First U/W camera choices

[rjsimp]

If you haven't noticed already, the SP-350 also has 3 underwater selections in the "scene" mode. I haven't personally tried any of them, but they might come in handy if you never get around to playing with it underwater before your cruise.

The real value of the SP-350 is the "My Modes" in setup. Since you should shoot everything in manual mode and not program mode or auto the My Modes can be set up to change all the camera settings to the default "starting points" for wide angle and macro.

The basic settings to start with if you have a strobe would be .. ISO-100, F-8, 1/250 for Macro and that would drop down a couple F stops and 1/125 or 1/100 for wide angle depending on how dark the water is. There is also a setting in there (check the manual) on setting the LCD view to not show "live" view. If you don't change this, the view finder will be too dark to see anything under water. You can try this out on land and change the setting and see the difference.

With the My Modes, it will make life easy because you can change everything on the camera with a push of a button.

Hope this helps

 

[rhyz]

Still reading everything but My Modes looks nice to use. Haven't tried it yet though. Shot a cple pictures in RAW (orf) last night to see how it would work. Alot of space taken up but have the 1gig xd card...might get a 2gig too. Am using Paint Shop Pro XI as it is supposed to be able to read .orf files but so far no go on it yet. :light:

 

[rjsimp]

Still reading everything but My Modes looks nice to use. Haven't tried it yet though. Shot a cple pictures in RAW (orf) last night to see how it would work. Alot of space taken up but have the 1gig xd card...might get a 2gig too. Am using Paint Shop Pro XI as it is supposed to be able to read .orf files but so far no go on it yet. :light:

I'm not sure of Paint Shop, but I know Photoshop CS 2 does (with the RAW updates available on Adobe's Web site.) I would figure that Photoshop Elements would also, but I know the new Lightroom program from Adobe does work and you can download it (still in beta) and play around with it.. Very nice program.

 

[rhyz]

Gonna install PS CS 2 later on today, had a drive quit in my other pc that needs to be fixed first..damn RAID system!

 

[rjsimp]

Gonna install PS CS 2 later on today, had a drive quit in my other pc that needs to be fixed first..damn RAID system!

I have a RAID 5 in my computer and it makes it nice, even if a drive fails, I'm okay and can just replace the bad drive. Other RAID types have caused me issues in the past. This was mostly due to RAID controllers that couldn't recover a mirror correctly.

Here are some good settings we got from Cathy Church to start with for the SP-350 with TTL. You could adjust them a bit if you don't have TTL.. Using this setup, you can simply push the "AE" button on the camera and switch between Macro and Wide Angle settings..

OLYMPUS SP350 SUGGESTED SETTINGS-TTL


MODE MENU - SETUP TAB
ALL RESET Off
LANGUAGE user pref
PW ON SETUP user pref
PW OFF SETUP user pref
REC VIEW On
SPEAKER Off
BEEP user pref
SHUTTER SOUND user pref
MY MODE SETUP up to 4 custom modes
FILE NAME Auto
PIXEL MAPPING Run it occasionally
SCREEN BRIGHTNESS your pref
DATE user pref
DUAL TIME SETUP user pref
M/FT user pref
VIDEO OUT user pref
AF ILLUMINATOR Off
SHORT CUT Macro;Flash+/-; user pref
HISTOGRAM Off
FRAME ASSIST Off
CUSTOM BUTTON My mode (replaces AEL)


MY MODE - MACRO
P/A/S/M/SPRG M
Fno 8
SHUTTER 1 / 500
MONITOR On
ZOOM 38mm
FLASH MODE Force flash
METERING Center weighted
MACRO (flower icon) On
DRIVE Single
ISO 100
TIMER/REMOTE Off
FLASH +/0
FLASH SYNCRO Flash synch 1
FLASH External
DIGITAL ZOOM Off
NOISE REDUCTION Off
AF MODE Spot
FOCUS MODE AF
FULLTIME AF Off
MICROPHONE Off
TIME LAPSE Off
RESOLUTION SHQ or RAW
WB Cloudy
WB +/Off
SHARPNESS 0
CONTRAST 0
SATURATION 0
INFO On
HISTOGRAM Off
FRAME ASSIST Off

MY MODE - WIDE ANGLE
P/A/S/M/SPRG M
Fno 5.6
SHUTTER 1 / 125
MONITOR On
ZOOM 38mm
FLASH MODE Force flash
METERING Center weighted
MACRO (flower icon) Off
DRIVE Single
ISO 100
TIMER/REMOTE Off
FLASH +/0
FLASH SYNCRO Flash synch 1
FLASH External
DIGITAL ZOOM Off
NOISE REDUCTION Off
AF MODE Spot
FOCUS MODE AF
FULLTIME AF Off
MICROPHONE Off
TIME LAPSE Off
RESOLUTION SHQ or RAW
WB Cloudy
WB +/Off
SHARPNESS 0
CONTRAST 0
SATURATION 0
INFO On
HISTOGRAM Off
FRAME ASSIST Off

 

[rhyz]

Nice, thanks Rich. I've just been screwing around shooting different settings of the same target to see what each will do. After reading Larry's thread on the 350 I might try the UW presets on my 1st U/W tries then go into RAW. Paint Shop Pro XIwill do Raw/orf files, but have also installed PS CS2 and used that to fool around with the raw files. Printing out the manual on the cd (or parts of it) for later help.

Still waiting on my Oly housing so doubt I will get it in the water before I leave on the 30th, but have 1 1/2 days in PR before the cruise so atleast I'll get it U/W then. Also picked up 3 xD h 1 gig cards for it.

 

[torrey]

The basic settings to start with if you have a strobe would be .. ISO-100, F-8, 1/250 for Macro and that would drop down a couple F stops and 1/125 or 1/100 for wide angle depending on how dark the water is.

Do you know what the optimal settings would be if not using an external strobe?

 

[rjsimp]

Do you know what the optimal settings would be if not using an external strobe?

When doing Macro and using the internal flash, I would imagine that the same settings would work as if you had an external strobe (I haven't tried this except for on land).

On any wide angle shot, you are going to be shotting natural light shots, so you will have to probably go to ISO 200 and open up the aperture. You would want to keep the shutter speeds in the 1/60 to 1/125 range still.

It will be a lot harder to get the dark blues, unless you get really close to something that you want to light up with the internal flash, then you can adjust the camera to a smaller aperture and darken the blues up a bit.

Shoot RAW mode if possible because you can always come back and adjust exposure to some extent and fix the white balance. It will allow you to salvage photos that you would think are gone. BTW, it is always better in digital to be a bit under exposed rather than over exposed so you can adjust thrings in RAW.

 

[torrey]

When you say "smaller aperture", you mean higher f-stop, right? I'm trying to learn the basics of photography...I've always just used automatic modes before.

Just to be clear, when I say higher f-stop, I mean moving to a higher linear number...like changing from 2.8 to 3.6. This is the kind of stuff that confuses me most about photography.

 

[alcina]

Torry, yes, you've got it

Wide open is the smallest number but the biggest aperture. Closed or stopped down is the biggest number but the smallest aperture.