So I brought in some Intova digital camera product...

I want to carry some underwater cameras in the shop so I brought in some Intova digital cameras and assorted items (red filters, wide angle lens, strobes/trays/fiber optic connectors) to try, as well as the $20 reusable film cameras that are good to a hundred feet. The digital cameras I brought in are 12 megapixel cameras housed in a housing that's good to 180 feet. If they're any good, they're a heck of a deal for under $250.

Some time in the next week or so I'll try to get out diving with one to see what it can do. I'm looking at keeping at least one for rent on the boat. I figure $35 a charter is a decent rental price for a camera that you can take a lot of stills and video (it shoots 720P HD video too), and I'll apply the first day's rental towards purchase of the camera if anyone decides they want to pick one up within a week after trying it. I'm hoping they're relatively easy to work with, like with any camera there's always a learning curve. I'll report back after I give 'em a shot.

I do plan on carrying some other photographic equipment down the line. Gotta get a start somewhere...

Later,

Steve

Olympus Pen PT-EP01 underwater housing for Oly's E-PL1 camera review...

Aloha,

I just received the housing for my Olympus E-pl1 camera. I refused the urge to go down the hill and do a dive with it today, tomorrow morning I'll have to. I took the time to read the manual, it actually comes with a reasonable sized manual, something I haven't seen with a lot of housings I've had before.

My first impressions are that it's well made. In the box comes the housing, o-ring, o-ring grease, dessicant packs, rubber LCD hood, a rigid lens cover. It also comes with an application for DEPP insurance. DEPP insures gear sets and underwater photo equipment. The housing features a new-ish locking system that Olympus has come with in the last couple of years that seems pretty good. The back of the housing is a transparent polycarbonate type of material. My only gripe is that only the bottom part of the back is polished to clear so you can readily see the o-ring and check for moisture... I'd like to see it polished to where you could see the entire o-ring to check on your seal. The buttons on the back of the housing are really nice, they're larger than I'm used to on other housings, and they're labeled nicely - almost better than the buttons on the camera are labeled.

I was happy to see the lens cover and LCD hood as the company that sold the housing had those available as "replacements" and I decided not to purchase them at the time. "Replacement" to me implies they come with the original purchase, but if you look up the housing on Olympus' site, they have the zoom gear ring listed as a "replacement" item, yet it does not come with the original purchase. I think Oly ought to change their website to say "optional" on the zoom gear, as the way they have it makes it unclear as to whether it comes with the original purchase or not. It doesn't. I did pick up the zoom gear as a separate purchase. The zoom gears are basically rubber gears that fit tightly around the camera lens which matches up with a small gear on the front of the housing so you can use the zoom. It's an extra 45 bucks, but well worth it. Different sizes of zoom gears are available, as the housing has been made to accept a couple different lenses and the gear needs to fit the specific lens.

The other purchase at the time of the order was the macro lens mount. It's a rigid plastic piece that fits over the front port of the housing and will accept 67 mil threaded lenses. I have an Inon 67 mil macro lens already so I'm set there. The lens adaptor is another 45 bucks... it all adds up.

The housing itself is pretty big compared to the Canon housing I had for my G9, but it's quite comparable to the size of the Ikelite housing I had for my Olympus 8080 several years back. The Olympus E-pl1 is one of the smallest interchangeable lens cameras available these days, and the housing is also. Olympus could have made the housing a bit smaller by eliminating the space for the optional electronic viewfinder. I'm sure they put that in there to appease the people who love using viewfinders rather than using the LCD. In my opinion the LCDs with live view have sort of revolutionized underwater photography, I suspect we'll see less use of viewfinders in the future. Even with it's somewhat largish size, it's quite a bit smaller than most of the DSLR housings we see come on the boat. Price of the housing is $599, I found it for $75 less. It sounds like a lot of money, but the typical DSLR housing begins at around $1200 and can top a couple grand easily. Olympus has made it so you can get an interchangeable lens system underwater for what has been the price of just an economy housing in the past.

Unlike most of the smaller point and shoot housings, this housing is not made for use of the onboard flash for taking photos. It's set up so the onboard flash can trigger a remote flash.. that's another expense down the line. For now I'll be shooting with available light.

I can't wait to get it wet.

Product review: Canon G9 with Canon WP-DC21 housing and Inon UCL-165 closeup lenses and M67 adapter...

Phew, long post title.... Here's the Canon housing for the G9, and the same housing with a Duron M67 adapter and two Inon UCL-165 closeup lenses added on to the housing. Pat and I recently picked up Canon G9 cameras and their associated Canon housings. We really love macro shots and saw some amazing stuff on one of the scuba message boards several months ago and were lusting for whatever allowed those pictures to be taken. After some sleuthing, not all posters want to share for some reason, we found the trick was by adding Inon UCL-165 closeup lenses.

This is a common practice by some people who have housings with threaded ports, you can add "wet" lenses to in effect get either closer or a more wide angle look. The Canon G9 and other simialar series Canons however have an oval port, which requires a 67 millimeter threaded adaptor. The one we found is manufactured in France and is readily available through one or two Japanese mailorder houses (google Yuzo Kanda to find the one we used).

Once the adapter is on you can add the closeup lenses... you can even stack the lenses to get a greater closeup effect. The first picture in this series is of a blue ginger out back of the house. I took it with the camera with the macro lenses from almost as close as it'll go. The second photo is what the camera will do with a single closeup lens added... much enlarged from the original photo in comparison. The third of the series is the same flowers with a second UCL-165 lens stacked on top of the first... much closer yet.

In underwater photography, closer is better... the less water between you and the lens the less to interfere with the image. With this particular camera and housing combo, you can add a single Inon UCL-165 closeup lens and still use the internal flash.
I have yet to try the second lens underwater as of yet, but I suspect it'll require an external strobe as the whole front end of the housing and lenses stick out far enough from the flash and you are close enough to the object that a portion of the internal flash will be blocked by all the add-ons.

The pictures above were quickies just to give you an idea of how much maginifcation the lenses give. I suspect it'll be tricky to get great underwater photos with these, but when everything goes right it might be just quite spectacular. The main reason you want to try to do all the closeup with lenses rather than just blowing it up in post production by cropping with an editor, is that everything you can do optically before working on it will give you a better picture in the end if you try to blow it up to any size.... hard to explain, but if I wanted to take a face photo and blow it up to say (I'll use extremes) 2' by 3' and instead of just taking a face shot I took a shot of the whole person, I'd have to crop out the whole picture except the face and by the time I blew it to umpty-ump times it's original size in post production it'd be very grainy or pixellated... you're better off just shooting the face only.

I've been out of the water with an ear infection for a week and a half... I'll report more soon when I can. I did pick up the external strobe I was looking at and couldn't figure it out underwater... I may have to read the instructions... oh, the horror!! I only had one dive with it before the infection kept me out, so taking the fact that nearly every time I take some new camera underwater I virtually always hate the results, I'm not worried about being able to figure out the flash.

later,

Steve

I picked up a new Inon UCL -165 closeup lens for my camera...

This is one of the early shots with the new closeup lens. I did crop some of the image, but not a whole lot. Inon, as well as other manufacturers, makes "wet" attachment lenses that you can add to the exterior of your underwater housing to acheive closeup or wide angle shots the camera can't normally do. The Canon G9 housing needs a special adapter (the one I found was manufactured by a french company, but only available through Japanese mailorder companies) to accept the lens, and with the adapter the wide angle lens apparently does little, but the closeup lens can do great things.

The lens allows you to get closer to the subject while in maximum zoom, so in my case instead of being 19 or more inches away from the subject in full zoom, I can shoot from roughly 6 inches instead while still fully zoomed in. Many animals can tolerate you being 6 inches away, but to do that normally you wouldn't be able to zoom in and still focus.

I'll do a more thorough review later, including where to find the adapters for the G9 housing and similar housings.

Starting Underwater Photography - Underwater Housings for Digital Cameras

Aloha,

I get a fair number of inquiries about which camera to get for starting out with underwater photography, so I'll chime in with a few of my thoughts here.

Many people think you have to get a dedicated underwater camera, while this may be the best for some people, it isn't the only way to go. Oftentimes you can pick up a great new camera, with all the bells and whistles, and it'll have a corresponding manufacturer designed underwater housing that is good to about 130-140 feet or so. In many cases you can even find a housing available for a digital camera you may already own. There are housings avaiable for many Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Casio, Canon and Fuji cameras already on the market, and they seem to be committed to supporting housings in the future. there's probablay a couple others I have forgotten. Below are some examples available at Amazon.com. You can refresh the page for more examples, or I suspect do a search for specific cameras and housings when you get to a results page. Note: Some of the lower priced housings here are geared to snorkeling depths, make sure to read the fine print.



Remember, each housing is generally made for a specific model of camera. If you have camera and are looking for the housing, you can always reverse the process and look up the camera and see if the housing is available as an accessory. Older models may be problematic as they get discontinued as cameras are phased out.

Having picked up our first digital camera and housing in about 2000/2001, Pat and I have been upgrading as time goes so I'm semi-familiar with what's out there. I'm not going to recommend specific cameras(The big photo show is at the end of the month - everyone will probably introduce new cameras and today's stuff will be out of date shortly anyway), but Canon, Olympus and Fuji seem to be the most popular with the semi-serious underwater hobyists. I wouldn't hesitate to house a Nikon, Casio, or Sony either though. Many of the more popular point and shoots even have underwater settings built in these days.

Some basic recommendations I'd give are...

LCD screen, get it as big as possible. You'll probably want at least a 2.5 inch screeen, LCD screens that size and up are much more forgiving to middle-aged eyes, plus you'll see more detail in what you're doing while taking the photo.

Optical zoom is more important than digital zoom, you are probabaly looking at 3X-6X or so optical zoom for underwater, although I've heard people are happy with their superzoom cameras underwater, they just don't use the full zoom capacity underwater.

If you are going to be serious about it, and have access to nicer image editing programs, you might consider getting a camera with RAW. At the very least I'd recommend getting a camera with a "Manual" or "Custom" white balance setting.
_________

Many people think they have to invest in external strobes and the whole shebang right up front. That's really not the case. Take a look through my archives, there's not a picture on the blog yet that used an external strobe. They were all done with the onboard flash or with natural light. People who know what to look for can tell if an external strobe was used or not in some shots, but most people who aren't really into the hobby can't or won't care. External strobes will allow you to do more things, and get you well lit shots from further away, but you can always add them later if you don't right away.

Many of the underwater housings suitable for diving depths are running in the $150 to $225 range and corresponding cameras can run anywhere from $150 and up, but you can often get into a pretty decent little setup from $300 to $650 these days. There are higher end cameras and housings available of course.... it seems once you get hooked there's always the desire to upgrade.

Anyway, once you've got your equipment together, the best thing you can do is get to know your camera, and practice.... It's almost a lock you'll be disappointed with your initial results at first, I was, but with practice you'll get to know what you can and can't do with what you have.