Help on Digital Photography

[Puffer Fish]

Love the shark shot.. almost looks like you were hiding from it.

I looked at Sea & Sea 1G and the Canon G9. I ended up going with the G9. I like the camera on land and in water. I went with the Canon housing for now and love the portability. I dive SoCal waters a lot but also like to go abroad. When I go on dive trips, it is not just to dive (mostly though). So I want a camera that I can take sunsets, sunrises, panoramas, canopy shots, etc. The Canon just won out in my opinion. The lag time to write to RAW was VERY negligible in my opinion. I do not take professional caliber photos, but between raw and photoshop, I feel I can get a lot out of my shots. I took ~350 photos in Roatan last week and have a ton of great shots.. no strobe, very few times using the flash. I found it easy to control aperture and ISO, although I am still learning. I often get confused on this stuff right now.

In a few months, I will prob get the ikelite and ds-125 setup and use that more locally, but I have a great setup for both land and sea now and feel I made the right choice.

I would agree that you did, and you have one of the best resolution Point and Shoot's you can buy. I would suggest that getting just getting a YS110 or Inon strobe is all you need to make a great setup....saving some bucks along the way.

 

[Puffer Fish]

One has to give you credit for loyalty. I like the setup by the way.

However, that camera is a very dated and it is easy to get much higher quality images, for not much more money.

The lens on that camera was indeed the last of dying breed and it is sad to see them go... but it did not have that much better resolution.. it just let a lot more light in.

While I am a giant fan of the Fuji F50, there are several canon's that are almost as good that one could use... but I know the F50 numbers by heart:

1. Camera and housing - close to $400 with a 2 gig memory card.

2. Epoque strobes and Epoque tray and arms (ok, Epoque america is out of business, but you can still get them (I would not, but you cannot beat the price) - $500. The tray and arms are nice though.

So, for just over $900, you get the same strobes and one of those 12meg bad image takers.

You also get at least 30% higher resolution images. And anti shake. One of those bad focus lights that will work in complete darkness. At least 4 different setups, which can be instantly called up for use. Manual controls. Automatic fill flash settings. The actual sensor, by the way, is larger in the little tiny F50. You have faster write times... less lag... able to use giant memory cards... nice movies.

Any you are correct, the image quality is at the limit of the lens, but that is not a bad lens.

The only sad part in all of this is that those low cost strobes were not improved upon. As there is still a need for a good quality, low cost strobe.

IMHO, the limiting factor in nearly all current reasonably priced non-dslr cameras is The Lens. Since the discontinuation of the Oly C5050z, no lens has had the right stuff. On the front of the lens it says Olympus Super Bright Zoom Lens and 1 : 1.8 - 2.6. No current camera comes close. That lens was very expensive to manufacture and most buyers (topside) did not use it in ways that needed the extreme brightness. Since megapixels is what sells cameras to the ignorant masses and sensor technology has advanced but not gotten more expensive to manufacture, we now have 12 megapixel cameras that have cheap crappy lenses and need a focusing light in low light conditions, like underwater.

A recent thread included a link to an article about the print magazine industry that claimed more than 6 megapixels does not make for better images, just more information. By that they meant very large file size and lots of noise with no discernible improvement to the magazine product. Another thing the ignorant masses didn't use is RAW, so many new cameras with otherwise good products only record in jpeg. :11:

Yes the 5050 is long out of production. Yes it has annoying shutter lag and ttl is only available with an Ikelite housing or aftermarket modification to the Oly housing. Yes the write time for RAW images is troublesome, especially with the xD cards. All that said, hurray for eBay, because when my current camera or housing dies another is available for around $200 and I come back from every dive with many great images that newer more expensive rigs will only occasionally do as well and hardly ever do better.

A year ago I won an eBay auction for this rig; 5050 w/1Gig CF card, PT-015 housing, Epoque WAL, Sea & Sea dual tray, Jetton arms and two Epoque ES-150 DS strobes with fiber optic sync, all for $800usd. This camera has full manual control, 8 programable pre-sets (MyModes) for typical situations and takes great images in full auto w/o strobe! I'd gladly up-grade, if any manufacturer would actually make an up-grade!

shown without WAL and camera​

Similar deals happen on rare occasions, but they do happen, and $800 hardly buys a decent new strobe, arm and tray! As with all eBay experiences and underwater imaging, YMMV!