Better technique vs. better camera?

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Thanks so much for your reply. I've been messing around with the camera a bit over the last few days and have the following to report:

1 - I have tried manual white-balancing here in my living room. However, all of the photos that I take after manually white balancing have a very green cast to them. My process is as follows: Hold white piece of paper at the same distance as the subject of my photo (in this case, the tv remote sitting on the arm of the couch, about 3 ft away). I have the direct-to-printer button set up to operate the manual white balance, so I make sure that the paper fills the LCD screen, then press the button. The flash goes off, but no picture is taken. I then frame up the remote and take a few shots, all of which turn out green. What's going on here?

I have also considered getting astrobe and based on reviews, the Sea and Sea YS-27 appears to be a good bet. I can get a good deal on the strobe, fiber optic cable and arm.

Thansk for all your help.
 
The problem is that you are white balancing with the flash going off on the camera. Then I bet you are taking a picture of the remote without a flash. The flash is going to give you one color because it beats out the room light, but the room light is not the same temperture as the flash and so when you take a picture without a flash, the room light is your source and is the wrong temp.

BTW, when you take underwater photos with a strobe, you DO NOT white balance the camera. You should select something like "Cloudy" (which is what I use for more vibrant colors) and leave it set to that. The strobe will provide the light necessary and you don't need to mess with white balancing anymore. :wink:

Also if you are shooting RAW mode, don't waste the time to white balance the camera even without a strobe as you can change that later and get the same effect as if you spent the time to white balance underwater. If you are shotting JPG, then you need to white balance if you aren't using a strobe to get optimal results.
 
Thanks so much guys. I'll look into an external strobe and shoot RAW. Now I just need to get them pretty fishies to pause for a second and give me a smile while I take their portraits.
 
make sure when you go for a strobe setup that the ones you buy can be used with other setups. I made the mistake of buying a starter UW camera rig and my optical strobe couldnt be used with my DSLR housing when I upgraded. I could have bought another one that had both options and saved a lot of money. oh well live and learn.
 
Take a close look at the housing and your flash setup before you
select a strobe setup.

The WP-DC15 housing for the SD850is doesn't have a good place to attach
a fiber cable link. The plastic is very curved directly over the flash area.
You will need some sort of stick on attachment and once you get one
that sticks on really well, you won't be able to quickly remove/install it if you
want to swap back to using the internal flash.

I have seen a really nice Inon lens attachment/adapter that supports a flash cable port
that might be worth considering especially if you intend to take some wide angle
or extreme closeup shots.
Here is the link:
Inon Lens adapter


Here is another thread on someone that is using a similar class camera (Sony) with
the inon attachments that might also be of interest:
Wide Angle on SD850

--- bill
 
Very cool adapter by Inon there. I figured I would look at their strobes while I had the chance...

Wow, $539 for the D-2000? Pretty pricey. I can get my hands on a used Sea and Sea setup (YS-27, cable and tray) through a friend for less than $400, so I'm going to go that route. I can turn around and sell it if I need a TTL setup in the future.
 
Very cool adapter by Inon there. I figured I would look at their strobes while I had the chance...

Wow, $539 for the D-2000? Pretty pricey. I can get my hands on a used Sea and Sea setup (YS-27, cable and tray) through a friend for less than $400, so I'm going to go that route. I can turn around and sell it if I need a TTL setup in the future.

Well.. There is a BIG difference between an Inon D-2000 or Z240 and the Sea & Sea YS-27.. This is not like other scuba equipment where all of them work similar and its just a matter of preference and features. A YS-27 will in many cases not give you enough light to be effective in your pictures.

Just a heads up before you spend the $$$
 
Great advice in here so far. I'll add a couple of things...

1 - don't scrimp on the strobe or go the "I'll change later" route, imho. Just buy something that not only works now but will grow with you. Why throw money away and why just set yourself up for more frustration and problems? Especially for a couple hundred dollars.

2 - your camera will always limit you as even with RAW you simply do not have controls that you need to get the most from underwater photography. That isn't to say that your camera isn't a nice little unit, it most definitely is. But from reading your posts, it feels to me that it isn't going to satisfy you much longer and the things that annoy you now, are just going to annoy you more and more. You might want to start looking at some alternatives to address some of your issues.

Everything in photography is a trade-off and in underwater photography even more so.
 
One of the other issues that I am dealing with is that, living in Dallas, I'm not diving all the time, only on vacation. I'll probably do somewhere around 15-20 dives next year, so I think this setup with an external strobe will keep me happy for 2009. If I can get great pictures out of this rig then I see no reason not to keep shooting with it. However, if I feel that I want more, then I'll make the jump to a newer (and more flexible) camera and housing. I'll look into the Inon strobes and see what kind of cash I can lay out for a strobe setup. Seems to make sense to me to get a strobe that can be fired via optical or TTL, just in case.
 
The 2 major thigns are glass and light. The glass part is your lens, the light is your strobe. Always spend as much as you can on both. Of the two the strobe is the most important and a good one will stay with you as you move through other cameras.

As for your camera and housing, my opnion is that the digital camera only last about 5 years or so. So, unless you have quite a lot of funds to spend try to keep the costs of both down. The days of using a Nikon F3 in an aluminum housing for 10+ years are gone.

If you go here: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/canon-corner/255461-wide-angle-2.html

You will see what I was able to do a few weeks ago with an A610 in a Ike housing with a Ion wide angle lens and the new Ike DS-160 strobe. I set the camera at 1/60 second, F8, and ASA200 as all I was doing was getting used to the manual control of the strobe. If I drop the ASA to 100 I can go to 1/120 of a second with no change in exposure.
 

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