Need an uw camera "expert"...?

[Dan G]

As the risk of getting flamed here... you can start with something simple like a POS. I use a cannon powershot with the cannon housing. (easily found on Amazon) It has an underwater setting to help deal with the color balance. Nice and small, easy to clip to my BC and not a big investment. Yea, a strobe would be great, but I just don't want to deal with a bulky set up right now. This one is from a night dive using just the internal flash. Wish I could claim credit for this photo, but that goes my DM, Jimaro (I think) from Blue Angel, who took this:

 

[Sideways]

I have to disagree with Brules for the majority of his post. I take crappy above water shots, and pretty darn good UW shots. Also while I try ( and 90% of the time I succeed) to be thoughtful of my fellow divers in the group, bottom line is I dive for ME...not them. When they start paying for all my gear and dive trips, I'll put them as my #1 priority As long as you're watching out for your DB, you're golden.

Kixy, I'm excited for ya! You just might find UW Photograph very rewarding! I think the choice of a DX-1g, of 2g, is a great choice. I got certified in Playa, went home and bought all my dive gear, Including the DX-1g pro package. So, from dive #6 to present (250 or so) I've had a cam in my paws. I upgraded to a DSLR 2 years ago, but quite honestly, some of the best shots in my library came from the DX! Here are some samples of the DX, with 1 YS-110 strobe....

SOCAL

Cozumel

This is a great lil Camera system! Comparable would be any of the Canon's from G9 on up. Two things to think about. One, get a strobe, you will be seriously disappointed with the results with out. Two, get a good software program, such as Adobe Lightroom. If you end up getting the DX, shoot me a PM, and I can help you with system specific tidbits Also, If you get either the DX or Canon.... be sure to get the Wide angle wet lens

Happy Shooting!!!!!!!!!

Greg

 

[WetBoy101]

Okay, I have to jump in too. If you want a great little camera and a strobe that is really affordable and takes amazing pictures even on full auto, go here and look at the IC12 or the new IC14 and the ISS2000: Intova underwater cameras, waterproof MP3 players, and underwater torches I can post a bunch of pictures that I have taken using this settup...

 

[cicopo]

For those who don't understand the RAW side of photography this article on Adobe's site will try to explain it in an easy enough form but what it comes down to is that cameras that can capture both a RAW file & a JPG file rely on someones idea of what your photo should look like & wrote software to produce that file. If we use the RAW file we have a much better idea of what the colors looked like than an engineer sitting in an office does. Just being able to accurately correct the white balance after the fact can really improve the look of most underwater photos.

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adob...shop/pdfs/understanding_digitalrawcapture.pdf

 

[Sideways]

For those who don't understand the RAW side of photography this article on Adobe's site will try to explain it in an easy enough form but what it comes down to is that cameras that can capture both a RAW file & a JPG file rely on someones idea of what your photo should look like & wrote software to produce that file. If we use the RAW file we have a much better idea of what the colors looked like than an engineer sitting in an office does. Just being able to accurately correct the white balance after the fact can really improve thew look of most underwater photos.

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adob...shop/pdfs/understanding_digitalrawcapture.pdf

Well said Cicopo!! RAW is king!!! You can, even more so with compacts, do great White Balance correction in Lightroom or Photoshop. A perfect example is my above posted pic of the kelp forest. With out the WB correction that shot would be solid Blue

 

[Mike]

Ok, well I TRIED to keep my non-Coz thread off in PM land, but once again I see ya’ll will have none of it.

Hey Brules, thanks for jumping right in with the lashing, good to get that out of the way I guess. Although I share your frustrations with the photog jerks, I’ve seen many a photo from folks using far less than bank-busting setups that were pretty dang spectacular, and well, everyone has to start somewhere... If I promise not to bring my brand new camera on the boat, can I have one? pleeeeeze? As for the other behaviors you and Gdog mention well, just wouldn’t happen.

So here’s the deal (most of what I posted over in the photog forum, with no answers ):

History: I've never been much interested in taking on the burden of UW photography as I've always been lucky to have one of your kind along for the ride, and I've just mooched photos (yes, I've ALWAYS given credit!). However, times have changed and I’m ready to start documenting my dives myself. Since I’m going to be retiring down there, everyone is constantly asking me about the place, both above and below. I’d like to be able to provide something.

About Me: I've been diving for a while, and fully admit I’m a lazy diver, maybe with a touch of ADD. I like to go slow, really look around, and have fun. I LOVE diving, but I do get distracted, (what a lovely coral formation, I should take a photo. Oh look! a gobi, I must swim over there and play... get the idea?) Buoyancy won't be the biggest problem here, remembering I have the friggin camera will be. Now, before you go all “you don’t have the dedication it takes and this is all just going to be a disaster”, I HAVE thought this through, and I’m ready to do it. THANK YOU BubbleTrubble, I think you understood perfectly!

I’m obviously looking for something fairly simple, entry level. I’ll probably never be GOOD at this, but I’d like others to be able to tell if it’s a photo of a fish or an eel. I realize it’s 95% the photographer, 5% the camera, and unfortunately, I'll actually need to take a photo of a FISH for this all to work out, but well, how bout some support here folks?

Requirements: I take at least a couple of warm water trips a year and I think that's where I'll do most of my photo taking, but I live in Puget Sound. This is where I'll need to practice and here, it’s not only f’n cold, it's DARK. Even darker under the water. So I'll need light. Don't forget that here, I'm in a drysuit with thick stay-puf marshmallow man gloves. They probably don't make a camera with Fisher-Price style buttons, right? oh well.

I've found some used Sea & Sea setups for sale, but how difficult are they to use? Are they really for beginners, or will I be overwhelmed?

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/classifieds-photography/400699-sea-sea-dx-1g-camera-package.html

I researched the Gopro, but I’m really more interested in photos rather than video. I've also seen some used canon cameras with Ikelite housings, and read good things?

Budget: I really want to stay around $500, but I'm thinking I'm probably high. How bout $700? Ok, $800.


Thanks for your help!

Buy this, enjoy, get a strobe when you can afford it.
(Under $500)
Sea & Sea DX-GE5 Underwater Digital Camera & SS-06633 B&H
Or

Stretch a little and buy this, all done, enjoy.
$900
Sea & Sea DX-GE5 Underwater Digital Camera Sport Kit SS-06635S
Sea and Sea stuff is simple, reliable and easy to use, easy to travel with, will have potential to deliver about an 8 out of 10 with 10 being technical perfection from camera optics and technology. Being able to get 8 out of 10s is usually more than good enough for the majority of shooters.

And after you buy it, get ready to -

always have to spend time on your vacation, charging batteries, prepping your camera in the room, washing your equipment after dives are over, drying it all, worrying about moisture in the housing...

on the boat worrying about you camera's welfare, asking for camera bucket to be on board, making sure somebody doesn't throw their mask in your camera bucket, making sure somebody doesn't drop some big honking camera housing into the bucket and bash your lens/camera for the 10-60 minute boat ride...

... get ready to be the person who misses half the stuff you see on each dive because you're waiting for that fish to pose for you

... get ready to have well intentioned divers trying frantically to get your attention every time they find a lobster they just know you must want to take a picture of

Oh and get ready for some hydroid stings if you're going to Cozumel and going to be taking pictures!

 

[Bubbletrubble]

RAW = more information. That "extra" information can be useful for tweaking photos in post-processing. But not everyone wants to be bothered with managing bloated RAW files and fine-tuning color representation manually. The JPEG format gives a "best guess" at what the colors should look like. For some people that's good enough.

Just so you know, one can certainly white balance a JPEG-format photo. However, the starting information contained in the JPEG will be less than the starting info contained in the original RAW image. This may or may not alter the "quality" of the white balancing significantly. Feel free to experiment with this on your own. Most cameras capable of shooting in RAW have a mode in which a RAW and JPEG are written to the memory card simultaneously.

For "just fun" UW photography with a simple Canon point-and-shoot, I shoot in JPEG all the time. I use Aperture to white balance the photo when necessary, but in practice I only resort to this when I have the internal flash turned off and I'm shooting wide angle-style shots. My local conditions don't offer great visibility (average vis: 10-15 ft.), so this dictates the kind of shots I gravitate toward (more macro, less wide angle). With macro shots that are properly exposed using the internal flash (or properly exposed shots using one or more external strobes), I don't mess with the photos in post-processing that much. Maybe just a quick-and-dirty unsharp mask here and there.

Others may enjoy spending a lot of time tweaking photos in post-processing. I don't. I try to get the composition, focus, and exposure right on the first shot. Bear in mind that I'm just an amateur photographer -- my love is diving and the photography is secondary. Obviously, if I were getting paid for my photographic work, I'd be shooting everything in RAW, using different camera equipment, and dedicating more effort to post-processing.

 

[kixy1]

"... get ready to have well intentioned divers trying frantically to get your attention every time they find a lobster they just know you must want to take a picture of"

oh gawd....I totally didn't think of that. If any of them have those shaker things and even THINK of shaking them at me...well, I guess it will be a good thing I'll have a camera in my knife hand

As for the rest of it, I probably SHOULD worry about all that, but I won't. It will all work out, or it won't, I'll obviously do my best to protect my investment, but I don't see myself getting lost in the photography. We'll see.

Wonderin why the hydroids like the photogs more than the rest of us? I always come home with battle scars, but this year I found some great gel stuff so it's not such an issue anymore

 

[Tigerman]

...
Others may enjoy spending a lot of time tweaking photos in post-processing. I don't. I try to get the composition, focus, and exposure right on the first shot. Bear in mind that I'm just an amateur photographer -- my love is diving and the photography is secondary. Obviously, if I were getting paid for my photographic work, I'd be shooting everything in RAW, using different camera equipment, and dedicating more effort to post-processing.

In a program like Lightroom adjusting the white balance to something "good enough" takes about 20 seconds in most cases. Hardly a lot of work.
Emptying the memory cards over onto the computer is something you'll do in the first place anyways so it don't need to be a very time-consuming thing to do.

Something to be aware of however if you start adjusting photos yourself is that a monitor WILL display wrong colors unless you calibrate it and that can make the printed pictures (if you do get them printed) look quite a lot different than what it looked like on your monitor..

 

[BTravlin]

Wonderin why the hydroids like the photogs more than the rest of us? I always come home with battle scars, but this year I found some great gel stuff so it's not such an issue anymore

Care to share the name of this gel?