Canon housing for Canon Powershot S70

Hello to everybody. I am a professional photog who has been using all manner of SLR's inside housings over the years. My current rig of choice is my Canon 1D MK II inside an aquatech DV3 housing, usually with the 15mm and port fitted. I've been craving a quality point and shoot and just tookdelivery of the Canon Powershot S70 which I am very impressed with so far. It's a point and shoot with total pro controls. Very nice indeed.

I've noticed also the availability of a Canon made housing for these cameras, called a WP-DC40. Has anyone out there used this housing and camera combo? I would really love to see some samples of any work, taken in a Canon powershot S series camera inside one of these housings. It would be great to see a large, varied range of imagery to see what it's strong points are. I'm looking for examples of under and above water. To those who are participating, thanks for your time and effort. I appreciate it.

Aloha

Sean Davey

http://www.seandavey.com

I have seen a lot of really nice stuff done with those little guys and actually uses some taken with a powershot 4 megapixels in my underwater photo course, shutter lag is the thing that most likely will bother you, but at the price of the housing who can go wrong I recommend the little weight sold by Canon, they get rid of that positive buyoancy. it's a great little camera to loan to your dive buddies also, keeps them off your back when your under!

Cheers

Sean,

I'm currently using a S70 in a WP-DC40 housing and more recently along with an Inon D-2000 strobe setup. I'm still very green to u/w photography so my pics are probably not doing this camera justice...

I just got back from a liveaboard trip from Bali to Komodo and have some of the photos up (good mix of topside and u/w) over on scubaboard.com.

the album link is as follows:

http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/1102

Lots of pics but mostly ameuterish. Unfortunately we missed the Manta cleaning station and the two eagle rays we did see were too far to get a good shot...

Again I must warn u I'm still much the neophite especially with wide angle shots and getting used to the external strobe... (one of these days I'll get a nice wideangle pic of a seafan/coral with a perfect blue backdrop and sunbust...) I'm still in the Aperture priority mode...

I've had the camera and housing for little over 3 mos and have used it for 3 dive trips around Asia (about 30-40 dives). So far I haven't had any issues with the housing (knock on wood). The buttons are easy to use even with gloves (well actually only tried with thin tropical gloves). I've only been down to 35m max with it (its rated 40m). One niggle I have about the housing is that it does tend to scratch the nice black finish of the S70 (it might be that my silicon gel pack might be a weebit big). The diffuser that came with the housing does a nice job and the internal strobe is actually pretty strong for a camera that small (within 3ft u/w or so). As you already know, u have to slide the front to turn the camera on and toss in the housing. If you want to power it down, you just hold down the function button. The camera does get warmer than other cameras I used. but I haven't had any condensation problems (I slip a silicon gel pack in). Battery life is so so but I understand improved from the older battery from the s60. If u avoid spending too much time reviewing pics on the lcd, you could probably get close 100 pics with the majority of them with the flash. The S70 lens actually does a nice wideangle shot in itself.

Only complaint I have with it is the autofocus tends to struggle a bit in low light situations but then I think that applies to a lot of digicams... But since I've bought a strobe which has a focus light, I don't notice this as much. Does macros nicely but if you try to use the zoom even a little bit w/ macro on, the AF lock gets touchy until u move a good distance away (defeating the purpose of the zoom!). But then again it helps with ext. strobe placement.

The reason I went with the S70/DC40 combo was the compact size but with all the manual controls and RAW function!. In addition to u/w photography, I wanted something compact that I can take snowboarding and general outdoors (sorry the Olympus 5060/7070's are too big to slip in a jacket pocket). Actually even with the Inon strobe setup, its still very compact compared to what Oly 5050/5060 rigs I saw on my trips. Topside, its got great optics and takes beautiful pics. Plus I love the 7megapixels which allows me plenty of room to crop a lot of my poorly framed shots!!!

I used it on my 1st two trips without weights and didn't find the positive buoyancy annoying. If anything, I'd rather have it positive in case the strap broke. Rather look on the surface for it then race down over a sea wall for it... Plus I think Canon charges some ridiculous price for the weights (I guess u could do a little DIY weight at the local Home Depot...)

Best of all, Inon has recently come out with lots of goodies for the S70/S60 and W-DC40 including a mount kit for there D-2000 strobe and bayonet mount for their wide angle and macro lenses. You can check it out at www.inonamerica.com.

sorry to be so long winded but hope u find it somewhat helpful.

cheers,

Mike

Thanks for your link Mike. It well and truly sold me on the housing, which is just as well because I ordered one yesterday anyway. I'm very impressed with the detail of the lens. The photos are really clean and colorful. Quite amazing for such a small package.

Right now, this camera and housing's going to be my back-up rig, but come October this year, when the Hawaiian surf season is well and truly underway, I'm going to use mine out at Pipeline on the north shore. I usually swim with an EOS 1D MKII and 2.8 70-200mm lens inside a water housing and as you can imagine, it would be ridiculously easy to swim with this,in comparison to my usual rig. I always thought this day would come when someone would make the ultimate compact water camera set-up. Canon's definitely gone the closest yet with this awesome combo. Killer sharp zoom lens, with full range of auto and manual controls, RAW, CF card memory, Digic II processor, the WP-CD40 housing. This is so hands down "the camera" out there right now.

Mahalo for your feedback Mike.

Aloha

Sean

www.seandavey.com

Sean,

mahalo back at ya.

glad my post was helpul. One thing I forgot to mention but I think you probably figured it out, the Komodo underwater shots were with an external strobe (some came out nice, some were miserable failures - oh well trial by error...). If you click back to my photo albums there are two others which include my first shots (Subic Bay and Puerto Galera) with the S70/DC40 without an external strobe. The Subic Bay was mainly wreck diving and the visibility was poor so I suffered a lot of backscatter and low lighting. Puerto Galera had better visibility but I think I may have overdone it trying to adjust the RAW white balance on a lot of the pics (1st time using Photoshop RAW converter and adjusting the white balance).

I agree, S70 is getting close to that goal of a perfect compact, full-featured camera. The one thing I'd love them to improve on the prosumer digicams is the shutter lag (got some great fish butt photos if you're interested...) But you get used to it and just plan the shot ahead.

Pipeline? Nice... As a budding surfer (actually I probably spend more time underwater surfing than I do diving! ) I'd love to see your photos later in the season. You'll enjoy that the S70 has a pretty decent buffer even when using RAW. In jpg format, you should be able to get some good action sequences. Just a shame Canon limits the high quality video to 30sec!

edit: just took a peak at your website. Wow... awesome surf shots! Love the ones from Tahiti...

Mike