After the relatively non-stellar things I am reading about the Sanyo Xacti, I am considering the S&S housing for the Sony HC9.
My big problem with it - no manual WB. I know how useful it is to have the ability to set the WB manually for stills but I see lots of people shooting video on AWB. Is it simply a matter of having different standards of what is acceptable (hobbyist use vs pro use) or does the HC9 do a good enough job with AWB underwater (I have yet to find a digicam that does...)?
I realize this is a bit of broad subject with no single correct answer - so if I can get pros and cons, that'd be great.
To put it in context - one of the planned use of the video footage I'll be taking is to put together some "Best of the Andamans" DVDs that we can use for marketing as well as sales to clients. So quality is paramount.
Thanks,
Vandit
No expert but we have the HC7 in a Gates housing and just had it at Cocos. Here the water can change from green to every shade of blue, 10ft of viz to 80 in one dive. We found Manual WB and Manual Focus to be key. The ability to go from Manual focus to Auto was also a big help.
Don't do it to yourself Vandit. Get a housing you can manually white balance.
(Edit: Or hire me to come and shoot the Andamans for you )
Oh man... that' what I was afraid of.
Looks like adding a housing with MWB is going to add atleast $2000 to the bill. I had started out thinking Epoque + Sanyo = $1000 +-) . That doubled with S&S + HC9. Now it looks as though that is doubling yet again.
Since I am shooting still first and foremost, that makes this a non-starter for me. I don't think it is worth the expense for something I'll be doing "on the side." Might as well spend that money on a 1D3 instead.
So Nick, how about coming and shooting the Andamans (just leave your rig behind when you leave ).
Vandit
Funnily enough it looked like I was being hired to shoot the Andamans a couple of years ago and then it fell through. Would love to take a look over there having dived the eastern part of the Andaman Sea so much.
Yeah it's easy for the cost of an underwater rig to spiral once you start researching and realise what these extra features can achieve for you. Maybe you could think about a used standard definition DV rig which can be manually white balanced? If it's really only for DVD then that would be fine, and if you're only going 4:3, not 16:9 then there should be loads of choice. Look at housings that can take Sony TRV900/TRV950/PDX10/VX1000/VX2000/VX2100/PD150/PD170. All good cameras for underwater use. All except the first 2 are pretty big though. PDX10 does proper native 16:9. None of them are really compact like you were originally looking for. Unfortunately manual white balance and that sort of compactness just don't really go together.
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