A buddy of mine just got a PD100 3chip video camera and housing. He shot some dolphins in 20ft on one of his first times out. The sunrays in the photos were awesome, better than any I've ever captured with my e-20. He froze and captured stills from the images and again - the sunrays were unbelievable. I have a housed 1chip digital video camera and it blows out highlights too easily to capture sunrays well, if at all. So, I'm thinking the difference is the 3 chips - why don't we have 3chip still cameras yet? The X3 is the closest thing. According to this theory, the X3 may be THE digital cam to take underwater for this reason alone.
All speculation of course.
Kasey
Have you tried shooting with a high shutter speed, and underexposing the blue a bit?
I've seen some fantastic results with still imaging.
Having a high dynamic range sensor with larger photosites also helps. IMO.
Cheers
James
I think I've captured rays as well as is possible with my system. I shoot with high shutter speed, and underexpose a lot!!! I can get OK results shooting silhouettes (sp), but what was impressive with the videocam was that he got rays with no special effort at all. They were as spectacular as with film! I think that 3 chips handling the information really is an improvement over one, and allows much more precise gradients of exposure and color. Like I mentioned before, my 1 chip PC110 can't do that. Wouldn't the same improvements be expected from still cams if they used multiple chips?
That makes sense. Have one chip to capture the lows, one for medium, and one for bright levels.
FWIW, I couldn't get good sunrays with my Coolpix, but I can with my S2pro.
Cheers
James
Another thought - I wonder if the red-filter used with the video cameras might make it easier for the cameras to interpret sunrays. I also noticed his blue water backgrounds to be a pretty indigo color (almost unrealistic) very consistently. Weird how a system that is obviously inferior at producing stills, can do sunrays so much better than any dedicated digital still system I've handled.
I don't think having three chips is what does it, other than that it increases the sensor area 3x. So having three chips is probably no better than having one chip that's three times the area. As James said, larger pixel size increases dynamic range, and I think that is the advantage of film over the small sensor digital cameras. That difference is most noticible on shot into the sun. Getting a reasonable exposure of the Sun and also getting rays to come out requires a range in brightness that's too much for the small 8 bit sensors. You either end up with a sun that's one BIG white spot or loose the rays in the dark water.
The best I've managed is this shot, and the key is that the Sun is NOT in the photo.
Here's a decent but not good shot that I got in Kona:
Still working on it. I was mostly playing around on this dive since I flooded my strobe.
