Giving up on photography or downgrading?
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There is a lot to be said for diving without any camera at all. I realize that is probably heresy on this forum but it might be worth a try.
I'm whiplashed that you like larger sensors and iPhones in the same thread....Pyndle,
Search for posts under my name......I've gone from film Nikonos to housed film SLR to housed digital SLR to smaller digital SLR (Canon SL1, Ikelite housing similar to your Sony APS-C rig) to now two choices that have eased my travel, set up, maintenance before and on site and after. Plus a huge travel downsizing......
The 1" sensor compact choices from Sony (RX100 VA or for more versatility on the surface RX100 VII) and Canon G7X II or G7X III are both great choices.
Small for travel, less expensive (Canon less $$$$ than the high end Sony) allow switching from macro to wide angle all on the same dive. The Canon has pretty darn good built in macro and the larger than Olympus TG-6 sensor can produce great sized prints.
Like you have I tired of hauling extra batteries, chargers, etc. and coined my theory "the elimination protocol" meaning any time I can eliminate o-rings, batteries, extra doodads my dive travel life becomes simplified and more enjoyable.
I'll confess to having 20+ years of underwater photos on my computer(s) from Whale Sharks to dolphins plus every colorful fish and nudibranch, reef scenics, etc. What I want to maybe take a picture of is what I'll term "different".......A new perspective, Black and White scenics, maybe a fish face at a new angle, etc.
With my Canon 1" sensor compact I pop on a wide angle "Air Lens". When I had the Sony RX100 VII I used 67mm glass Inon lens. My housing's flash diffuser for using the camera's built in flash or a semi-powerful LED light 1000 - 3500 lumens is fine for closer than 1.5' as a close up shooting option.
On my upcoming trip to Raja Ampat this fall I'll take my remaining Canon G7X II, Fantasea housing, F Series pop on "Air Lens" (that restores my native 24mm focal length) plus maybe one single small flash - an Inon S2000 or new S220 if it comes out by then.
I've dived with a single Inon S2000 flash on my housing's cold shoe mount and got pics I'm happy with. Inon has a fancy little quick disconnect mount I might add to hand hold the strobe playing with lighting.
I may take a super lightweight little tray I have in my dive locker with lightweight FLEX style arm which are MUCH lighter than ball joint and clamps.
The other thing I use these days is the wonderful DiveVolk touchscreen housing for my iPhone 13 PRO Max. Truly a game changer and I've had people who worry purchase a 2nd phone to use strictly as an underwater camera.
You only really need a "standard" iPhone 12 / 13 / or 14 with the 1X and .5X two lenses underwater. iPhone 13 and 14 models even have incredible macro capability built in. They see in incredibly low light.
Using a 1000 lumen flash light I shot photos of BSA / Norton motorcycles in the hold of the famous Thistlegorm wreck in the Red Sea last August that rivaled people using huge housing set ups.
Being "in the UW photo industry" over 35 years I'm sad to see too many people pushed into the "bigger is better" mind set. After a few trips hauling it all, maintaining it all, etc. they're overwhelmed and not having fun
Poke around and you may find something like a compact or iPhone housing is all you need these days
Just one old guy's opinion!
David Haas
PS - Here's some photos taken with my previous iPhone XR in Maldives
View attachment 785678View attachment 785679View attachment 785680View attachment 785681View attachment 785682
David Haas
Contributor
I'll be the first person to agree APS-C and FULL Frame sensors can technically deliver more data, detail, etc. but believe in 90% (or more) of cases it's not as much bang for the buck these days.....
The OP asked about downsizing and this thread did evolve into "enjoying diving and traveling" a bit. The emergence and continued development of AI, Apps and more depending on one's personal image needs will dictate choices is all.
I have dive friends who've either migrated to a compact camera or many more to an iPhone in the DiveVolk housing. At least 50 people on my trips have done so including me so the world is changing, and FAST.......
One friend on last year's Red Sea / Egypt Nile cruise trip made a coffee table book shot on iPhone and it looks great. Printing capability and image processing is at least 50% of the game today. I preach shooting any photo is 50% capture in focus, reasonably illuminated and framed photos. The other 50% is post processing from simple to a bit more depending on your interest, budget, etc. I'm lazy these days and rarely spend more than 3-5 minutes on any image worth editing whether on my computer(s) or iPhone.
Here's another story for you:
I went to my local Cleveland camera store Dodd's (in business since 1891 !!!) for a photography equipment manufacturer's expo. I looked longingly at the latest cameras, lenses and doo-dads as I still read several photography web sites daily......
A Canon rep had a nice (physically large) $850.00 printer and offered 13" X 19" prints for anyone who brought a couple images on an SD card to get printed for free. I hadn't but he asked: "Do you have any pictures on your iPhone?"
I Air-Dropped 2 photos (both shot on compact cameras) to his MacBook......Each file was barely 3.1MB and he printed them out. See below and all I could say is WOW.....
I try and temper my comments with the caveat: "Buy and shoot whatever you want".
I just see many traveling divers who enjoy diving but want a few memories without a big hassle
Enjoy!
David Haas
Here'a
The OP asked about downsizing and this thread did evolve into "enjoying diving and traveling" a bit. The emergence and continued development of AI, Apps and more depending on one's personal image needs will dictate choices is all.
I have dive friends who've either migrated to a compact camera or many more to an iPhone in the DiveVolk housing. At least 50 people on my trips have done so including me so the world is changing, and FAST.......
One friend on last year's Red Sea / Egypt Nile cruise trip made a coffee table book shot on iPhone and it looks great. Printing capability and image processing is at least 50% of the game today. I preach shooting any photo is 50% capture in focus, reasonably illuminated and framed photos. The other 50% is post processing from simple to a bit more depending on your interest, budget, etc. I'm lazy these days and rarely spend more than 3-5 minutes on any image worth editing whether on my computer(s) or iPhone.
Here's another story for you:
I went to my local Cleveland camera store Dodd's (in business since 1891 !!!) for a photography equipment manufacturer's expo. I looked longingly at the latest cameras, lenses and doo-dads as I still read several photography web sites daily......
A Canon rep had a nice (physically large) $850.00 printer and offered 13" X 19" prints for anyone who brought a couple images on an SD card to get printed for free. I hadn't but he asked: "Do you have any pictures on your iPhone?"
I Air-Dropped 2 photos (both shot on compact cameras) to his MacBook......Each file was barely 3.1MB and he printed them out. See below and all I could say is WOW.....
I try and temper my comments with the caveat: "Buy and shoot whatever you want".
I just see many traveling divers who enjoy diving but want a few memories without a big hassle
Enjoy!
David Haas
Here'a
I was in exact the same position with the OP few months ago - in my case with a Sony A5100 + meikon case + 2 S&S strobes mostly for macro using 2 wet lenses (+5 inon and +10 SubSea) being used for years and kind of fed up with it.
In my case, I decided to go to the GoPro 11 way as I have young kids and I thought that an action camera might find other uses too.
For macro, there are gopro specific wet lenses ( MACROMATE MINI - The Ultimate GoPro Macro Lens - Underwater Photography - Backscatter ) but I went the unconventional way. Bought a m67 to gopro kind of adapter ( INON M67 Filter Adapter for GoPro HERO11, HERO10 and HERO9 ) and kept using my diopters on a flip adapter. I also bought 2 "cheap" video lights ( Wurkkos DL07 ) and I am also using an old (also cheap) flood light I have ( Andoer Ultra Diving LED Fill-in Light DSLR Camera Video Lamp for GoPro Hero N5T4 743022315317 | eBay ).
Here is my rig:
As always there are some good things about this setup and some bad. Here we go:
Pros:
- Overall the setup is quite light - I wouldn't say small (due to the tray + lights) but I can barely feel its' existence underwater (although it is a bit negative) and it doesn't pose any problem to me to carry it around topside or even travel with it.
- It works for videos, especially for wide angle ok-ish ( for very nice results a wet wide angle lens is still required).
- I can also do macro (with several limitations though - see below).
Cons:
- For macro it is a real pain in the a$$ to get it properly focused. GoPro has fixed focus, the depth of field is pretty tight due to the diopters and there is no indication how well the scene is focused (screen is too small to see such details) hence you have to rely on experience and your feeling. I've done a lot of dives dedicated to macro and getting a good focus is still very difficult. Vast majority of my recordings are well out of focus.
- Second important problem is that the diopters cause build in stabilization to under perform. Unless you use a tripod on seabed or something, your shoots will be shaky (so shaky that even post processing won't be able to fix).
- Diopters introduce quite a bit of vignetting (especially when combined) and reflections. About a quarter of the frame around the center is still usable (for 4k you still get a decently sized frame) but quite a lot of the sensor is wasted.
- Forget capturing stills. Quality is never good and capturing raw needs a lot of processing/delay (several seconds) per picture.
- Processing 5k and/or 10bit video clips is considered top, so several apps (eg Davinci Resolve) don't support these in their basic/free versions.
- Post processing can still be pain, considering that you have to watch/edit all the clips. Also making an interesting video out of the many clips you have after a dive trip is not as easy as putting them back to back (at least to me) - the result is just boring to watch.
Here are 2 small unedited clips to get an idea of what you can get (see them in full screen):
and
Both were recorded with both diopters (Inon +5 and SubSea +10). I can't remember the size of the fish but it was small. Maybe ~1/2" or less. The nudie (Elysia timida) was a about 1/6" of an inch or so. In the case of the fish clip I was kind of resting my rig on the sand (still shaking but not a lot). In the case of the nudibranch clip, I was trying (but failed horribly) to hold the rig still.
Overall in terms of practicality it is much better compared to my photography rig, but in terms of quality of the output I am still strangling to get consistent decent results.
EDIT: I forgot to say these: I try to do at least one dive per week. But, I don't have a boat and the selection of accesible by car, decent dive sites is kind of limited here (maybe 5 sites or so). Diving without a camera becomes quite boring after a while like this, hence I don't want to give it up all together.
I hope these will help you a bit decide.
All the best
In my case, I decided to go to the GoPro 11 way as I have young kids and I thought that an action camera might find other uses too.
For macro, there are gopro specific wet lenses ( MACROMATE MINI - The Ultimate GoPro Macro Lens - Underwater Photography - Backscatter ) but I went the unconventional way. Bought a m67 to gopro kind of adapter ( INON M67 Filter Adapter for GoPro HERO11, HERO10 and HERO9 ) and kept using my diopters on a flip adapter. I also bought 2 "cheap" video lights ( Wurkkos DL07 ) and I am also using an old (also cheap) flood light I have ( Andoer Ultra Diving LED Fill-in Light DSLR Camera Video Lamp for GoPro Hero N5T4 743022315317 | eBay ).
Here is my rig:
As always there are some good things about this setup and some bad. Here we go:
Pros:
- Overall the setup is quite light - I wouldn't say small (due to the tray + lights) but I can barely feel its' existence underwater (although it is a bit negative) and it doesn't pose any problem to me to carry it around topside or even travel with it.
- It works for videos, especially for wide angle ok-ish ( for very nice results a wet wide angle lens is still required).
- I can also do macro (with several limitations though - see below).
Cons:
- For macro it is a real pain in the a$$ to get it properly focused. GoPro has fixed focus, the depth of field is pretty tight due to the diopters and there is no indication how well the scene is focused (screen is too small to see such details) hence you have to rely on experience and your feeling. I've done a lot of dives dedicated to macro and getting a good focus is still very difficult. Vast majority of my recordings are well out of focus.
- Second important problem is that the diopters cause build in stabilization to under perform. Unless you use a tripod on seabed or something, your shoots will be shaky (so shaky that even post processing won't be able to fix).
- Diopters introduce quite a bit of vignetting (especially when combined) and reflections. About a quarter of the frame around the center is still usable (for 4k you still get a decently sized frame) but quite a lot of the sensor is wasted.
- Forget capturing stills. Quality is never good and capturing raw needs a lot of processing/delay (several seconds) per picture.
- Processing 5k and/or 10bit video clips is considered top, so several apps (eg Davinci Resolve) don't support these in their basic/free versions.
- Post processing can still be pain, considering that you have to watch/edit all the clips. Also making an interesting video out of the many clips you have after a dive trip is not as easy as putting them back to back (at least to me) - the result is just boring to watch.
Here are 2 small unedited clips to get an idea of what you can get (see them in full screen):
and
Both were recorded with both diopters (Inon +5 and SubSea +10). I can't remember the size of the fish but it was small. Maybe ~1/2" or less. The nudie (Elysia timida) was a about 1/6" of an inch or so. In the case of the fish clip I was kind of resting my rig on the sand (still shaking but not a lot). In the case of the nudibranch clip, I was trying (but failed horribly) to hold the rig still.
Overall in terms of practicality it is much better compared to my photography rig, but in terms of quality of the output I am still strangling to get consistent decent results.
EDIT: I forgot to say these: I try to do at least one dive per week. But, I don't have a boat and the selection of accesible by car, decent dive sites is kind of limited here (maybe 5 sites or so). Diving without a camera becomes quite boring after a while like this, hence I don't want to give it up all together.
I hope these will help you a bit decide.
All the best
bubblemonkey2
Contributor
Just get a TG6. Seriously!
If you end up missing having to wash and tend equipment after that, there's always rebreathers & DPVs!
If you end up missing having to wash and tend equipment after that, there's always rebreathers & DPVs!
I just noticed that the attached videos' quality has been seriously degraded maybe by google drive.
Anyway whoever interested let me know and maybe I can arrange a direct transfer or something (files are about 40mb each).
EDIT: It has to do with the settings of the player. Make sure 1080p (HD) is selected in the lower right corner.
scubaozy
Contributor
Few years ago I have flooded my camera during the first week of a 2wk trip. One of my fellow divers gave me their backup TG, I think it was 4 or 5, I installed it to my dual flash setup and happily snapped around. On small display photos looked ok but back home, when I view them with large display, it was totally different story..
Once getting used to an SLR or m4/3, it is not that easy to be happy with a point and shoot.
Bubblesong
Contributor
Alternatively you could hire a camera-Sherpa buddy to lug your rig around for you topside, then assist with spotting critters while you are photographing.
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