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I'm not a fan of the D5000 because it doesn't have a focus motor, and requires you to buy lenses with built-in focus motors. Often, the best deal with cameras is to buy the model that just became obsolete because of a major upgrade. With Nikon SLRs, the D90 was just replaced by the D7000, and...

I enjoy taking photos, so photography adds to the enjoyment of the dive for me. I got into photography because my wife enjoyed diving more than me, so she bought me a camera to get more into diving.

There have been epic arguments on the web about whether the front nodal point or entrance aperture should be at the center of the dome. My experience in designing an adapter to use an Aquatica dome with a Zuiko 8mm fisheye on an EP1 is that centering the dome on the front nodal point is...

Personally, I don't like the 18-200. Optically, it's mediocre just like the 18-105, it's just mediocre over a larger range of focal lengths and costs a lot more. In general, the point of an SLR camera is that you can change lenses, and don't need to rely on the compromises of a single lens for...

Lots of people have great results with the older Nikkor 60mm AF-D lenses, which don't have internal focusing mechanisms. The front element never extends past the filter threads (which don't move with focusing), so there's no worry with that lens hitting a port, but it is most definitely not an...

A good kit of Nikon lenses above water: Tokina 10-16mm f/2.8 Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 Nikkor 55-200mm zoom A good kit of lenses below water: Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 Tokina 10-17mm fisheye zoom You could combine the wide angle glass, but there will be tradeoffs. Underwater, a fisheye...

I agree with what Jean has said. Screw on ports have a lot of drawbacks. In general, you don't want to slide a surface too far against a compressed o-ring, because of risk of heating the o-ring (if you heat a compressed o-ring through friction, you can permanently deform the o-ring through...

The lens angle is related to sensor size and focal length. Construct an isoceles triangle, with the base the diagonal dimension of your sensor, and the height of the triangle the focal length of the lens. The angle of the vertex of that triangle is your angle of view (at least for a...

Although the autofocus is better with the EPL1 with the new firmware, the EPL2 with the new generation lens is even faster. On the other hand, the new generation lens doesn't focus as close as the older lens, so it sacrifices some macro ability.

There was a famous 20th century ceramic artist in Japan named Shoji Hamada. At one point in his life, Hamada moved to a town called Mashiko, which was famous for having some of the worst clay in the country. Hamada then spent the rest of his life making hauntingly beautiful pottery out of...

I have the FL-14 for my E-P1. I'm not a big fan of it. I would go with at least the FL20. The FL-14 is so close to the lens that you can get a lot of lens shadowing of the flash. It's also not very powerful, and goes through AAA batteries fairly quickly. I've sometimes had overexposure...

It's a little more than rumors with Nikon. Not much more, but a little more. For example: Nikon Plans `New Concept' SLR Camera as Early as This Year, Kimura Says - Bloomberg and Nikon says preparing camera to create 'new market' - Money - DNA

Olympus E-PL1 is the most common EVIL camera underwater that I've seen. I think I might be the only person with an E-P1 underwater. The Olympus 9-18 lens is an excellent lens underwater. Olympus is coming out with a 50mm macro lens sometime in the spring, that should also be a popular lens.

Nikon might be releasing something EVIL in April.

I stand corrected. Thanks for the information, Jean.

It depends a lot on your budget. A lot of people use the Nikon D300 or D300s underwater. Once you add in the cost of a housing, the price difference between the D300 and the D90 becomes pretty minor. The new D7000 looks like a great camera for underwater use, too. I would stay away from the...

When I was buying my system, I had a choice between a D60 and a D90. D60 + 60mm AF-S was the same cost as D90 + 60mm AF-D (I got a mint condition used 60mm AF-D for $300, and the 60mm AF-S lenses were going for $600 at that time). I have no idea what prices are like these days, but I would...

Underwater, the ambient light is blue. If you take a photo with half ambient and half strobe light, your photo will come out too blue. That's fine if that's what you want, but in most cases underwater photos are better with more reds and yellows. To get the most reds and yellows, you want the...

We fight that claim because it's false. The main reason to use a flash during a daylight shot is as an eyelight, to get that gleam from a model's eyes. That's only valuable if the person is facing you, and that typically means standing still. If you can't get an un-blurred shot of a person...

You can get a used Yashica-MAT for much less than the cost of an XZ-1, so not all medium format cameras have gotten stupid in price, but I agree with you that most are quite expensive for what they are. As for DOF, I think the key problem is that f/stop doesn't account for different sized...