Camera setup for my situation (advice)?

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Keep in mind that f/1.8 on 1" is roughly equivalent to f/3.1 on APS-C - not much difference from f/3.5 on Sony 16-50mm. Besides, underwater, you generally stop down for extra depth of field anyway.
 
Your conditions in NZ sound quite similar to conditions in Sydney. I use a Nauticam housing and to me it was worth it, I wouldn't recommend the Canon housings as they are not serviceable and I seem to recall some threads saying they were not that reliable. If I was in your position I'd be leaning towards the Fanatsea housing and theG7X II as out of the box it is better suited to macro. In murky waters wide angle shooting is limited and plagued by back scatter in my experience, I'm assuming NZ conditions are similar to Sydney and there will be plenty of macro subjects. It gives you a better chance of getting some nice shots early on.

Of course if you can scrape the money together the Nauticam housing with the vacuum system is great, that green light gives great peace of mind when taking expensive cameras underwater.

Don't under estimate the importance of ergonomics for your housing, it is often reported that people with great buoyancy suddenly are like brand new divers when they have a camera in hand, having things easy to access and use means that there's less things to think about while framing your subject.

I would agree get a good housing and camera and shoot ambient light for a while, Learn how to colour correct it in post and results are reasonable, then think about adding a strobe. I started with one strobe then later on added a second. I would suggest for strobes be sure to get one with manual capability, a TTL only strobe can be problematic.
 
I would also consider a RX100IV that’s second hand. You’ll save even more and the battery life is better on the IV than the V. The VI was also just announced so that should help drive IV and V prices down. Battery life is important when you’re underwater!
 

Back
Top Bottom