the picture with one hand. Usually while inverted in the water! he he...The next problem was that the gloves I use, while great for the Nikonos, have these little hard plastic protusions on the palm for protection from wear and tear, and these made it impossible to grip the casing so it was constantly sliding out of my hand. Tommorrow I'll try with one of these disposable surgical rubber gloves over the others to see if I can get more traction. You see, I try to make as many mistakes as I can on the first day to get the learning curve over with as soon as possible.

Adrian

 

[tylerz]

Not having a flash compensation on my camera and after all my playing with setting the camera for the darkest possible settings it can achieve with a flash, I still find situations where there is too much flash and the result is some whitewash at the center of the shot. So, I decided to proceed with an idea from a while back, that I have been meaning to try. Basically if the camera does not support control of the flash to the most minute detail, then manually do so. I thought if I put something over the flash that limits how much of the flash light actually reaches the scene then I will accomplish my goal. So test one is to use black electrician's tape!

The following picture is of this superb workmanship of technical modification to my camera.

The next two pictures will be shot comparisons before and after modification.