Camera upgrade advice

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A few other ideas to help with battery life. I get 2 dives on a battery (a6000 in SeaFrogs Salted housing):

- Set camera to Airplane Mode (turns off wifi radio)
- Turn off AF illuminator (won't help in the housing)
- Turn off Pre-AF
- Set flash exposure compensation to -3.0 and use external strobe on manual. I start with 1/125 @ f/8 ISO 100 and use power adjustment on my S&S strobe.
- I set my camera to go into sleep mode in 2 minutes.

Not directly battery life related:
- Some people like back button focus and assign the AF to the C1 or AEL button (depends on housing and size of hands). They find it is easier to get more photos with good focus. It is on my list for my next trip.
- My preference is to shoot in RAW then use Capture One to post process. I started with the free Capture One Express for Sony and purchased the Pro for Sony version. Good for Color/White Balance, cropping to taste and adjusting exposure, contrast, etc..
 
A few other ideas to help with battery life. I get 2 dives on a battery (a6000 in SeaFrogs Salted housing):

- Set camera to Airplane Mode (turns off wifi radio)
- Turn off AF illuminator (won't help in the housing)
- Turn off Pre-AF
- Set flash exposure compensation to -3.0 and use external strobe on manual. I start with 1/125 @ f/8 ISO 100 and use power adjustment on my S&S strobe.
- I set my camera to go into sleep mode in 2 minutes.

Not directly battery life related:
- Some people like back button focus and assign the AF to the C1 or AEL button (depends on housing and size of hands). They find it is easier to get more photos with good focus. It is on my list for my next trip.
- My preference is to shoot in RAW then use Capture One to post process. I started with the free Capture One Express for Sony and purchased the Pro for Sony version. Good for Color/White Balance, cropping to taste and adjusting exposure, contrast, etc..
I shoot an A6000 underwater & an A7iii above (yes I have dunken heartily from the well of Sony Kool-Aid). I have tried Back Button AF both above & below the surface and I am simply not bright enough to use it. If you forget to push the button, then there is nothing to tell the camera to focus the lens and the pictures that I forget to do this on are horribly out of focus. If you make this switch, I think that you really have to commit to it.

Thanks for the tip about airplane mode. That is one of those things that I never would have thought of, but as soon as you mentioned it, it was like "Well of course!".

I used to use C1 Pro, but I have switched to ON1 for a couple reasons. When I shoot landscapes, I will sometimes want to focus stack, do exposure blending or HDR and stitch panoramas. All of these are much easier in ON1. Having said that, C1 is much better when it comes to setting the tone (adjusting Black Point and White Point especially) and colour.
 
- Set flash exposure compensation to -3.0 and use external strobe on manual. I start with 1/125 @ f/8 ISO 100 and use power adjustment on my S&S strobe.

Another option is to use wired sync or an LED trigger. The availability of the former is dependent on housing and strobe models, but LED triggers are becoming more available.
 
I shoot an A6000 underwater & an A7iii above (yes I have dunken heartily from the well of Sony Kool-Aid). I have tried Back Button AF both above & below the surface and I am simply not bright enough to use it. If you forget to push the button, then there is nothing to tell the camera to focus the lens and the pictures that I forget to do this on are horribly out of focus. If you make this switch, I think that you really have to commit to it.

Thanks for the tip about airplane mode. That is one of those things that I never would have thought of, but as soon as you mentioned it, it was like "Well of course!".

I used to use C1 Pro, but I have switched to ON1 for a couple reasons. When I shoot landscapes, I will sometimes want to focus stack, do exposure blending or HDR and stitch panoramas. All of these are much easier in ON1. Having said that, C1 is much better when it comes to setting the tone (adjusting Black Point and White Point especially) and colour.

So true regarding BBF. I had it set up on my Olympus and often was 'reminded' of it when I couldn't focus.

I also like the Capture One Levels tool not only to set white and black point but you can set Red, Green and Blue independently which is good for some underwater photos.
 
Answering my own questions - looks like the Seafrogs A6xxx housing with a 4" dome port supports manual zoom for the 16-50, and the 6" port supports the 16-70.

Important: while 16-50mm fits into the 4" dome, it will not focus at the longer end of its zoom range - it still works at 30mm, but not at 50mm. The 4" dome port is meant for short fisheye lenses, such as Sony 16mm pancake with VCL-ECF fisheye converter, or Samyang 8mm manual fisheye. The 16-50mm lens should be used either with the short macro port and wet lenses, or with 6"/8" domes. The bundled flat port works too, but it does not allow wet lens attachment. The zoom/focus knob is mounted on the housing itself, so it works the same with any port - none of the SeaFrogs ports have any controls on them.
 
Important: while 16-50mm fits into the 4" dome, it will not focus at the longer end of its zoom range - it still works at 30mm, but not at 50mm. The 4" dome port is meant for short fisheye lenses, such as Sony 16mm pancake with VCL-ECF fisheye converter, or Samyang 8mm manual fisheye. The 16-50mm lens should be used either with the short macro port and wet lenses, or with 6"/8" domes. The bundled flat port works too, but it does not allow wet lens attachment. The zoom/focus knob is mounted on the housing itself, so it works the same with any port - none of the SeaFrogs ports have any controls on them.


Wait, you are saying you can change the zoom on the kit lens underwater with the salted line from seafrogs?
 
Wait, you are saying you can change the zoom on the kit lens underwater with the salted line from seafrogs?

Yes, of course - the 16-50mm lens has a single control ring, used for zoom or focus depending on camera settings - in AF modes it controls zoom, in manual focus mode it controls focus, and in DMF mode, it controls zoom until you half-press the shutter or use back-button focusing, at which point it switches to focus. The housing comes with two zoom gears in the package - one for 16-50mm and the other for 10-18mm. The zoom gear slips onto the lens and its teeth (via an intermediate conical gear) engage the knob on the left side of the housing. Gears for additional lenses (Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 16mm f/1.4, Sony 16-70mm/18-135mm, Sony 18-105mm, Sony 55-210mm) are sold separately. Note that there is only one knob on the housing, so with lenses that have multiple control rings like the Sony 10-18mm you can only control zoom - focus has to be fully automatic. On the fully manual Samyang 8mm fisheye, the gear controls focus and aperture has to be pre-set before sealing the housing.
 
Yes, of course - the 16-50mm lens has a single control ring, used for zoom or focus depending on camera settings - in AF modes it controls zoom, in manual focus mode it controls focus, and in DMF mode, it controls zoom until you half-press the shutter or use back-button focusing, at which point it switches to focus. The housing comes with two zoom gears in the package - one for 16-50mm and the other for 10-18mm. The zoom gear slips onto the lens and its teeth (via an intermediate conical gear) engage the knob on the left side of the housing. Gears for additional lenses (Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 16mm f/1.4, Sony 16-70mm/18-135mm, Sony 18-105mm, Sony 55-210mm) are sold separately. Note that there is only one knob on the housing, so with lenses that have multiple control rings like the Sony 10-18mm you can only control zoom - focus has to be fully automatic. On the fully manual Samyang 8mm fisheye, the gear controls focus and aperture has to be pre-set before sealing the housing.

Thank you so much for all the detailed responses. I thought for sure the seafrogs housing was able to change zoom underwater but was confused by the end of this..

Important: while 16-50mm fits into the 4" dome, it will not focus at the longer end of its zoom range - it still works at 30mm, but not at 50mm. The 4" dome port is meant for short fisheye lenses, such as Sony 16mm pancake with VCL-ECF fisheye converter, or Samyang 8mm manual fisheye. The 16-50mm lens should be used either with the short macro port and wet lenses, or with 6"/8" domes. The bundled flat port works too, but it does not allow wet lens attachment. The zoom/focus knob is mounted on the housing itself, so it works the same with any port - none of the SeaFrogs ports have any controls on them.

But i understand what you mean now. Thanks again for all the camera help!!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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