Question SeaFrogs for old T3i rebel / 600D

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!

StenieJ

ScubaBoard Supporter
ScubaBoard Supporter
Messages
21
Reaction score
21
Location
East Bay, CA
# of dives
0 - 24
I have an old Canon that collects dust & I probably wouldn't miss it if I was to lose it. I want to take underwater photography as one of my AOW and we already own a nice GoPro but was thinking of maybe getting a housing for my camera also. There are very few housings out there for my model, most are disco'd. Any reason I should stay away from this?

Sea frogs for Canon 600D T3i 40M/130ft Waterproof Underwater Camera Housing Case https://a.co/d/govucbi

What else would I need to purchase?
 
I wouldn't bother. This is a fixed-port housing, which means you'll be limited to the 18-55mm kit lens. This is quite narrow, by underwater photography standards, and it gets further narrowed down by the flat glass in front of it, plus the flat glass adds some fairly nasty pincushion distortion. You can alleviate that to a degree with a wet dome, but it's still 27mm FF-equivalent on the wide end - a GoPro is much wider, allowing you to get that much closer to a given subject while fitting them in the frame. With a mirrorless (i.e. EF-M or RF-S mount) camera, you could use a lens that is compatible with wet wide lenses, but the EF-S mount does not have any of those.

Also, your camera is an SLR, which means that to engage its phase-detection autofocus array, you must use the optical viewfinder. If you use live view, the pellicle mirror used for autofocus swings out of the way, and the camera uses contrast-detect for focusing, which is much slower and less reliable. However, this housing does not give you access to viewfinder, so you have to either use live view, or shoot blindly.

As a new diver, your best course of action is to stick to the GoPro. Underwater photography is, if nothing else, a very expensive undertaking - a typical underwater photography rig costs well into five figures USD; the housing is just a small part of it - so it's best to have some experience before committing to this path.
 
@Barmaglot thank you! I don't know what a bunch of those things are, but it sounds like it would be a not good return on investment. If you have the time, does a TG6 work similarly? That was the other camera I was looking at. I'm pretty sure we will stick to just a go pro, but if I had an extra $1,000 lying around to spend on a camera would that be a good point and shoot. I've read the sea life ones are not worth the $$ (I know I also need a housing)



OM System Olympus TG-6 Red Underwater camera, Waterproof, Freeze proof, High Resolution Bright, 4K Video 44x Macro shooting https://a.co/d/2we3tD3
 
TG-6 has a good reputation in underwater photography community, primarily for its macro capabilities. It has a 25-100mm (FF-equivalent) zoom lens which can shoot macro natively - Olympus call it 'microscope mode' and it can focus almost right down to the lens front element. It is less capable for wide-angle shooting, but equipped with a wet lens and good strobes, it can still turn in a respectable performance there. Its primary weakness are lack of a fully manual mode (you can't manually set its shutter speed, aperture and ISO all at once - AFAIK most users put it in aperture priority, where they set the aperture and use various tricks to coax the camera into using the shutter speed and ISO settings that they'd like. The small sensor and relatively low resolution are also limiting if you want to print your photos, but they're fine for web and mobile use. It also has a limited aperture range - only f/2 and f/2.8, with f/8 being achieved via a neutral density filter, so it darkens your photos but doesn't give you extra depth of field. On the upside, unlike a GoPro or a smartphone, it can sync with strobes (external flashes).

For a $1000... you can get a TG-6 and a housing, but not much else. Look here at TG-6 packages to get an idea of the costs involved - Olympus TG-6 Waterproof Camera and Housing Packages
 

Back
Top Bottom