Here are some notes on a ten-day trip to the Big Island of Hawaii, with eight boat dives and snorkeling every day save one. I highly recommend snorkeling on the Kona coast.
About the housing:
- The housing is much larger than some of the manufacturer housings out there, but very manageable.
- I lost the flash diffuser the first time out -- should have followed Chris's advice. The diffuser did work well and is absolutely necessary to avoid flash shadow from the lens port, particularly for close-up shots. (Positioning the diffuser horizontally gave vastly underexposed shots, probably because too much light reflected off the diffuser into the flash sensor; a vertical orientation worked much better.) Therefore I used plastic soup lids from the local ATA supermarket as a substitute. They worked very well, with optimal results when held at the far end of the lens port, tilted towards the subject. (I ended up using two stacked lids held out; four stacked lids gave similar results at the near end of the lens port. The diffusers also help in bringing down flash intensity for macro shots.)
- I found that the camera needs to be positioned very carefully within the housing. If it is screwed in too tightly, then the mode selector dial will not turn well. (Until I figured this out, it was the cause of endless frustration, since I change frequently between manual [for close-up flash shots] and aperture priority modes [for ambient-light shots, or flash shots with ambient-lit background], and occasionally use the movie mode. When I had trouble turning the dial, I got it to aperture priority and left it there, setting exposure compensation to between -2/3 and -2 stops for flash shots.) On the other hand, if the camera is screwed in too losely, then the important menu down button will not engage. The solution is to screw the camera in moderately tightly and test both controls before going in the water. Another problem arises then because the camera is slightly loose: the flash spring release will not engage. The easy solution is to press the C-AF button to brace the camera from the opposite side while releasing the flash.
- One small, rare gotcha: It is easy to turn the control for the F button (for ISO adjustment) past the button. This can sometimes make the F button get stuck down, rendering all other buttons unresponsive. If this happens, then just jiggle the F button so it releases.
About the camera:
- Use freshly charged batteries. The first time I went out with a battery that had been fully charged three weeks earlier, and it must have discharged in the meantime because I only got 26 shots out of it. The battery life was always rather poor. I always switched batteries between dives and often still came close to running out (particularly on a night dive when I had a little less attention to spare to managing battery life). While snorkeling I did run out of batteries several times.
- The RAW write time is awfully slow. I missed lots of shots due to the glacial RAW write time with a 1 GB card. It also threw off my timing for other things: After finishing one shot, I like to immediately prepare the camera for the next shot (restoring generic settings, then perhaps turning the LCD off or the camera off). But the camera is completely unresponsive while writing a RAW file, so I basically had to wait on the camera even if I didn't need to take a shot immediately. On the last time out, I used a 512 MB card and it was so much nicer. I think I should probably have purchased two or three 512 MB cards and swapped them along with the batteries, as JTemple and Kelvin have suggested.
- There is a slight dark spot on my sensor; I might send the camera in to Fuji to be cleaned. On most photos, it is not noticable and easily corrected anyway. But it is extremely noticable in movies because it stays fixed in place. Is there a way to apply, say, 10% lightening to a specific area of every frame of a movie (on a Mac), with minimal lossiness?
And the camera/housing setup in general:
- For flash close-up shots, I typically shot in manual, with shutter speed at or above 1/1000 (doesn't matter) and aperture set according to subject distance. (For close-up subjects use f8 for maximal depth-of-field. For subjects maybe a foot or two away, open up to maybe f5.6 because the internal strobe isn't strong enough otherwise.) With the diffuser positioned properly, there is usually no need to set flash exposure compensation, but special cases of course arise. I mostly shot ISO 100 for the slight bump in effective flash strength this gives, but occasionally (when I had time to play with settings) dropped to ISO 80.
- I have never used the movie mode above water, but surprisingly used it a number of times underwater. I typically used it to capture a dynamic scene perhaps a fair distance away for which a photo wouldn't come out. For example, when a manta happened to swim by, I switched to movie mode and just panned approximately. I couldn't see the manta on the LCD so the one photo I would have been able to take (remember 9 seconds between RAW shots) would have been hit-or-miss and not a fantastic photo anyway (manta was too far away). Anyway, instead of wasting time setting up the camera for an ambient-light shot (switch to aperture priority, turn camera off and on again to disable flash, check that exposure compensation is neutral), I wanted to just enjoy the moment even as I was capturing it. A quick movie is also a good way to capture the feel of a snorkeling site, better than photos. The movies are of poor quality -- the more complicated the background the more compression is applied -- but are quite fun. Of course, editing movies in post is challenging (too many decisions to be made).
- If there are any particulates in the water, and you are some distance from your subject (say a turtle), then don't bother with the flash as backscatter will ruin the shot. Use an open aperture in aperture priority instead. If there are any particulates in the water and you are close to the subject, take several shots and often one will come out with less backscatter.
- Overall it worked quite well, and the photos came out about as expected. Most aren't very good, many (most?) are slightly out-of-focus, but I at least documented my dives. Some technical limitations obviously (particularly slow RAW and poor battery life -- which have a fairly direct relationship to shot quality -- and better high ISO capability would have been useful), and gear limitations (no external flash or macro/wide-angle adapters). Having shot with no-flash disposable cameras for several years, I really appreciated the flash and close-focus capabilities, and the ability to immediately review a shot and its histogram. Many photographic limitations on my part. I'm very happy with both the camera and the housing.
Other:
- A CC30R filter, simply held in front of the lens, seemed to work rather well when there was maybe a 10 foot light path through the water, but it wasn't really strong enough for some snorkeling and all diving. I kept the filter between two plastic soup lids for protection between shots, since it is fragile. The filter was very cheap to experiment with (<$10), and I'll buy a stronger one next time. Since a filter costs in exposure, it would probably work better on a better camera (film or DSLR) which can handle higher ISO speeds.
Postprocessing lesson:
- All my underwater shots were shot RAW. Photoshop CS2 is an awesome program. I was using the 30 day trial instead of s7raw in VirtualPC, and I'm sold.
Some of my photos and stills from movies:
(All photos are uncropped and have only gone through RAW conversion followed by resize/resharpen. Some IDs are uncertain. More here.)
-DSCF2365: Pustulose phyllidia (nudibranch) with unidentified hydroids, Turtle Pinnacle
-DSCF2368: large Blackside hawkfish, Turtle Pinnacle
-DSCF2467: Dwarf moray, diving Naya Point
-DSCF2486: Leaf scorpionfish, Garden Eel Cove
-DSCF2490: Banded coral shrimp, Garden Eel Cove
-DSCF2496: unidentified (large-scale?) Soldierfish, night dive at Manta Ray Heaven (night name for Garden Eel Cove dive site off the airport)
No mantas were seen (we went to see them at the Sheraton Keauhou the next day), but still an interesting dive.
-DSCF2521: Undulated moray catching Lavendar tang, Manta Ray Heaven
I got a few shots from this sequence (hunt, catch, bang against rock, swallow), but the long RAW wait times hampered me, and I was getting warnings on the battery.
-DSCF2540: Triton's trumpet eating Cushion star, Makaiwa Bay
-DSCF2567: Undulated moray, Wash Rock
-DSCF2569.avi still: Manta ray
Comments, criticisms, and IDs are very welcome. I won't be back to Hawaii till next year (if I don't freeze in Monterrey in the meantime).
(I'm cross-posting this on digitaldiver and wetpixel.)
