SP-350 Update

I have to say, that after three trips diving 30 to 70 feet with the SP-350/PT-030 combo, I'm extremely happy with my choice of cameras. On the plus side, the housing is small, light, easy to get into and out of. The built in scene settings work very well. I've had the best success for a variety of UW shots using the UW macro setting and upping the quality to SHQ. The built in flash works fine for macro, and I've played with dive light illumination with some good results and no focus, blur or white balance problems. The auto white balance works as well as a filter and doesn't require natural illumination. 8 megapixels gives you a huge picture, and the clarity is quite good. The menu is easy to navigate, even underwater, and the important functions can be accessed in two to three strokes. The screen is large and easy to read underwater. Battery life with a rechargeable CRV-3 is phenomenal. I just did a half hour dive with the camera on full time, left it on in the boat for over an hour for whale/seal/otter and friend shots. I then reviewed my pictures and showed them to my friends at the restaurant for half an hour, let my dive buddies look at them in the car for another ten minutes. I brought the camera home and downloaded the pictures, and left the camera on for half an hour while I messed with the files on the computer. The battery indicator still reads full charge. The camera has so many manual settings and preset capabilities that after a month of ownership I haven't begun to use them (plus and minus). The ability to shoot raw or take raw with a JPEG back-up is great.

On the minus side. The autofocus is slow. I can't tell you how many times I've snapped a picture, finished and moved the camera, then had it flash and take a shot of my fin or the bottom. I have five pictures of the splash after a whale breached fully and then landed in the water (I had my finger on the button waiting to focus so I wouldn't miss it.) At least one picture still had a fin out of the water. I think this can be cured using manual presets for focus distance so the camera doesn't have to autofocus for each shot. There are so many manual settings and the manual is so foggy that after a month, I haven't figured out how to use them all. The lens cover for the housing hangs on a four inch string and there's nowhere to plug the thing while you're shooting, so I've lost five or six macros to the lens cover hanging halfway in front of the lens. The rubber boot around the screen effectively shields the corners of the screen from view underwater, so it's hard to change some of the settings and see what you've done.

Overall, I've got about six hundred dollars in the camera, housing and a filter. It has performed phenomenally for most of my uses. It is light and easy to use, and has enough features that it will only get better as I gain experience with it and UW photography. I want to add a strobe and play with the manual settings to minimize some of the shortcomings. I highly recommend this combo for anyone who wants a P&S with some SLR features.

Larry - Nice photo. BTW, there are a couple of options that might help you with the focus time. There's a full-time AF which automatically focuses on anything you point at....so you theoretically could point at the ocean where the whale is breaching and it would focus beforehand. The other is manual focus mode. I have done this several times. It brings up a handy distance meter on the LCD and allows you to set it manually. While setting it, the LCD actually gives you a close up window of the subject you're focusing on. In the case of a whale you would preset this to infinity and just snap away. The other option would be to employ one of the above methods and set your camera to continuous shoot. If your resolution is on HQ, I think you get about 5-7 fast shots before the buffer fills completely. I'm with you on the happy selection thing. I've only used it in the pool and on a manatee dive and I'm thrilled.

Later,

Gary

I've been playing with the focus settings, and it seems like the manual focus is the best set up for quick shots. Just set to infinity, as you said, and hold it half way down. It speeds up the reaction time by a huge amount. I've also been kicking myself in the shins for forgetting I could have put it in movie mode and just left the thing on for 19 minutes or taken HQ movies at 30 frames/second for 20 second segments! Too bad the resolution is so much lower in movie mode. One thing I'm strongly considering is a telephoto lens. The 1.7 from Oly would up the total zoom to about 25X, and I think Inon or Epoque has one to go on the 46mm housing thread.

One other problem I had was taking surface pics between dives without pulling the camera from the housing. The first bunch I took were blurred from water spots. This time I just wiped the lens gently with a dry tissue. It cleaned up nicely and didn't leave lint. How did your Manatee pics come out? You can check some more of my shots on Scubaboard in Member Gallery under Larry C.

I posted a few under the dive trips catagory. My shots turned out okay...you can read about my struggles ...

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11825

One other note about the movie mode...make sure your mic is turned on in config. Silent movies are great at depth but not when you want to hear the oohs and ahhs . I learned this the hard way. Later, Gary

Larry,

I just did a few more tests with the 350. This was my typical unscientific approach. My wife was driving us around today and I was playing with the camera in the passengers seat. My first experiment was to put the camera into total manual mode, including manual focus. I set the focus to infinite which I believe is anything beyond 15ft. On a bright day there was virtually no shutter lag (.5 second?). Here's the unofficial test.

Car doing 40mph. Camera aimed out the passengers side window perpendicular to the direction of travel. Looking only at the LCD I tried catching objects as they entered the screen on the left. In Manual mode I was able to get a photo of the object before it left the screen. I'm confident that I won't miss any action if I have a mode preprogrammed this way especially in good light. The only problem I see with this configuration is the buttons that control the focus distance are also the ones controlling shutter speed. There's no way around this so if you need to adjust shutter speed you have to shift it back into automatic focus. The only work around is making the AEL a quick button to access that menu so you don't have to go through the menus while down under. In any case, manual mode should definitely allow you to catch the whales in mid-breach.

Autofocus with the full-time autofocus enabled. This is also faster than just the AF mode alone but not as fast as the manual mode above. Again it has to acquire a lock on the subject before it can fire.

Autofocus mode alone is tough in a moving vehicle because it can't seem to lock so I can imagine if your subject is moving underwater it will also find it tough to lock on.

So in 2 of the 4 "my mode" programs I will have one with the complete manual focus and the other with autofocus with full-time autofocus. There will be another for macro and the final my mode for the magic filter.

I hope you find this useful,

Gary

Another way to get a quicker shot is to set the camera on the "Sport" preset. This gives a faster shutter and a prefocus. I finally got to play with "My Mode" this weekend. We dove Point Lobos Reserve on Sat. morning and after helping with an open water class (My wife and I are doing the Dive Con in Training thing) we went out for a quick half hour on the Breakwater wall in Monterey. In terms of getting the settings right (flash level, aperture and shutter speed) the presets do a better job than I do, but I got to play with RAW pictures. Now that I popped for a new $800 computer, I was able to download and use the free "Rawshooter Essentials" program. Totally easy to use and I was able to repair my over/underexposed pics as well as improving them with fill lighting, shadow contrast, etc. Generally, I've found that the Auto white balance on the camera works about as well as manual or post editing with a few exceptions. I have a cheapo strobe on the way after the 3-4 week back-order and hopefully that will get rid of some of my backscatter issues. I've posted some of my new pics on ScubaBoard.com in member galleries under Larry C. I don't know if I can link it or not, but I'll give it a try.

http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgall...00&ppuser=51877

Thanks for your post. I'm considering getting this camera, but I'm told that the lcd display shuts off when you are in manual mode. Is there any truth to this?

I'm looking for a p&s with manual settings, but don't want to go SLR.

Eddy.

Eddy,

The camera is setup with a histogram feature which supposedly makes the display turn dark to represent low light. Inside this can make the LCD look black or even in the off position. You can turn the histogram feature off in the camera setup, the display is fine. I am currently experimenting with the Sea&Sea 16mm wide angle lens. The early results have been good.

Later,

Gary

Finally got in the water with my FL-20/PFL-01 set-up. Still waiting on the Sunpak and its tray to build my arm, so I hand held the flash. Fortunately, it is almost neutrally bouyant, so I could adjust my bouyancy, check my air etc. and just kind of let it float there. Had a lot of initial problems with holding the strobe too close to the subject. Overexposed most of my early shots. I also forgot to turn off the built-in flash, so I had overexposed backscatter shots. Finally, I must have rubbed the knob on my descent, because my original setting on ttl-auto turned into something else. Fortunately, all the pictures were in RAW, so I was able to clean them up nicely in Rawshooter essentials. Third dive of the day I had the flash set to strobe only, got the knob in the right place and held the flash well behind the camera for macros and well off to the side for wider shots. Had some nice results. More shots on Scubaboard member gallery-Larry C

Larry,

Another handy feature of the oly setup is it has a manual mode for the flash. You put the flash on manual and you can select settings 1-10. I had the same issues with the internal flash setting originally...fortunately I've worked all my bugs out in the pool. I've got some pictures to post of uninteresting subjects but nonetheless good shots to show the difference with a WA lens and without it. The Sea and Sea 16mm has worked out to be a real find for the money.

Do you have to manually focus with it, or does the auto focus still work? How bad is the vignetting? Have you found a single step adapter yet, and did it solve the vignetting issue? I've been thinking about the Inon's as they have a great reputation, but at $61.95 for the AD adaptor plus $259 for the WA lens or $369 for the fish-eye, it's about like buying another camera.

          The camera is setup with a histogram feature which supposedly makes the display turn dark to represent low light. Inside this can make the LCD look black or even in the off position. You can turn the histogram feature off in the camera setup, the display is fine. 

My wife bought a 350. I was playing with it briefly this morning. I found the above situation. Good to know a solution. One more similar situation. The screen gets quality greatly decreases when focusing on dark seen, such as in poor lighting. Is this normal for the 350? I only had few minutes to play with it and won't have a chance to get back to it before Friday.

Edit: I just called Olympus. Got through immediately. The lad said doesn't sound normal, to send it in. I'll wait for any additional feed back here.

Edit: Camera sent back to http://www.newegg.com for exchange.

Got tired of waiting for my Sunpak to set up the tray and arm and finally built one for the Oly flash. Will dive with it tomorrow.

I am so appreciative to have finally read postings that are so helpful in deciding on whick U/W setup to purchase. I'm just making the switch from an inexpensive Bonica film camera. My priorities were to have a digital, at least 6 megapixels, SLR features macro capabilities, and definitley a strobe. Of course it is constrained by my budget, trying to keep it as close to $1000 as possible. This seems to be about the best quality and performance I could hope for, for the $. I looked into an U/W housing for my Canon digital Rebel. $1300++ w/o strobe. I look forward to future postings from you since you've added a strobe.

Thanks!!

KarenB from Iowa

Karen,

Welcome to wetpixel Here's a link to the Oly I assembled on Ebay and the relative costs.

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11517

Here is another with a wide angle attachment that I purchased not knowing how well it would work.

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12973

Took the loc-line rig out yesterday. Very easy to adjust. Well balanced and slightly negative bouyancy. I'm still struggling with camera settings for use with the flash and flash settings. I stuck with ttl-auto but most shots were underexposed. Through the miracle of Rawshooter, I saved many of them. New shots are posted in my Scubaboard gallery. Next time I plan to either up the ISO, lower the f-stop or use a different flash setting. I still had some problems with shadows, so I'm looking forward to the Sunpak coming and allowing me a strobe on each side of the subject. I didn't get many wide shots due to 8-15 foot visibility with lots of chunks.

You put the flash on manual and you can select settings 1-10.

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Is this the camera's internal Slave setting? Is 1 weakest and 10 strongest? Has using the manual strobe setting lowered your shutter delay?

I'm really struggling with strobe settings. What works with one camera setting changes entirely with a different one. Last dive I had crap visibility and lots of surge, got the strobe a little too close and had washed out overexposed pictures I couldn't repair. I never had this happen on the built in flash, but the improvement in backscatter is significant.

Larry,

Is this the camera's internal Slave setting?

Actually the manul setting is on the fl-20 flash. You also need to set the camera flash settings to slave. Then you can select a level. 1 is the lowest. I used this for supermacro mode (which I'm doubting will work very well on any subject that has any movement at all). I kept washing out the subject in supermacro until I figured out how to manually set the flash.

Later,

Gary

Thanks Gary. I'm going to play with the strobe settings some. Also, I've been using fixed camera settings and altering them manually up or down on F-stop and shutter speed. I'm going to try some shots on Aperture priority and Shutter priority and see what happens, although from what I've seen topside, the camera seems to just automatically go to the lowest setting in low light conditions. I'm interested in what the exif says afterward and how well the camera compensates and adjusts the flash in auto settings. My other challenge is finding an ideal strobe distance for macro and s-macro shots. Have you come up with a way to keep that stupid diffuser in place? Every time I move or touch the thing it falls off.

Larry,

I've found manual to be the best. Aperture always sets the shutter speed too low. The camera seems to not understand that a flash is attached when its making the settings so it matches the shutter speed to the lighting conditions. Ditto for the aperture. I have been practicing successfully using the regular macro mode and zoom along with the diffuser...sorry...the diffuser is what it is and I haven't found a good way except to check it before every shot.

Later,

Gary