CP5000 Setting for underwater

Manual focus sounds scary to me with the CP5000. I guess it just takes a learning curve. I will probably yeild better results with the "lag" and auto focus. Thanks for the feedback.

Anyone out there thinking about getting the A5000? It looks and sounds real nice to me... just wondering if anyone else has been waiting for this one.

Dave - Did you shoot in Manual focus? I find that scary as well, the view finder on the cp5000 is difficult for me to focus on let alone trully tell when the subject is in focus.

I spent several nights shooting the white tip reef sharks in their dusk feeding frenzy at Cocos Island. I felt that autofocus would be too slow.

I set the camera to A, one DS125 set to full, F8, and manual focus set to 4 feet. I just waited for sharks to come to that 4 ft dx. Seemed to work well. I don't think you could have shot the camera any other way. I couldn't see the command dial to change settings. I think maybe a small light rigged to see the controls if I try another night dive.

I don't see whats scary about trying manual. If It doesn't work just turn back to Autofocus.

Well, in Cocos I shot 3 great rolls of dolphins, silky sharks and manta rays with my Nik V and a 28 mm lens. Thats what inspired me to try it with my 5000. I was shooting at night and couldn't see the controls and so I preset it to manual before the dives.

The other problem is knowing the hyperfocal distances of the 5000 (with the 19 mm lens). That is what you are talking about with the focus caliphers on the Nikonos lenses. I just used the max F stop which worked fine. But this was at night. In the daytime when you would want to balance with the avalible light would make knowing those hyperfocal distances important.

Also I read in the manual where the manual focus distances the camera give are not valid if you are using the 19 mm lens.

WC-E68 means a .68x multiplication factor. Not sure how that applies to DOF - whether you multiply it or divide by it.

Cheers

James

The 19 mm lens widens the lens and intuitively should increase the depth of field. As far as using manual focus with the 19mm lens. I found that at the widest setting of the camera lens the manual focus seems accurate. but when I tried to zoom to the longest lens length to photograph a lobster it was completely out of focus. I saw where someone was selling a chart of hyperfocal Dx for the 5000. There was a charge for it so I defered.

I had the protype A5000 housing and shot in auto focus. The lag took a like bit to gauge but once gauged was not a problem. We were shooting mainly sharks and dolphins so I had lots of practice to get it right. Was tough watching Eric, Jim and Dave firing those D60's for multiple frames but I was happy with my results.

Not that the manual focus is not a good option, I preferred being closer if possible than four feet so you could just adjust to a closer manual setting . I may give it a try next time also.

I have a photo on digideep.com that is photo of the week for week 35 if you want to see one.