I am expecting a new baby

[Jules]

yes , it was better after putting it on spot focus but still doing this thing where it focusses past the point of being in focus to take it out again. Wierd!

I am back at the bottom of the learning curve and even thinking of checking out ebay for one of the £200 5050s... my PT-015 housing cleaned up fine and is sitting in the airing cupboard pining for a camera!

I must have patience and just play with the new one. Presumably some of these programs for manipulating your RAW images will elt you save theresults as JPG? I need remedial lessons in this respect..

Can someone please write an idiot pixie guide to processing RAW underwater images just for me please

oh and before anyone else pm s me about the hot-tub pictures they weren't any rude ones, just pics of jets and drains and toes to test out the functionality.. )

[Cussy]

Focus in low light isn't great with the 7070. My experience is forget the infra red focus thing. You're doing well if you can use the manual focus, I just can't judge when its in focus.

The problem might be the distance. For macro I'd say you have to be almost touching the lense for super macro, and macro needs to be 30cm+ away. I had same problems. I find that no matter how careful the camera moves between focus and taking. So reduce the aperture, shot on A with a high f number. Using a torch you should get a decent shutter speed with f8 or higher. You don't get those brilliant reduced depth of field photos, but you should get what you want in focus. Try taking some flower photos top side to get used to it.
Rob

[Mike W]

I find two probs with macro - the camera moving between locking focus and taking the shot, and the plane of sharp focus being in front of or behind the bit I actually want in focus.

To reduce the first problem I try to support the camera - sticking my thumb under the camera and little finger against the reef or resting the camera on my fist. If you're trying to hold a torch in your 'free' hand this is challenging. To sort the second problem I take more than one pic and just hope that one of 'em comes out right. A bit hit and miss, but I don't find the viewing screen very useful to assess exact focus underwater - I struggle to see the screen in focus to be absolutely honest -it's an age thing!

Only other suggestion I'd make is to try a screw on macro lens instead of super-macro. You use the long end of the zoom to get the biggest image possible, move the camera back and forth until the subject looks in focus then half press the shutter release and fully press whent he camera says it has locked on. You'll find the camera is much further from the subject than in super macro.

As for RAW - When you take a shot the camera sensor records the RAW data, then applies pre-set processing to generate the jpg you later download to your PC, saving only the jpg. If you shoot in RAW the sensor records the data and saves it, and you process the RAW data on your PC to create the jpg (Or TIFF) that you view. The advantage to this is that you can apply all the processing parameters to the RAW data in the comfort of your own home (This includes contrast, saturation, sharpness, colour temperature and so on) and you can re-do the processing until you get the result you want. You can even compensate for a stop or so of over or under exposure. The downside is that it takes a lot longer to do that just leaving it to the camera.