Underwater Photography

[gemnjam]

Hiya,

I just wondered if anyone could offer me some advice. Essentially earlier this year my OH broke his digital camera and so for xmas I thought I might get him a new one.

Seeing as how we seem to have got ourselves into this diving malarkey now I thought it might be a good idea to get one for which he could later get a waterproof housing to take it out with him and wondered if anyone could make any recommendations or a good camera which won't break the bank?

Also, someone else I know said they were advised when doing the underwater photography SDC they needed a camera with white balance (at least I think that was what it was called). What is this? And would it be a good idea to get one with this anyway firstly for better pics and also in case OH does the SDC later?

Any advice welcome. Thanks

[ChristianG]

Seeing as how we seem to have got ourselves into this diving malarkey now I thought it might be a good idea to get one for which he could later get a waterproof housing to take it out with him and wondered if anyone could make any recommendations or a good camera which won't break the bank?
Now there's a loaded question and a half - where do I start?

Some URLs to help you:
http://www.digideep.com/english - mostly tells you whether there is a housing available for a camera. Mostly - they're not prescient.
http://db.tidbits.com/article/7891 - tells you, in exquisite detail, how to buy a camera but it has no provisos for u/w use so that's very much a caveat.
http://www.dpreview.com/ - gives you as close to an unbiased opinion as you can get, provided you know how to read the technical jargon, which is pretty daunting. Again, above water only.
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/ - one of the better "how to/what's that?" sites.
http://www.wetpixel.com/ - as the name implies, arguably the best underwater photography site on the web. You could do worse than ask the same question there, but give an idea of budget for the camera otherwise, like me, they have nothing to work on.

Mods, I hope I'm not blotting my copybook by supplying those URLs, but we don't have a dedicated Photography Forum where we could have this type of stuff readily available as a sticky, just like YD.

Also, someone else I know said they were advised when doing the underwater photography SDC they needed a camera with white balance (at least I think that was what it was called). What is this? And would it be a good idea to get one with this anyway firstly for better pics and also in case OH does the SDC later?
In an ideal situation, this is what your camera should have:

• White balance (WB) (also useful above water) allows you to change the hue your camera shoots at depending on the light. Light, BTW, is not just bright or dull. A quick and dirty explanation is that a form of white balance is employed when you opt from "scenery" to "portrait" (etc) mode on your broken camera which I assume is a Point & Shoot (P&S) rather than a dSLR (digital Single Lens Reflex).
• raw: some P&Ss can shoot in raw, it basically means that all of the information is made available to you rather than having the camera auto-convert it into a jpeg or similar when a lot of the information is lost. Raw allows you to adjust the WB in post processing.
• A fast lens, and some lenses are much better than others. f2 is the current benchmark but if you get something that starts at, say, f5 and goes up from there depending on where the lens zoom is I wouldn't consider it. Large amounts of telephoto are, BTW, largely unusable underwater. By fast I mean that the lens drags in (another quick and dirty explanation) as much light as is available and especially u/w you simply cannot have too much light. There are lenses and there are lenses, Samsung uses Schneider lenses and Panasonic uses Leica lenses and I tend to stand at attention when I hear those names. This is not to say that the Canons, Nikons etc of this world are "bad" lenses but I certainly wouldn't entertain a camera and lens made by the equivalents of Messrs Yum and Cha (that no-one's ever heard of previously).

A lot of people, and I'm one, say that when it's all boiled down it's the glass (of the lens) that counts.

The above are the three essentials IMO but also don't get caught up in the megapixel race, 10,000 pixels is more than enough in a P&S, more than that mostly makes matters worse rather than better.

It's one heck of a big bone for a Chihuahua to gnaw it, I wish you luck. Oh, and my analogy is no reflection on you personally - at all. :)

[PeteM]

Mods, I hope I'm not blotting my copybook by supplying those URLs, but we don't have a dedicated Photography Forum where we could have this type of stuff readily available as a sticky, just like YD.

No it's fine.

As we get a lot of this type of post how about we get someone to write a beginners guide to underwater photography we put it as a sticky in the technical topics section (could put it here but I think it fits better in technical). We then sticky it and lock it so it does not get swamped (with a note in the post saying that any questions should be posted in a new thread).

The question is who writes it;)

[ChristianG]

The question is who writes it;)
Well, I'll stick my hand up if you like, unless someone else wants the job. At least I have the time given that I'm retired. I'd also be pleased to help if you want to give the job to me but I think that there are many on this site who could also help so I'd propose a thread for that purpose which can be closed and then suitably modified in the light of new technology or whatever. I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one here with some vague knowledge of cameras and I sure would be able to use some help on video, about which I know precisely nothing.

Should we take this to PM or, my preference, e-mail or a separate thread so we can stop hijacking this particular one? I'm sure you know, or can get, my e-mail address Pete. :)