UnderWater Camera

[catherina1105]

Hello everyone. I am very excited for the holiday vacation because I will be having my first scuba diving with my friends. I plan to go to a magasin materiel (equipment store) to look for Unterwasserkameras (under water cameras). What brand should I choose? Do you have any suggestion guys?

[sfau]

There are two ways of getting an underwater camera
1) Buy a purpose built underwater camera and housing (expensive)
2) Buy a underwater housing for an existing compact camera (less expensive)
As this is your 1^st time scuba diving the cheaper option is the second one. Most underwater housings for compact cameras are usually rated to 30m whereas the purpose built models tend to be rated to around 60m. As you are a complete beginner you will not be going deeper than 18m anyway.
A couple of good websites:
http://www.seaandsea.com/
http://www.camerasunderwater.co.uk/store/

Mind you the easiest thing to do would be to hire one from the local dive centre!

[ziggy53]

Originally Posted by catherina1105

Hello everyone. I am very excited for the holiday vacation because I will be having my first scuba diving with my friends. I plan to go to a magasin materiel (equipment store) to look for Unterwasserkameras (under water cameras). What brand should I choose? Do you have any suggestion guys?

Catherina1105, welcome to the Digital Grin.

In addition to what "sfau" had mentioned, there are underwater P&S cameras from Olympus and Pentax (mostly) and a fairly recent review of some of the offerings here:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q209waterproofgroup/

You can also use a standard P&S camera that you can adapt to snorkel depths with a "DiCAPac" underwater case:

http://www.dicapacusa.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=3

I got one of these cases for my son to use in a dusty/sandy application and I was pleasantly surprised at the resulting image quality.

[Blackwood]

Strobes are an important part of most any underwater rig. Note that water absorbs and reflects ambient light. The deeper you go, the darker it gets, and at a fairly rapid rate.

That said, if you are in clear water with clear skies and remain in the shallows, you can get away without them.

[InsuredDisaster]

I personally find that with strobes, you are not replacing light so much (well, actually you are) but the color. Go deeper than even a few meters, and you'll find that your photos have no reds, yellows and oranges. Red light is absorbed by the water at a fairly rapid rate, as are reds and yellows. Yesterday, I was at 26 meters on a shipwreck. I moved my torch over some drab coral and it became bright red. Your strobe will do the same thing.

So strobes are great to have but do add additional cost and bulk to a system. And they'll add a lot of complexity to shooting underwater to avoid lighting up all the silt in a shot. But they open a lot of possiblities. I'd strongly recommend that if you don't wish to buy one now, you at least get a system that will take one in the future.

Wideangle lenses are great to have underwater. Basically, color is absorbed by any distance in water, horizontal and vertical. So if you are 30 meters from your friend underwater, his bright red shirt will appear very brownish. Additionally, silt in the water will reduce visiblity and clarity, so you want to get as close to your subject as you possibly can.

Final thing to look for, if you are buying a new camera to go with this system, is the ability to shoot RAW. A buddy had a little U/W compact, and since it was purposely designed to shoot underwater, it had an underwater mode, which boosted yellows and reds. The thing is, shots taken very shallow had a rather odd yellow color cast. Deeper shots looked ok. I shoot raw and was able to custom set white balance and all the other stuff, and generally, the color of my photos look better. Of course, this takes time to do. Its not the end all, and you don't have to immediately shoot everything in the RAW file format, but having the ability to grow into this in the future is perhaps a good thing.

Just my two cents.

[Robinivich]

How much experience do you have scuba diving? And what's your level of interest with photography? I'm going to assume you're pretty new to both!

For use with scuba you really need to go with a housed camera, for two reasons:

1. The depths one usually goes to on scuba are either at the limits of what "underwater cameras" can do, or beyond them. The cameras in the comparison Ziggy gave are excellent choices for use on boats, and some for snorkeling, but are not designed for scuba, even as a beginner diver one goes to 60ft/20m, which is twice the deepest rating of this camera type.

2. A housing is usually made with a capability to attach a strobe (flash), which is a big plus when you're going deeper than 30ft/10m, and basically mandatory if you're going deeper than 60ft/20m. There are ways to get around using a flash, such as RAW white balance adjustment, or better yet special filters plus white balance, but I think this is beyond the scope of this thread.

If you already have a camera, then have a look at different companies that make housings for it. The links sfau posted are both good companies, also consider http://ikelite.com/. If you don't own a camera already, try and buy a camera that, as InsuredDisaster suggested, can create RAW files, making sure there is a housing made to fit it!

And of course, keep posting to this thread and keep us up to date!

[AlbertZeroK]

Look at the Olympus 1030SW. I use it under water at the pool and it works great!

[Zerodog]

Originally Posted by AlbertZeroK

Look at the Olympus 1030SW. I use it under water at the pool and it works great!

How does it do out of the pool? That was one I was considering for a P&S.

[AlbertZeroK]

Originally Posted by Zerodog

How does it do out of the pool? That was one I was considering for a P&S.

I love the wide angle capabilities and used it at Disney with good results. It's a decent point and shoot, definitely not a G9 or DSLR though. You will need to know that it only takes an XD card or a Transflash (MicroSD) card with an adapter - and I've had issues with the adapter, so I stick with M+ XD Cards. It's also not the fastest camera for shooting shot after shot (of course, my comparison is a 6.3 fps 50D.)

I love the water proof and rugidability!

[InsuredDisaster]

I have had two of the Olympus "waterproof" cameras. Both have failed. I'm not certain I'd rely on them for continous submersion, unless you are putting them in housings maybe.

And just my preferences, but I really think getting a camera with more manual control is a big plus in UW photography. The Oly 10xx series seems to lack much beyond the way of auto modes.

[AlbertZeroK]

Originally Posted by InsuredDisaster

I have had two of the Olympus "waterproof" cameras. Both have failed. I'm not certain I'd rely on them for continous submersion, unless you are putting them in housings maybe.

And just my preferences, but I really think getting a camera with more manual control is a big plus in UW photography. The Oly 10xx series seems to lack much beyond the way of auto modes.

I got the Olympus as a pocket point and shoot. The waterproof feature isn't bad, I always grease the seals before taking it under water. But it's for occassional use for me after my wife said she got disheartened by a throw away waterproof camera. I can definately see if someone is going to use the camera all the time under water, the camera not lasting, but for light underwater use, it's great.