Advice on system starting out

Hi. I have been looking to buy a digital camera for use on land and underwater for some time and I am hoping that the experienced users in this forum can help me! I'd like to get a decent system starting out so I won't have to upgrade to soon in the future. I am open to spending more money and get an SLR if users think that it might be the best option, but ideally I'd feel most comfortable making a purchase around the cost of the Olympus 5050. Since I don't know too much about strobes and how to connect them to the camera, I need advice on them as well. I have a laptop (Mac Powerbook) to bring with me on trips and I could download images to it. Some cameras I've considered (but I have no idea what housing, strobes, or accessories to get for taking on a trip) are the CoolPix 5000, Olympus 5050, etc. Thanks for any advice!

Just to give you the benefit of my recent digital camera experience. I currently use a digital SLR (Olympus E10) for detailed land photography and a point & shoot (Dimage xi) which I take almost everywhere for reactive situations. Rather than going full on & purchasing a housing (expensive) for the SLR I bought a housing and strobe for the Dimage xi in order to get some experience of digital use underwater.

On a recent trip to the Maldives I soon found out the limitations of the Dimage xi point & shoot, which autos everything & allows you limited flexibility. I learned a lot from the trip and the camera. I will now be purchasing a housing for my E10 SLR.

My advice, if you have the dosh go for an SLR outfit. If not perhaps a non-SLR but with almost full SLR functions. The new C5050 (5 mega pix) package looks excellent and we are awaiting reports on the camera from a previous post. I am now toying with the idea of getting the C5050 as well as the SLR outfit as it would stop my wife scrapping over the camera when we are both diving together. I can also still use my S & S YSD25X strobe with both units.

Hope this helps in some respects

Mark H

Go for the 5050 it's the best inovation in this class.

Housings will be available from several hundred dollars to three thousand dollars for the high end all singing all dancing jobby.

Stobes: Go for a rigid arm Sea & Sea tray with a DX 90, this is the easiest way to learn strobe techniques without the complications of bendy arms.

This is a very "in my opinion" post. With that said:

Nikon came out with their version of the the Olympus 5050 - almost a year ago! It's called the Coolpix5000.

Many housing manufacturers already support this camera and there is a wealth of knowledge on this forum about how to use it. Strobe use with the Coolpix5000 is much easier than with the 5050 and you are not limited to a very short list of strobes.

The advantage of the 5050 system is that Olympus makes a cheap housing.

Check out the cost estimate here:

http://www.wetpixel.com/features/200211_ge...gettingstarted/

You'll see that when you add up the equipment for the whole camera system, the difference in "savings" to go with the Olympus housing doesn't look as attractive.

HTH

James Wiseman

I recommend the 5050. James's cost breakdown is correct. IMHO the ~$600 difference doesn't buy you much.

I disagree that strobe use is easier for the CP5000. The optical fiber connection between my C4040 and YS90DX has never failed me. It's easy to set up and flood proof.

The utility of TTL in these camera's has been disucssed here lots and lots of time. Even with TTL, underwater is never a "point and shoot" enviroment. You'll have to figure out what compensations are needed for your setup and conditions to get good results. Do a search on this site on the number of times people ask about trouble with their TTL. It's eaiser to use manual. With the instant feedback from your LCD, you'll get calibrated on shutter speed, aperature and strobe power setting in a short time.

As much as I hate to admit it, I made a mistake in that estimate.

If you go w/ the Oly, you will also need a tray and handle. So throw in roughly another $100 for a single handle and tray.

That closes the gap to roughly $500. For that, you get a rock solid housing, a strobe bulkead connection for a sync cord, and a deeper depth rating. You also get TTL strobe control and flash compensation with the Coolpix.

Cheers

James

Yeah, but I would err on the side of quality with the 5050. Flash compensation is hardly an issue when $500 could be spent on something else like a lens.

Flash compensation can be done by removing the arm from the tray and holding it back a little further. As far as choice is concerned there is no need to look further than the 90DX - Well at some point you could add another!

Thanks for the advice so far everyone. There doesn't seem to be a clear winner between the 5050 and 5000 for underwater use? I'm not sure I understand the differences with how the strobes work with each housing/camera. I think I understand the need to get an additional tray and handle for the PT-015 housing but I'm not sure how the strobes work. Also, as far as the SLR's go, which one of the available digital SLR's is the best option for someone like myself. It seems the housings are all fairly expensive. Thanks!

Oh, and I plumb totally forgot the Nikon 19mm lens!

J

To read the longest thread ever on digital SLR setups, click here:

Digital UW SLR Comparison Thread

Cheers

James

For the 5050 + PT-015 ( BTW I think this is rated to 40m, so I don't think depth is an issue ), use the internal flash to trigger the YS90DX on slave mode. The light is sent through an optical fiber with one end mounted in front of the flash (outside of the housing) and the other end on the strobe's slave sensor.

The advantage with this scheme is there's nothing to flood.

The CP5000 + Ike housing has a strobe connector. A cable connects the stobe and housing and wires internal to the housing completes the camera connection. This setup can be operated in the TTL mode, although for the CP5000 it's not really through the lens because the TTL sensor for the CP5000 is on the outside of the camera.

Bob. What I meant by compensation are the +/- exposure setting in TTL mode that increase or decrease the stobe exposure from the nominal TTL exposure (I think Nikonos shooters use the film ASA setting for this function). It's pushing buttons on the camera rather than changing stobe position.

A DSLR system will set you back at least $5000 before the strobes. I've seen great results from both the Canon D60 and the Fuji s2 pro.

Digital UW SLR Comparison Thread

Hmm. They seem to assume the worst, when I'm involved. Too bad.

So you are saying Two Towers is better than Duece Bigalow....

As Herb implied, the difference in strobe compatibiliy boils down to the fact that Nikon's strobe protocol has become the standard for underwater photography. the Coolpix 5000 uses the same electronic signals to fire and quench the strobe that the Nikonos uses and that Nikon's SLRs use (aside: this does *not* apply to their digital SLRs, which use a different protocol). So, with a Coolpix 5000 you can theoretically attach any Nikonos compatible strobe via a synch cable and get "TTL", though as herb also points out, the metering is done by a sensor on the handgrip, not a sensor inside the camera. For the Olympus cameras, you must use a slave strobe because there is no TTL connection (except for the Olympus FL-40 flash). And not just any slave strobe will work, because the camera's metering system uses a preflash to prodict exposure -- the slave strobe must know the difference between a preflash and a "main flash". There are currently four strobe manufacturers (that I know of) that make strobes compatible with preflash digicams: Sea&Sea, Ikelite, INON and Epoque. The Sea&Sea YS-90DX is a manual strobe with the olympus cameras because it recreates only the second (or main) flash; it has 12 (I think) power settings. It has an internal slave sensor that is made more reliable by adding a fiber optic cable to pipe the cameras flash directly to the sensor. The Ikelite DS-50 and DS0125 use a separate sensor, pointed at the camera and connected to the strobes electronically to sense the preflash and the main flash. Ike's strobe/sensor combination is TTL only as it reproduces both flashes from the camera. Ike has announced a manual sensor/controller and says it will be ready soon -- that will give DS-50 and -125 users an option of TTL or manual control (10 power settings), though that decision will have to be made before the dive (the manual sensor, apparently does not have a TTL setting, and, as I said earlier, the TTL sensor doesn't do manual). It is my understanding that the Epoque strobes operate in a TTL-like fashion as well and that the INON strobes can do either TTL or manual depending on the strobe and the settings you choose (Allan is the only one among us that has an INON strobe, I think). I have two DS-125s and like them, others have the YS-90DXs and love them. We could probably spend a while arguing over which is better for what.

The PT-xxx housings do not ship with a tray (a bar attached to the bottom of the housing to which strobe arms are attached). If you get the PT-015, you can buy an aftermarket tray that bolts on to the tripod mount of the housing.

As far as flash adjustments go, with a manual strobe, it's pretty simple -- you set the camera manually, then crank the strobe to whatever power setting you think is close. If your shot looks wrong on the LCD, you change settings and do it over. You would think TTL would let you avoid this but I find that it isn't so simple. With my DS-125s, I find that I must go into the camera menu and adjust the flash exposure compenstion in the camera to get a good exposure quite often ( in other words, I'm telling the camera to quench the flash earlier or later) but usually the adjustment is between +0.7 and +1.3EV for my setup. Is what I do really that much different than what a true manual strobe user would do. I'm not so sure . . .

Hope this helps,

At the end of the day neither camera was aimed at UW users otherwise a little more forethough would have gone into the design regarding strobe connection and TTL syncs rather than having to rely on the effective but still heath-robinson routes.

Regarding what is good for beginners: think small, think cost effective and justifiable expense - how often will you use it and what are the end results going to be used for.

The 5 mpix range is hard to beat and a lot more forgiving than DSLR's. If at some point you feel it's not for you it hasn't cost the same as a family car. Think about depreciation too - as poor as a PC!

Thanks, I think I beginning to understand the differences between the strobe uses. It seems like the manual stobes require alot of trial and error. Are the adjustments you are making typically only required at the beginning of the dive (e.g., once you have the strobe dialed in for the lighting conditions on a particular dive it is set and forget for the most part), or do you have to constantly adjust the flash? Do the strobes that operate in a TTL-like fashion, such as the Epoque (I am interested in this one because Marine Camera is offering a deal on this strobe and the PT-015 housing) make this process any easier? Finally, do the D-SLR cameras offer any benefits in making strobe/lighting adjustments over the 5050 or 5000? Thanks!

I think that either method will require some trial and error until you start to figure things out. Then, as you learn, your intuition will take over and you'll start to get more photos right on the first try. I have no personal experience with the Epoque strobes, though it appears that the only place selling a TTL version of an Epoque setup is oceanbrite. Doesn't look to me like the one that marineacmera sells is TTL. Best bet is to ask before you buy.

The only DSLR that currently does TTL underwater is the Fuji S2Pro. It uses the "old" Nikon flash protocol. For macro, I would think that it would give pretty good exposures and have seen examples of that. TTL is more problematic for wide angle, if left to its own devices (depending on how much of the frame your subject fills, e.g.). Again remember, though, that a complete underwater setup for the S2Pro will set you back $5000 or so and have a much steeper learning curve. As much as I lust after a DSLR, my gut and my wallet tell me to wait a while despite the fact that I'm seeing some good stuff from Eric, James and the others using them. I currently shoot a C-4040z and am tempted to move up to a C-5050. That's as far as I'm wiling to go at the moment for underwater use.

New for the 5050. You can now disable the preflash so any slave strobe will can be triggered by the flash.

The strobe power depends on Aperture and subject distance. You'll find that after a few dives, you'll be able to get a proper exposure with one to two shots.

Thanks. Would a single strobe be enough for a 5050 setup?

Sell the car, house and other toys and buy an SLR, your going to do it in 9 months anyway.