Advice for new Oly 5050 owner?

Hello everyone!

My husband and I are new to diving and underwater photography. We got our AOW in December and are headed to Cozumel this weekend for our 2nd ocean dive. Even though we don't have a lot of dives logged, we are definitely addicted!

We recently purchased the Olympus 5050 Zoom and PT-015 housing...no external strobes at this time. As of now, I plan on just using the "P" mode for this trip...taking the time to get use to the camera and still working on my diving skills.

Those of you who have the 5050 know that you are able to set up to 8 different modes. After some advice from others, I'm thinking about mainly working in the following two modes:

1. For close up: "P" mode, Macro, and fill-in flash.

2. For wide angle: "P" mode and fill-in flash.

Do these sound okay? And, if so, should I just set "My Mode" to the Macro settings and switch the dial over to "P" for wide angle, or should I set both of them in "My Mode?" I'm not sure how quick or easy it is to switch from macro to wide while diving.

Any help or advice you have to offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Jennifer

Hi,

P(rogram) mode will be OK while you work on other skills. However, as you get more comfortable, to get best results you will want to shoot manually.

In low light situations (in the reef shadow, night dives, late afternoon, low vis)

program mode can get some pretty good results. However, on a well lit reef, the camera program will detect lots of sunlight and cut the flash exposure out almost entirely. At depth, sunlight light is too far to the blue spectrum, and your program exposures will be exposed properly, but all a blue mono-chrome. White balance settings will do little to correct this.

On the Olympus Cameras, By shifting to Manual Mode, where you set the shutter and aperture manually, your flash will remain in a TTL-like exposure mode - the camera wil attempt to compensate the flash power to get a correct exposure on the subject. This allows you to set the aperture/shutter settings to get the desired ambient light exposure (those deep blue water backgrounds), stop motion, and depth of field while allowing the flash to autolight the subject (not fool proof like any "TTL" but gets some great consistent results).

Since you are shooting with the on-board flash only, get as close as you can. Then get closer. At depth, Start out at F6, 1/100sec at ISO200. Look at the LCD image after each shot. Keep the histogram display on to give you a quick reading that you have not burned out the highlights (un-fixable photo damage), something you can not always detect with the LCD image. Change the f-stop up and down to compensate on exposure feedback. If conditions stay constant throughout your dive you will find yourself changing exposure settings seldom.

The most important thing is to be safe and have fun. Take on the work-load of manual exposure after you are completely comfortable with the rest of your situation.

Have fun -- Dave

I agree with Dave on this one - especially his last paragraph.

Remember, this is your first saltwater diving experience. Your "mission" should be:

Stay Alive

Have Fun

Take Some Photos

Learn!

I would recommend that you concentrate on closeups for your first shots. Since you will be in Cozumel, try to do some of the dives where there is plenty of sand surrounding reef areas. You can kneel in the sand and take pictures of corals. That is a great start.

Don't try to take a picture of ANYTHING that is more than 1' away if using the internal flash. In fact, unless you see a turtle or want a shot of you dive buddy, don't take a picture of ANYTHING more than 1' away.

Have fun!

James