Underwater housings for digital SLR's? Advice?

[rocketandroll]

Hi all


Hope this is the right place to ask this question....

I'm a photographer first, a diver (well, snorkeller mainly) second...

I have a few digital SLR's and want to take them with me on holiday later this year (destination tbc, but probably Red Sea coast, see post in snorkelling forum)... I bought a cheap (£100) 35mm underwater camera and took it with me on my honeymoon to Thailand... took a few rolls, but was generally disgusted with the results which were at best dark and blurry, and at best unrecognisable :-(

I would very much like to take my Eos 20D rig, inc a nice F2.8 macro lens underwater (5m absolute max)... but really don't have the budget to go and blow £1500+ on a hard-case housing and underwater strobe/flash setup... certainly not for the sake of a two week holiday :-(

So... my real question is... does anyone have any experience with the flexible 'bag' type housings that are available? Seems I can fit my whole camera, battery grip, big lens and hotshoe-mounted flash in to a £200 bag... which is a lot more palateable. But... £200 is a lot of money if I still get rubbish pictures out of it.

Has anyone used one of these, do they know what the optical quality of the glass in the 'window' is like in general? Are there any other important things to remember about lighting etc for underwater photography that, as a land-based photographer, I wouldn't have thought of? Most importantly.... how hard is it to operate a fiddly SLR through a thick bag... underwater?


Many thanks in advance for any advice!



Ben

[Paul Morris]

The problem with the flexible bags is that they are compressible so aren't really any use other than for at or just under (1-2m) the surface. A bag to fit a large DSLR, battery grip & strobe would also be quite large and VERY buoyant.

Saw a professional photographer along at one of our pool sessions taking photographs for a company website, used the same setup. Personally I got better results with a compact-digital, decent housing & UW strobe as I could get underwater underneath the subject and shoot towards the surface. He was very limited in the angle of his shots (i.e. surface bound).

If you're not that serious and don't want to invest in an underwater housing for your EOS, then consider a decent prosumer digital compact, such as Olympus or Canon. Quite good polycarbonate housings are available at reasonable cost, most are rated to 40m+ so are well within your requirements.

I use an Olympus 5060, Ikelite housing & Ikelite DS-50 Strobe and I'm very happy with the results. People are winning UW photo competitions these days with high-end compact digitals.

A big Canon EOS is a lot of camera to trust to a plastic bag. :eek:
An Ikelite polycarb housing (http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/2d20canon.html) is available for the 20D, might be cheaper than you think.

[rocketandroll]

Many thanks for that info...

The sites that sell them (the bags) list them as technically useable to 10m+ but only easily useable to 5m due to compression of the bag against the controlls under the pressure rendering the controls unuseable. I won't be going below 2m, 3m max I'd have thought.

Hadn't really considered bouyancy being a problem... but I guess that could be a reasonable amount of trapped air that you're trying to drag under...

though I've certainly seen images of them being used down a good few meters (both the SLR and the camcorder versions) so they must be able to be dragged under to some extent.

The issue of it leaking or being ripped does worry me a bit... that's £2K's worth of camera, and a big chunk of my liveliehood being dragged underwater... a bit of a risk I guess...


I may take a look at a point and shoot and hard housing as an alternative... it's just a hard thing to live with after years of SLR use... shudder :-(

No manual control, shutter delay.... eugh :-(


Thanks again for the info, will do some additional research!


Ben

[Iain Topliss]

The Canon S70 and S80 have a fair degree of manual control (far more than the average point and shoot) and have a dedicated housing. Might be worth a look. Unfortunately I have nothing to offer in terms of experience with this setup - I just know it is a possibility. Maybe somebody else out there has used it?

Iain

[Paul Morris]

No manual control, shutter delay.... eugh :-(
Hey we're not all phillestines! :mad: I know my f-stop from my deco stop. ;)

Most prosumer compact digitals do have funny modes such as M, S, A, TTL Flash compensation ??? I'm sure you know what they stand for :p

Shutter delay exists, but some are much better than others, especially in full manual mode when you pre-focus.

I use the Olympus C-5060, which I think has been replaced by some later model with far more pixels, probably about a month or two after it came out....

Shutter lag can be virtually eliminated with the right settings, the annoying part is media write times for RAW camera files (approx 6-8 secs to a 4GB Microdrive). Solid-state media is no better, the mediabus in the camera is the bottleneck!. Seems like it lasts forever, when your money shot glides past you and the little red light is still flashing! Shoot JPEG for those moments!! JPEG has no such problem, but I'm a big fan of RAW.

If you decide on that option, try a few before you buy. Take a nice big media card along and shoot some RAW to get an idea of shutter lag & write times etc.

Any significant others that would like cameras for their upcoming birthdays? :D