When the D-Lux 4 came out with the 24-60mm lens I knew that it would be a camera to seriously look at for housing underwater. To date the D-Lux with the 24mm lens is the first P&S with such an offering. In fact, the reviews for top side shooting noted that the 24-60mm might be limiting for some. However, as most know 24mm is just wide enough to get serious with underwater. I will not belabor my review of the camera as there are some topside reviews that are more than thorough. Instead, I will highlight how I used it underwater and what I found.
My normal mode of operation was to turn the camera on and leave it on throughout the dive day - this procedure was because the housing does not have an on-off button. With both the mfg supplied battery (1100mah) and the after market battery (1500mah) the battery was able to easy last through out the day which typically include 3-4 dives taking 40-50 pictures per day. At the end of the day two of three bars of the battery indicator life were left. So a couple times I left the battery in for the next day to see how it would fair. One of three was typical. So I estimate that the battery is good for 100-150 shots writing both jpg and raw.
To save the battery I set the controls to turn off the screen after 30 seconds and the camera after 2 minutes. This worked well enough except a few times when the monitor would go off just about when I was about to shot. A quick press of any button would restore the monitor. To wake up the camera though required a half press of the shutter button. Most than once I pressed a bit too much and took a picture of nothing and wasting a flash discharge.
There was the usual noticeable shutter lag that was annoying a few times. Much of it though was being the first time I have really used the camera while trying to shoot with a current. More than once I felt like a pilot doing a go-around as I found myself drifting father into my subject than I wanted before the shutter went. As such, I would drift out of my subject and go back around.
On the other side I only noticed the auto-focus hunting a few times. In most cases the focus was sharp that is when I got the depth of field right. Though in the past I shot a lot in aperture priority topside this was my first time shooting UW so I have some learning to do again as I found UW depth of field trickier. In the hands of someone with more experience I am sure they could up the performance than my attempts.
Two items I did not try on this trip - movie mode and macro auto-focus.
UK - Germany Housing
Deciding which housing to go with was a hard decision. The 10Bar or UK- Germany. In the end the UK-Germany won out. I think it was because I had bought the Lecia version of the camera so I went with the German version rather than the Asia version.
The housing itself is well made. Beefy as one would expect with an aluminum housing. I did notice that in one place the anodizing got nicked and within my first few dives there was some noticeable corrosion that turned into 2-3mm pit. There are a couple of smaller spots as well. All of these spots are along hard edges. Not sure was to think of this phenomena.
Being a Lecia Uwe took the minimalist approach to the controls. As already mentioned there is no on-off button. There are no controls for the aspect ratio and the image auto-focus mode. A few times I wished I had these controls as I wanted shot movies and missed a few nudibranch photos. Had I set the image ratio to either 4:3 or 16:9 instead of 3:2 I could had movies. Using the macro auto-focus adds significant time over the std focus thus preferred not to use it unless I was specifically looking for macro shots which this trip was not.
Uwe did add a button for activating the digital menu for me (later versions of the housing should also have it). This button gave full control over the joystick via three buttons - one for press, one for up down, and one for left right. I used the press a few times but not as much as I thought. However, I did use the up/down as it is used to set the aperture, shutter speed, focus, and exposure compensation. This is perhaps my only complaint with the housing. More than once while grabbing the housing my thumb would hit the up/down and change the setting of which ever control was active, in my case the aperture. So while I thought I was shooting at f8 it was really shooting a at f2.0 thus my flash was blowing out the photos. At first I thought it was my misjudgment in the flash power but I quickly learned to check both.
I also found the up/down and left/right to be sticky. So when adjusting I would have to lightly touch then move back to center in order to adjust say the f-stop. More than once I had gone too far down in the f-stop and would have to move the setting back up because I did not get the button centered quick enough. The zoom was also a bit stickier than I would have preferred as it too have to re-centered after each use.
Side bar - 10bar and Nautilus were able to come up with a single button that replicated the joystick up/down and left/right. I would be interested in hearing how fine of touch their controls had. I would probably be willing to give up the press for having better up/down left/right control.
The other part I noticed even before using the housing is that all of the buttons have a stick too them after they had sat for a while. A simple push would unstick them but some days it was a pretty hard press. I would say it was due to poor rinsing and salt but they having been doing this from even before getting the housing wet. As such, each day before closing the housing I would run through all of buttons.
The housing has a single European Nikonos strobe connection. I equipped the housing with Hienrich's TTL converter but did not use it on this trip. Instead I shot in manual all the time.
The camera fits into the housing like a glove. No tray is needed as the tolerances are so close that the camera rests very nicely on two support under it with the port wrapping around the lens. The back of the housing has one more support which nestles camera. The fit compared to when I housed a Canon F7 in a thirdparty housing which suffered from horrid QA issues was night and day. Smooth, very smooth.
The housing comes with a M8 female thread on the side for attaching a ball or a tripod thread on bottom. I went with a tray and arm set up made by Reikle (as I said I went with the German version of everything). My only complaint with the tray/housing was with a single tri pod screw is that the housing would twist even with a stop bar along one side. Compounding the problem was that the tri-pod screw was a bit too long which required a couple of rubber bits under the housing. Though I would start out with everything tight towards the end of a couple of dives the tripod screw would loosen from all of the twisting back and forth. Towards the end of the week of diving the rubber bits slid around enough that one fell off mid dive (I had missed that it had slide soo far to one side of the housing when putting things together for the day). I will probably remove the rubber bits and use a thin washer under the tripod screw instead. I would have gone this route immediately had I been able to get the right washer before leaving but the rubber bits seemed to work on land.
Overall I am quite pleased with my rig. It a bit negative underwater but no so much that it is a pain. I think adding a float to a strobe arm will help balance it out. I liked that it was compact and did not require a huge amount of extra room in my luggage. Although if Uwe comes up the the dome port it might grow.
For a strobe and focus light I used the new Subtronic Pro 160 and a Hartenburger Mini-Electronic Focus Light. I have reviewed them in the lighting section.
I will post up some sample images once I get back to the states.
