Conspicuous Consumption(graciously helping the Japanese economy)

Ok, so maybe you didn't get that Nikon D3 with the Seacam housing. Or there wasn't a set of nice shiny Ikelite DS-125's under the tree. What's a person to do?

I've had a lot of people ask me about what underwater photo gear they should get, or upgrade to, etc. In my mind, the choice is pretty simple, despite the large number of combinations of types of gear. I'll try to categorize it for you and give you some opinion....

Let's divide the camera/housing combos into 3 separate groups:

Group I: The small P&S, generally with no strobe. Example: Canon SD1000 in Canon housing

Group II: The larger P&S with either one or two strobes. Example: Olympus C7070 in Ikelite housing

Group III: Digital SLR, two strobes. Example: Nikon D200 in Nexus Housing

My first piece of advice? Avoid the middle ground. Toss Group II (GII) out of consideration. GII has the limitations of GI and GIII combined, and few of the advantages. GI is great for a camera to take along that doesn't get in your way. Yes, it has some limitations, but you can make some great images with it. Since you can put it in your pocket or clip it to your BC, it is always there but not in your way. Once you start diving with GII or GIII sized setups, your dive becomes more about photography than diving. The camera dominates. It's a tradeoff, of course, because you can make better images with it than the GI's. But the GII's are really the worst of both worlds. Avoid the GII's, in my opinion.

Group I: The little Canon ELPH cameras, like the SD1000 or the SD850IS are amazing little machines. I am amazed at how good some of the photos from these cameras come out. The little Canon housings are a great value for the money. The downside to Canon in this range is just the shear number of offerings they have. It gets quite bewildering trying to differentiate the various models they have. I'm sure that Nikon, Sony and Olympus also have some great cameras in this range, so if you are partial to those, I'd bet you can find one that would work well.

Group III: I should probably break this group into several sub-groups, given the huge range of options here, but that'd just confuse the issue. Basically, once you commit to buying a DSLR and housing, you are in the price range of a nice little car.

To make things easier, let's not talk about dollars... let's talk about BTU's. No, not British Thermal Units, but rather, Basic Toy Units. A BTU is just a measure of money in a relative sense. For example, let's say that for skiing, a BTU is $100. So, a lift ticket and lunch would set up back about 1 BTU, and a new pair of ski boots would set you back about 5 BTU's. Now that doesn't seem so bad anymore, does it?

For underwater photography, the exchange rate is about $1000 per BTU. On the low end, a basic GIII setup is going to be about 4 BTU's once you get the camera body, a lens or 2, housing, a port, a couple of strobes. If you get away from just the kit lens and treat yourself to a couple of wide angle lenses plus a macro lens, plus lenses and extension rings, and zoom rings, and focus rings, you'll start pushing 10 BTU's. Step up to full frame body, a spare body (and you really need a spare), some more lenses, etc, and 20 - 25 BTU's is not out of the question. And the scary thing is that it could even go up from there. Ouchie.

Brand of DSLR? In my mind, there are currently only two options, Canon and Nikon. I don't think you can go wrong with either. People get attached to one brand or the other, but both are excellent. Yes, there are others (Sony, Sigma, Olympus) but I'd go straight to Nikon or Canon and not look back.

We'll talk housings and strobes another day.

To do list

This is a just a list of topics to discuss in future installments. No guarantee that I'll get to them, just a placeholder to remind me.

Gear choices
Chimping
Blue blob (P&S issue)
RAW vs JPG mode for underwater
Subject etiquette
Fish bombs
Shark conservation efforts
Editing tools
Supernumery
more to come.......

Remembering Jim Watt

James Watt (not to be confused with the inventor of the steam engine nor the looney Reagan-era Secretary of the Interior) was an underwater photo pro that I got a chance to dive with for a couple of weeks on two separate trips. Jim died last year, at an age many would consider to be too young. At least I do, as he was only 10 years older than me. I didn't really know him that well, but I learned some things from him that have stuck with me.

Jim didn't seem to worry too much about the details of his gear and settings. He seemed to shoot in aperture mode most of the time (for wide angle at least), and surprisingly he shot in JPG mode, not RAW. He was much more into composition and lighting than in camera settings. Some of the people on Wetpixel (pixel counters) derided him about that (probably not to his face, but on a public forum). But... Jim made some beautiful images, and he sold a whole lot of them.

On one dive in Sipadan, Malaysian Borneo, he ended up mistakenly taking my wetsuit. His boat left before mine did, so when I went to get my suit, all that was left was the same make and model, but two sizes too small. The water was warm (it was only a .5 mm suit), so I dove anyway, with no suit. It turned out on that there were Yellow Spec'd Jawfish with eggs (male Jawfish brood eggs in their mouths) on this dive. Unfortunately, they were located just so that I had to hover between two big patches of swaying hydroids. I got a shot, but came back with hydroid welts all over my torso. Ouch.


He also wasn't apparently the nicest, most sensitive guy on the planet. On one of our trips, one of the women didn't seem too happy that he brought a different woman along with him. I'm not sure what she expected, but whatever it was, she was pretty obvious in her contempt for him. A year earlier, though, when she was with him, she thought he was pretty cool. Lol.

Besides the idea of "just shooting", and not worrying too much about the technical details, one of the things I learned from Jim was the notion of merciless editing (deciding which photos to keep, and which to throw away). Basically, it means that when in doubt, throw it out. Accepting that premise has made a huge difference for me. I plan to go into the concept and how I apply it in a future post.

RIP Jim.

U/W Photo on CNN

Here's a CNN video about an underwater photo contest in Eilat, Israel.

link

A bit schlocky, but most mainstream media coverage of scuba is that way.

New toll free number for Dolphins:1-800-sticks-and-weeds

Wed Dec 5, 1:58 PM ET
PARIS(AFP) - A man may bring flowers to impress women, but male Amazon river dolphins carry weeds to win over the opposite sex, British and Brazilian researchers say......

read the rest on Yahoo

Some resources

Wetpixel is a community for U/W photographers run by Eric Cheng. I met Eric on a Bahamas Tiger Shark trip a couple of years ago. Good guy, and WetPixel is a great resource with news, forums, etc. The search engine the site uses is kind of lame - wish it had a better one, because there is a lot of great info there to sift through.



DigiDeep is a database of U/W housings and the cameras they work with. It's a great site for researching housings, and they also have a forum.



Ok, while not necessarily a U/W photo site, I dig SmugMug. It's an awesome photo sharing/publishing site. It's not free, but it gives you a lot of control over how your photos are presented. They have a standard service and a pro service. The pro service allows you to sell your photos, and they do a great job of printing. Their tech support is faster than any company I have worked with. Highly recommended.



Here's a site that has reviews of Canon lenses. The guy is probably on the Canon payroll so take it with a grain of salt, but there is a lot of info there.



I'll add these sites to my "blogroll"... and post more as I find them.

Cp

Gearhead

I'm not a big gearhead when if comes to camera equipment. I'd much rather be underwater shooting than stressing about buying new gear. My focus (now look what you made me do, a pun) is not so much on the gear but on the image. But, I will say that having decent to good gear sure makes getting a great shot easier.

I've gone through 4 different iterations (generations) of underwater digital gear. I've never shot film underwater, though until digital came out, I always had a Nikon SLR. While I do miss that camera, I don't miss film. Digital has some significant advantages underwater. We can get into that in a different post.

So here's what I shoot underwater with now:
Cameras: Canon 5D DSLR
Lenses: Canon 17-35, Canon 24-70, Canon 100 macro, Sigma 15 fisheye, would like to add the Sigma 150 macro
Housing: Subal
Ports: Subal FPS120/3 macro and DP-FE2 dome, plus various extensions and some duct tape
Strobes: Dual Inon Z220s

It's an awesome setup - Canon stuff is great, but I would be just as happy with a Nikon D3 or D200 in a Nexus housing. After all it is just a tool. When I play my guitar, it sounds ok. Sometimes, I think I need a new one. But if Joe Satriani, or Joe Walsh, or Joe Perry (or Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, or Jimmy Something) were to pick up my guitar they could make it wail. So I really just need to forget about a new guitar and play the one I have. Likewise with a camera setup, I'd be happy with just about anything as long as I can take pictures with it underwater. If I take a crappy image, it is almost never the camera's fault, it is mine. Luckily, with digital, I just hit the trash button and shoot again....

Cp