USVI-On-Line

Jen
It just dawned on me - your Canon has image stabilization - makes a huge difference when trying to shoot these things while floating in the water. My older Canon does not, and I am always dissapointed at how shaky my UW videos look.
I see almost no benefit to IS on land, but what a great feature to have for snorkeling.

(drink up)

jmq...yes...I agree with you. I'm not sure that I see much of a difference on land with the SD850 IS v. my older SD450. The underwater video probably did benefit some though. Again...however...I still think that the conditions (depth, direct sunlight and here for example...perfectly calm water...) contribute more to the quality of the uw shots than the camera itsself! Now...having the digital v. a disposable...well...that's a different story! I do love the uw setting...for sure!

Cool vid its always so cool when ya see those things.

jmq my Cannon S2 IS would be useless at twelve times optical zoom without Image Stabilazation

Cptn - I have the S3 IS also with 12x.
I have the old SLR habit of switching over to the Tv setting to set higher speed when composing exteme zoom shots, esp when I want to retain quality, because I think that the way IS works is to increase the auto ISO setting which can result in a grainier image. Or, if you have ISO set manually, it increases the speed at the expense of depth of field.

That 12x is amazing - equiv to something over 400mm I think. It reached across and down a valley to get this shot.



Sorry for riffing off topic away from the squid, but maybe useful info for folks considering cameras.

Don't ya just love that little camera. Your way more advanced than I am. I need to learn more about the manual settings I'm just lazy I guess. But I tell ya what, for a point and shoot it does a pretty good job on auto. I would reccomend this camera to anyone getting into photography simple to use and room to grow when you want to learn more. What are they up to now like the S5 or something. Awesome photo by the way that 12 time zoom rocks