Please help !!! Canon A640 vs. Fuji E900 vs G7????

[pakman]

will do... Just crossing my fingers that we get some OK viz so I can try some ambient light shots in the shallows to test out the low light ability of the F30. Hmm... to be honest with you, I don't plan on using an external strobe with the F30. Anyways, if the F30 shows some good potential underwater, maybe I'll think about attaching one of my Z-240's to it in the future. But to be honest with you, I just got the F30 so I could have a REALLY small pocket camera to take with me everywhere topside and on local dives where I just don't want to be hassled with bringing out the DSLR.

I would think the D-2000 would be more than enough for the F30.

IMHO, dunno, the F30 all rigged up with Inon Fisheye lens, handle, arm, strobe just looks soo wrong... But if it's that good of an u/w camera, maybe its worth going that route...

 

[ghnouer]

Ummmm....I will wait your opinion before purchase the camera. Maybe the (old) E900 with an Ike housing should be better for the future acessories? I hearded good things about Oly 5050 ( and saw exceptional photos from jlyle) , Sp-350 and the E900. Maybe I need more information before I decide.

 

[The Kraken]

For what it's worth, you can see some of the pics I've taken with my E900 and Ikelite housing here:

http://s111.photobucket.com/albums/n122/The_Kraken_2006/

. . . and I'm very, very new to underwater/digital photography . . . a real neophyte!

the K

 

[starlan]

Here are some pics someone took in the Red Sea while snorkelling using the Underwater mode in the F30 and posted them at dpreview.com. The person used one of those pouch housings, not even the real housing, obviouslt they are no good for anything other than snorkelling but you get an idea of some images straight from the cam on Auto mode with the internal flash and a nice sunny day.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1012&message=20537570

 

[ghnouer]

Thanks....Starlan. Nice photos you found in the dpreview....Maybe with the Fuji housing, an external strobe and some ad lenses we will see better results. I like the fact that the F30 is very small (maybe it will be my backup in the future but 'd be nice if it take nice pictures too).

 

[RichKirby]

pakman, your avatar is creeping me out! :mooner:

 

[pakman]

Ummmm....I will wait your opinion before purchase the camera. Maybe the (old) E900 with an Ike housing should be better for the future acessories? I hearded good things about Oly 5050 ( and saw exceptional photos from jlyle) , Sp-350 and the E900. Maybe I need more information before I decide.

Well I did three dives this weekend. Had a chance to take my Fuji F30 along. Unfortunately, the visibility wasn't so good. On top of this, we were doing shallow dives (8m and less) so surge became a problem. Anyways, enough with the excuses...

Given that I've been shooting with a DSLR underwater lately, I found the lag on [-]shutter and [/-]AF lock frustrating... (but compared to my old Canon S70, not sure if it's any worse or better). (edit: actually the shutter lag isn't the problem. once you get focus lock, shutter is quick) Maybe it was the poor vis? It did seem to do a little better when my dive buddy assisted by shining his focus light on my subject. I found it almost impossible to lock focus on any moving subject. I found macro setting was frustrating with the lens fully zoomed as the minimum focus at that focal length was kind of long. I was shooting mainly in aperture priority with auto white balance. I did manually white balance (pretty simple process) but I kept forgetting to do it as I changed settings around.

Best shot I could get was this cooperative crab (no adjustments made to this, uncropped...)

exif data: lens zoomed out (24mm), aperture priority mode, f/5.0, ISO 200, auto white balance, internal flash on forced.

I'll try to post more unprocessed/ uncropped photos later after work to give you an idea of what this camera is capable of.

 

[pakman]

looking at the pics I took last week, I realized how I miss shooting in RAW... I used to never set manual white balance on my old Canon S70 or with my new DSLR. The manual white balance worked pretty well (just stupid me kept forgetting to reset to manual WB after testing out other WB settings). With the inernal flash, the auto WB didn't work so well and I find a lot of the macro pics are still overly green. Which I'm not so surprised about given how small the internal flash is... An ext. strobe would probably make a big difference.

Also, the low ISO ability of the F30 was real nice. I was able to take some OK ambient light shots with up to 800 and 1600 ISO.

here's some shots of my model for the day, SB member thepurplehammerhead... yeah, go ahead, take the piss out of him for his outfit...

here is a shot with auto WB (no flash). ISO 800

and here is a shot after manually setting WB against the sand. ISO 800

no adjustments other than resizing in photoshop.

 

[starlan]

Hi Pakman, Im sure you'll get used to it as you dive a couple times with it. I like the crab picture. Meanwhile a person form the Netherlands posted some excellent F30 pics taken over there in bad conditions too, he shot them in Underwater mode and states he only used the internal flash and only applied sharpening. Here is the link: http://members.chello.nl/s.hoogwegt/

Regards,
Sinan

 

[ghnouer]

Hi Pakman....I saw your photos in the other F30 thread and I liked a lot. Good job!!!