What to buy

I know, this is probably a question that gets asked all of the time, but I thought I would pose this here anyway. Hopefully I won't annoy too many of the regulars here.

I spent a few days with a great outfit called Optiquatics who got me from being a total newbie to being able to actually take decent photos and understand the impact of lighting, aperture, shutter speed, etc.

So, that being where I am at, I am trying to decide what kind of rig to go with to start with. I am considering either the Olympus 5060 with the light and motion housing, and a couple of strobes <which ones?>, or taking a Canon D30 that I already have and getting the housing for that and a couple of strobes, with the option of upgrading to the D60 with the same housing if I want to upgrade in the future.

Which of these would you go with and why? Am I missing another obvious choice? I am not quite ready to plunge in and buy a new SLR at this time.

Thoughts?

Justin

When I bought my first housing, I had to make a choice that was somewhat similar to yours, except I didn't have a camera that I wanted to house. I was choosing between a Sony SDC-S85 and a D30. At that point, there was an Ikelite housing for the Sony available, and I could get a housing for the D30 custom made by Ikelite or stock from UK-Germany. I ended up choosing to purchase the Sony because at the time I was looking at $800 for the Sony versus close to $3000 for the D30. Fast forward a year and I was selling the Sony and the housing for it and housing a D60 instead (which I still have).

Hindsight says if I were to make the choice again I would have gotten the D30 and housing. If you're comfortable with the D30 for topside use and you're not used to using a P&S digicam, you might be better off getting the D30 housed. It's a good camera overall, and does give you an upgrade path to the D60 if you choose to upgrade. Without doing the math, I'd guess that you'd spend less getting the D30 housed (because you're looking at an LMI housing for the 5060).

With regards to strobes, you'd probably want to look at either Ikelite DS-125s (or -50s if budget limited) or Inons. I personally really like my DS-125s, but others here are very fond of the Inons.

As a side note, with the exception of my 2002 Truk gallery, all the galleries on my site (see link in signature) were taken with a D60 in a S&S housing with either 1 DS-50 or 2 DS-125 strobes.

Hope this helps.

Tom

A Digital Rebel body only costs around $750, a small expenditure comparied to the cost of housing and ports.

Good point Herb. Not much more than the cost of a 5060 either.

Why would I want the Rebel over the D30, other than more megapixels?

Well, the Rebel is a scaled back version of the 10D, which replaced the D60, which replaced the D30. So, somewhere along the line, the autofocus system went from 3 points to 7 and supposedly improved in low light. Higher ISO capabilities are better on the newer versions as well.

You'd have more manual control with a D30/60 than a Rebel, although there seem to be workarounds for most everything.

One thing to consider, there are fewer and fewer D30/60 housings in production as time passes because neither camera is still being made. The Rebel on the other hand is just recently being supported by housing manufacturers. There's probably a bigger used market for both the D30 or D60 bodies as well as housings, so you could potentially save some money there over a Rebel.

My feeling is that the D60 and the Rebel produce comparable quality images. There are pros and cons to both obviously. You could house your D30 for cheaper than buying a new Rebel and housing, and have an upgrade path to the D60, or you could bite the bullet and buy a Rebel and housing. A lot comes down to budget and how likely you are to want to buy a new body in the near future...

Tom

If I continue to enjoy this on dive 300 rather than dive 3 of underwater photography I will likely have upgraded to whatever the current equivalent of the 10D Mark2 at the time, so I am really looking for my interim step between now and when I decide to sell my car for underwater photography gear. :? <Luckily they are moving my office near my house, I suppose>. The thing that has me leaning towards SLR is I can imagine any kind of shutter lag is just aggravating underwater. Do any of the 5050 or 5060 users have any comments on focus time and shutter lag on the Olympus line of cameras in real world situations?

Tom, are you happy with the performance of the autofocus on the D60?

On the D30 low light autofocus isn't exactly a dream, so I was assuming I would need a focusing light. Are they becoming standard for folks shooting in non-tropical locations?

Justin

I had a 5050, if youre used to dslr you'll hate shutter lag and high noise.

But the 5050 is very convenient, the oly housing is cheap, small and light, and with that camera you can do wide angle and super macro on the same dive ! It's a great system

Now i have a drebel, i love it... it don't miss my pictures to shutter lag anymore, now i miss them to using the wrong lens or worse to bad lighting

btw using the hacked firmware you get many of the missing features on the rebel

I'm ok with the AF on the D60. It's not great, and it does help with certain lenses to have a focus light (100mm macro for instance). Having not used the Rebel or 10D in a low light situation, I don't know whether it's a quantum leap in AF performance from the D60 though.

Shutter lag can be minimized somewhat on a P&S by pre-focusing, but you will definitely see a difference. Another difference is using the viewfinder instead of an LCD screen to compose. This one comes down to personal preference. I could never get used to using the LCD to compose having used an SLR in the past. Some people love it though and have the opposite problem. One thing to note is that the viewfinder on MOST housings for this class of camera are fairly small and can be tough to use. When I first got my S&S housing I had a lot of difficulty using the VF and tried to find a way to improve it. In the end I just got used to it. It would be great if someone had an add-on viewfinder like Subal or Seacam in some of the lower priced housings...

Housing a D30 in 2004 sounds a bit retro to me - unless you find a cheap second hand housing. If you're a Canon man Drebel and 10D are bargain buys compared to what the d30 cost on release.

Selling your car to pay for a housing is probably insufficient commitment to underwater photography. I had to sell my left kidney on Ebay to house my 10D, but I'm hoping it was worth it!

Rob, if you read Justin's initial post, he stated he's not quite ready to buy a new dSLR at this time. Whether or not a Rebel or 10D is "cheap" relative to the original cost of a D30, it'll still add at least $750 to the cost of getting UW, which is $750 he doesn't need to spend if he uses his D30.

I'm not saying the D30 is the best choice, but I can definitely understand trying to minimize expenditures.

Justin, one other option is to get a 5050/5060 and an Oly housing to start rather than an LMI housing. You still have all the issues of using a P&S, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper. You could get the camera and housing for less than just the cost of a used D30 housing.

Sorry if this is more confusing....

Tom

If you sell d30 and buy rebel, I'm sure it will be less than $750. You've then got to consider housing choices and costs - and Rebel has a plethora of cheap housing options (including the new Jonah package in the 'News' section). Rebel also comes with a good starter underwater lens. For D30/D60/10D if you need to buy a good wide angle zoom, the 17-40L will add $700 to the equation.