please help me choose my first UW digicam!

[kittykat23uk]

Tim,

Many thanks for the useful links you posted. Are you aware of any limitations with the 5050 and compatibility of memory cards? Any that you would recommend or that I should avoid?

Kind regards

Jo

[KenByrne]

I went to a talk last night about using compact cameras underwater. Steve Smithson who gave the talk has been using an Olympus 5050 and he gave a good idea of what was possible with this camera.

He produced some stunning macro shots in UK waters with just the internal flash. He said himself that he had expected backscatter to be a problem with this setup but it didn't seem to be a problem. For these photographs he set the camera on Aperture priority so that he could set a small aperture for good depth of field. He used ISO 100 a lot of the time to allow faster shutter speeds with the small aperture. Most important was the he set the camera on macro and zoomed the lens out to it's widest settings. Don't be tempted to use the telephoto end of the lens as an alternative to getting in close. He estimated his distance from the subject in his macro shots as about 15cm. He found that the internal flash was not powerful enough for scenic or diver shots and that without flash the colour rendition was not good unless he was very shallow.

With an external flash he used the same techniques for macro but was able to have more control because of being able to control the position of the flash. He also produced some decent scenic shots with the external strobe. He did say that he needed to pick smaller subjects than he would have shot with an SLR as the lens isn't wide enough to get big scenics and be close enough to light them. If I remember correctly most of the scenic type shots were taken from about 1 metre from the subject.

Finally he showed some true wide angle shots taken with a suplementary lens. This included diver shots in Capenwray and a decent shot of the Giannis D. This lens made a big difference but is an expensive addition to the kit.

I don't think any shot that he showed was taken on anything but the widest zoom setting.

A few general points. He'd like to try shooting RAW but the time between shots is too long in RAW mode. Take your time approach your subject carefully and get close. Make sure the camera has focused before pressing the shutter all the way down. Most compact cameras will take an out of focus shot if you press the shutter straight down, so press the shutter half way wait for the focus confirmation signal then take the shot. Use the LCD to check the lighting then set a smaller or larger aperture if needed.

[kittykat23uk]

Ooh thanks for all the info Ken! I'll be mainly using it for wildlife shots rather than scenic so its all useful info. Any idea what strobe he used?

[Jim A]

Great camera to start with and a real bargain for you.

A 512 mb XD and 1 gb CF card will be fine to start. The great features of the 5050 are the Mymodes (see above) and the facility to take RAW images. This will present another learning curve but well worth the effort. The Inon D-2000 is an excellent strobe.

[KenByrne]

The strobe he used was a Sea & Sea YS90 DX with optical fibre cable. His main reason for choosing this strobe was the variable power settings. I don't think this strobe is available new anymore. Alternatives would seem to be YS90 Auto, YS110 or the YS27 DX. The YS27 DX seems to be the cheapest but as far as I can tell doesn't have the option to use a cable to connect it to a DSLR housing should you upgrade later.

[TimIngmire]

This site is useful for memory card with the c5050 - surprisingly it's up to date. wrotniak.net: Memory card writing speeds

If you put WTB ads around the place - you could well pick up trays for mounting external strobes which you bolt into the base of the PT-015.

Check out issue 14 of UWP mag where Peter has written a really good article on how you can expand the system.

As Jim says above, RAW write times are slow but depending on tsubject this will not be a problem - eg, wreck shots, Nudi's etc so use RAW on these. For free swimming fish and the like you need the speed of jpegs.

I think you'll really like the c5050.

[KenByrne]

I've added a summary of Steve Smithsons talk onto the NUP site NUPG.org.uk, The Northern Underwater Photography Group complete with sample pictures. The picture look a little soft on here but that is because of the reduction in size. It does give a good idea of what is possible.

It's created from a Powerpoint slide show so needs activex to run.

Ken

[daw]

Your first question was what camera to get, and my reply would have been a used Olympus C-5050. I don't think there is a better choice overall than this for several reasons. First of all, it has an f1.8 lens. Since this forum is about diving in water which is often low vis and dark, that can be a huge help. Although depth of field is lower with a wide open aperture, because of its relatively small sensor, the depth of field at f1.8 is the same as a digital SLR with 1.5 crop at f5.4 or a full sensor camera at f9.0. Also important is the fact that the lens fully extends when the camera turns on, whether at telephoto or wide angle. This allows you to get full use of add-on wide angle lenses. I use an Inon wet mount wide angle lens which works fabulously. My modes lets you change lots of settings easily. I like being able to change from wide angle to macro on the same dive. The supermacro mode works well overall, although autofocus in this mode can be a bit frustrating. It doesn't always pick what you want to focus on. If I find a macro subject I really like, I usually take a bunch of pictures to improve my odds of one focused the way I want. I've used mine for 4 years and it's still going strong. I use a 2Gig CF card. I also have 2 DS-125 strobes which help light things up when not shooting available light. (Mine is in an Ikelite housing with TTL strobe control) Good luck!

[TimIngmire]

Daw,

you make an excellent about the brightness of the c5050 lens which is very often forgotten - having a lens which can open up to 1.8 is a great bonus especially when combined with a WAL. None of my SLR lenses open up like this.

Agreed also that the c5050 is a very hard to beat package for UW use.

Tim