First UW Camera Selection

[ryan115]

As stated, I am looking at getting my first UW camera. I have narrowed it down between the A570 IS with a WP-DC12 and the A720 ISwith a WP-DC16. I am trying to figure what the main differences are between these two cameras. I know there is a difference in zoom level (can you even use the cameras zoom while inside the housing) or do you have to rely on external attached lenses? Also do either or these housing alow attachment of accessories (lenses, strobe, etc...)? I also see that the A720 has slightly higher megapixels and can take an SDHC card. I have also read that the A720's operating system hasnt been hacked yet to allow shooting in raw. I'm not sure if this even really bothers me at the moment. I figure that by the time I am ready to move on to this level, someone will have hacked it by then. Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[BTravlin]

I just received the housing for the 720 today. Yes, you can use the zoom but I'm not sure about attachments. I looked in the manual and there is no mention of this and I don't see anything obvious about the housing that would lend itself to easy attachment of external lenses.

 

[jbmooney]

Ryan, I'm a newbie myself, but I have an A720IS and can help with some of your questions:

1 - no lens attachments on the OEM housing.
2 - given a tray and arm(s), you can mount a variety of external strobes, but they must be fiber-optically triggered (sensing the onboard strobe's activity), and they must be able to ignore or mimic a pre-flash (one flash) in the onboard strobe, unless you want to shoot entirely in manual mode with the pre-flash shut off (which may be the best way to go anyway). BTW, I gather that some extra shielding of the onboard strobe may be necessary for some units, as there will be light leaks otherwise which tend to throw off the external strobe - I don't have any direct experience with this yet myself.
3 - yes, you can use the zoom with the WP-DC16, but the odds are good that you won't want to much underwater - remember the relationship between increased focal length and the need for more light (which is hard to get from an UW strobe), and note that this relationship is even more pronounced with P&S cameras, because they have small CCD chips and record less light than DSLRs.

I chose the 720IS because the difference in price was so small that the camera's extra capacity on land seemed worth it to me, but YMMV.

Incidentally, I got two very good pieces of advice here and on other boards that I'll pass on to you. First, I drowned my camera by dropping it in the water off a dock before I ever got it into the housing, and had to replace it (the photos I lost were, of course, irreplaceable) I was advised to put the replacement in the housing right away, both to protect it and to get familiar with using the controls.

The second was to consider getting one or more of these filters, which can obviate the need for strobes for some kinds of relatively shallow water snapshot photography. They will also allow you to use the camera's DV capacity, which burns up memory, but is an interesting feature (strobes are useless for this type of use, of course). I haven't tried this yet either, but the results look remarkable, and they came well recommended, so I'm looking forward to it (they're also cheap enough that an experiment is worth it, IMO, and they can be cut to fit inside the housing without sticking them in, so they can go in and out at will).

HTH,

- John

 

[HowDidIGetIntoThis?]

Do the filters achieve anything more than you'd get by running the pictures through Photoshop? Alternatively, would you be likely to Photoshop them even if you have used the filters?

What size memory card are you running in the 720? I'm planning to have several cards so that the world won't come to an abrupt end if I have an unplanned laundering of the electronics. I've been thinking the best compromise may be to try to run out of memory about the same time as the batteries would go flat.

thx.

 

[ce4jesus]

Here's a guy who did a very simple and innovative DIY adapter for his housing to addon the Inon Lenses. DIGIDIVER :: View topic - Canon G7 housing (WP-DC11) - DIY Lens Adapter / Mount Base

 

[ryan115]

I did see that INON makes a lens adapter for the WP-DC12. Does any know if thew will be making one to fit the WP-DC16? I was thinking they may have not made it yet because the camera is newer.

 

[f3nikon]

Here are some folks that do NOT use the add-on lenses:

Canon Powershot A620 - a photoset on Flickr

Anilao Feb 2007 - a photoset on Flickr

Understanding Camera Lenses

Chromatic aberration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


And from another thread:

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/un...elike-compact-vs-seatool-dslr-xti-400d-7.html

Plus the part in your statement where you seem to think that the ADD-ON macro lenses STACKED will IMPROVE the image?

When in fact the opposite is true…the ADD-ON lenses will DEGRADE the image in terms of chromatic aberration and loss of contrast. Move your mouse around the problems listed under the engle and compare those two defects with your STACKED Fuji pictures.

Understanding Camera Lenses

Chromatic aberration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Can you say chromatic aberration or purple fringing on your “sexy” shrimps body and tail or the loss of contrast (washed out colors) throughout the entire image! The silverside shots both looked bad.

Fuji, Canon and the rest of the gang had painstakingly design their native lens to minimize these issues…so what do you when you start stacking lenses that were NOT design for their lenses, that’s right DEGRADE the image!

And I have a lynch mob and their lackeys that to this day will not believe that the image is degraded at all! Were these the non-serious, no critical eye “photographers” you were referring too?

Then to prove that a native P&S camera is capable of taking high quality images I refer you to this website, which are NOT my images, but a fine examples of U/W images from a P&S without the STACKED lenses.

Canon Powershot A620 - a photoset on Flickr

Anilao Feb 2007 - a photoset on Flickr

The colors really pop and the over all image very sharp and these are from a 7 megapixel A620 Canon P&S camera! Your Fuji I believe is 9 mp!

 

[jbmooney]

HDIGIT -

I don't know the answer to your first question yet, I'm sorry to say. I imagine it will take me a lot less time to use the filter than to run individual frames of a DV (at 30fps) through Photoshop, but for stills, I'm not sure if there's much advantage (though there may be).

Since Photoshop is part of what I do for a living, the answer to your second question is probably yes (for stills), though I imagine less correction will be necessary. I'll post if and when I get answers worth paying any attention to.

I have a a 2GB and couple of 1 GB cards for the 720, but primarily because I also use them for the DSLR I use topside (they would outlast the batteries in the Canon by a healthy margin, I'd guess, particularly if I'm using the onboard strobe). I agree that your decision to use a card that matches your battery life is wise if you're only using the P&S, but I'm afraid I don't yet know with any reliability what that size is.

 

[RoyN]

Either ones good. You can add a strobe along with it to give it a one two punch!

 

[jbmooney]

F3, those are gorgeous pictures, and interesting tutorial links, but I'm afraid you've lost me about what your point is. The Wikipedia link seems to make the point that chromatic distortion may be reduced by the addition of the right add-on lens (though it certainly may also be increased by adding the wrong one).

In any event, if you were replying to me, you seem to be saying that several things I didn't say are wrong. I don't for a moment doubt that Canon makes great lenses for its P&S cameras - that's why I bought a Canon P&S (not a Fuji - I'm sure they're fine, but I don't see anyone in this thread who's shooting with one). Also, you seem to imply that a higher pixel count is definitive for a camera's quality, an assertion that I would argue with. (If you were replying to someone else, I apologize for wasting your time, but, who were you talking to, and again, what was your point? What am I missing here?)

My point to ryan was that shooting with his Canon P&S, zoomed in to a really long focal length could overreach the lighting that was available underwater. That doesn't have much to do with chromatic aberration. If there isn't enough light, chromatic aberration won't be noticeable, or more precisely, the whole image will be underexposed enough so that fringing or other problems will be secondary.

- John