USVI-On-Line

Hi guys! We are headed out to STJ at the end of the month. I was checking out your pictures in a previous post. They are awesome! What kind of camera are you using?
PS - I LOVE the spotted eagle ray! I've been to STJ 5 times and have never seen one there.

Thimbu wrote:Hi guys! We are headed out to STJ at the end of the month. I was checking out your pictures in a previous post. They are awesome! What kind of camera are you using?
PS - I LOVE the spotted eagle ray! I've been to STJ 5 times and have never seen one there.

Thank you for your compliment. We assume you are referring to our underwater pictures in asking about the camera. Below is a write-up we've did for others that have asked the same question. Note: jmq, a frequent contributor to this forum, is actually the master, we are just the grasshoppers - we've learned a lot of our knowledge from him.

The Eagle Ray picture was taken by our oldest son. On our 2006 trip all four of us took turns taking the underwater shots. They boys took most of the moving sea life pictures such as the turtles, fish, rays, squid, etc. - they did a really nice job in capturing a lot of the shots.

The quality of our underwater pictures is a combination of the camera, its respective underwater housing, technique, and the software to enhance to the pictures.

First, the camera: We use one of the Canon PowerShot digital cameras, model A95 (probably a newer model is available now). Our camera, like a lot of the newer Canon PowerShot cameras, has an "underwater" setting that makes things fairly dummy proof. Without the underwater setting you have to mess with white balance, etc - which jmq is an expert on. The Canon cameras also have a panoramic setting to use on land, which is quite cool (see examples in our STJ pictures).

Next, the underwater housing: Canon makes a whole line of underwater housings; you have to choose the right one for your model. These housings are extremely well engineered, giving you complete access to all buttons and controls. We’ve also used the housing while boating, river tubing and snow skiing.

Other camera manufacturers make underwater housings for their cameras. We have no experiences with those, but we can recommend with confidence the Canon cameras and their respective underwater housings.

Note: We have a slightly older Kodak digital that we used for most of our on land pictures. While on STJ we generally leave the Canon in the underwater housing, thus having the second digital on hand for our normal snapshots is quite convenient.

Third, the underwater shooting technique:
• Turn the flash off, unless you are shooting into a dark area.
• Shoot level or looking slightly up.
• Exhale as you shoot to help minimize your movement
• If you are able, put one finger down on something safe (rock or sand) while shooting to control your movement. Note, do not touch coral or other sea life.
(these last two techniques we learned from Colette at 6-PAQ Scuba: http://6paqscuba.com/
• We use weight belts designed for snorkeling to help us stay down without popping back up so quickly (you still want to have a slight positive buoyancy). If you are interested in these let us know and we’ll give you our write-up on snorkeling weight belts.
• Take your shots as close as possible, generally within arms length.

Here a link to additional info:
http://www.scubatoys.com/store/joelarry/goodphotos.asp
http://www.splashdowndivers.com/photo_g ... rwater.htm

Lastly, the software: We use the software that came with the Canon camera to enhance the underwater shots (ArcSoft Photo Impression) and can be purchased separately. It has a one-click auto-enhance function that takes out the bluish-green hues that all underwater shots get and brings out the true colors that you actually saw underwater. Sometimes we have to tweak the color balance or brightness setting because the one-touch over corrects, but generally the one-touch default results are perfect. Others on this forum use Microsoft Picture-It for their underwater photo enhancement, which also has a one-click auto-enhance function. We have an older version of Picture-It that we like to use for our above-water digital picture editing, but it doesn’t have the easy enhance feature for underwater shots that the new version have.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have more questions,

I feel like quite the fool for asking this next question but here goes......I have a Powershot S40 with the underwater case. I have been experimenting with different settings over the years. I have never noticed an underwater setting and am now wondering if my camera has one! Can you describe it?

Unfortunately, it does not appear your camera model has an underwater mode. The A95 model has a setting on the "Shooting Mode" dial call Special Scene or SCN on the dial, see excerpt from the A95 users manual below. When you turn the dial to SCN then you get to select from about 10 different photo shooting options on the LDC screen, with "Underwater" being one of them (a few others options are Fireworks, Beach, Snow, Night, Foliage).

Your camera does not seem to have this option, see the excerpt from the S40 User's manual below.

From A95 Users Manual:


From S40 Users Manual:

Thanks Bob & Anita! In a weird way I am glad that my S40 camera does NOT have that mode - I'd hate to think that I bought the camera with underwater photography in mind, have owned it for several years and never saw that button!

Thanks for props Bob.
Thimbu - I dont mind fussing with different settings, etc. If you are likewise inclined, then scroll thru camera menus or look up how to manually change the white balance setting to "cloudy" and see if it makes a difference. Think you may have to use a main camera setting other than fully automatic to do that/have that option.

I actually found that it did not make much of an exposure difference for me - much more dramatic was the simple software fixes Bob detailed, but it might make more of a difference if you are shooting more at depth, like B&As crew were able to with the weight belts. Plus the UW setting on the newer Powershots might do more than just change the white balance, which could also explain bigger difference for B&A vs. my UW pics with older A80 that doesnt have the UW setting.

Pay more attention to Bobs other shooting tips like shooting UW in bright sunlight of midday, etc.

Also buy extra media cards to take more pictures at highest resolution because it is harder to compose UW shots and see the LCD screen underwater, so this will allow greater cropping with software afterwards with minimal loss of quality.
JMQ

Thanks for the detailed tips. I've been wanting to give more than a disposable u/w camera a try. An underwater case for my Canon S410 is running about $240. Instead of going for that I'm thinking about picking up a newer camera with an underwater case, perhaps a Canon SD 700 IS; that has the UNDERWATER setting. I've often wanted image stabilization for a small camera.

Cheers, RickG

OK, How about a camera similar to the Canon SD 700 IS, but a little less money? I was hoping to spend about $300 with the case. Any suggestions?

Xislandgirl wrote:OK, How about a camera similar to the Canon SD 700 IS, but a little less money? I was hoping to spend about $300 with the case. Any suggestions?

Don't think you can get a camera and case for $300, a $400 budget might be more realistic. You should be able to purchase most of the Canon UW cases in the $160 - $170 range (stay away from the bad online retailers). But this would only leave you $130 to $140 for a camera with your $300 budget.

But you should also get a larger memory card since the card that comes in the camera won't allow you to take many shots at full resolution (larger memory card: $30 - $50, depending on size). If you bring a laptop with you then you'll be able to get away with a smaller cards since you can transfer photos out of the camera during your trip to free up memory. If you are counting on the card to hold all of your trip's pictures until you get home then you'll need a larger card.

Also highly recommended are rechargable batteries with a charger. Recharable batteries and a charger are an upfront cost but provide long term savings. (Rechargable batteries and charger = $20 to $35 depending on how many batteries you get - we carry 3 sets of rechargable battiers (1 set in the camera, one set on standby and one set being recharged from previous day's use).

We have a Cyber shot that I am very happy with but I can not find a decent case for it. I just wanted a smaller camera for travel.

I have a huge memory card and the rechargeable batteries, so maybe I should just try and find a case for what we have and buy a smaller camera for land shots.

I found the camera info on the Bongo Bongo blog. I hope Russ & Jeff don't mind that I copy and paste it here.

Here’s another picture of the rope lights, and one of Russ on our roof deck tonight. I post these, because I am amazed with this little camera we just bought. A guy who goes by the name JSSS on the usvi-on-line forum sent me a couple of pictures and some video he took with the WATERPROOF Pentax he bought. I was impressed with the pictures, and the video was perfectly fine for Web sharing and such, but mostly I was intrigued by the WATERPROOF part. (One of his videos was a granddaughter diving into his pool and swimming to him). I went store hunting, not online hunting, for the camera, but it was sold out wherever I went. So I instead bought this camera…a waterproof Olympus Stylus 720 SW…but actually I am yet to throw it in the water. (We have pain-in-the-neck waterproof housings for a couple of cameras, and this just sounds too good to be true.)

Anyway, in playing with this camera, I am wowzer-impressed with what it does! Night shots are impossible, but look at these photos. One of the multiple auto settings figures it all out, and to be able to actually put a subject in a night shot without a whole lot of tripod action and manual settings is pretty amazing. Can't wait to try it under water.

If you haven’t bought a digital camera in a couple of years (me), check out what’s out there. If you have, don’t take for granted what you’ve got!

Also consider Pentax Optio WPi as all-in-one waterproof (to 6 feet for shallow snorkeling only) digicam within your budget.

Reviews, info, prices:

http://www.amazon.com/Pentax-WPi-Waterp ... B000ARIV7M

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0508/05083 ... tiowpi.asp

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_rev ... iowpi.html

Some UW shots taken with Pentax – could probably benefit greatly from some aforementioned software tweaking to cut down blues and bring out other colors…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/turgeon/se ... 083368500/

Bob&Anita - Could you tell me about the snorkeling weight belts, please? I need to know which would be the best ones to get for novice snorkelers. I am interested in getting some for our Dec. trip.

FYI - We are all good swimmers.

Thnx!!

Coden wrote:Bob&Anita - Could you tell me about the snorkeling weight belts, please? I need to know which would be the best ones to get for novice snorkelers. I am interested in getting some for our Dec. trip.

FYI - We are all good swimmers.

Thnx!!

Here is what we've written before on weight belts for snorkeling:

Wearing a weight belt is extremely helpful if you are a good snorkeler, a floater, and interested in taking underwater photographs while snorkeling. The added weight helped us to more easily dive down and not pop back up so quickly, yet the belts caused no hindrance with swimming or problems rising to the surface for air. The amount of weight depends on your size, body fat, type of water (i.e. salt/fresh) and type of wetsuit, if any, you are wearing. To give you an idea of the amount of weight we used, Bob used 8 lbs, Anita used 6 lbs, our oldest son ended up not needing any weight since he doesn’t have any body fat and our 14-year old son used only 2 lbs. The key is finding the right amount of weight to give you slight positive buoyancy; you never want negative buoyancy. Too much weight will cause you to sink into the coral, both damaging the coral and yourself. The right amount of weight will let you rise slowly to the surface when relaxed.

We purchased our weight belts at our local scuba shop and are a style for snorkeling. The belts have pockets made out of cordura material where you slip in soft weight bags. The weight bags are like bean bags, not your traditional hard scuba weights. We got the weight bags in a variety of weights, ranging from 1 lb to 4 lbs. The pockets and different size weights bags allowed us to quickly interchange the weights until we found the optimal weight for each of us. You generally want to use the weights in pairs so you are balanced on each side. Here is weight belt brand we purchased:
http://www.seapearls.com/belts-soft.html

There are plastic clips that hang off of the belt for divers to clip stuff on. We had no use for them so we cut off them off and singed the ends of the cut nylon to prevent unraveling. The nylon belt is quite long on them too, so we cut each belt to fit and singed the ends as well.

There are other brands, but we like this brand because they come in a variety of colors so we each had our own color to tell them apart.

And here is what they look like on us:
http://www.pbase.com/image/63208774/medium.jpg

The weight belts are fairly comfortable to wear. We found it easy to hike to and from our snorkel destination with the belts. We just snap them around our waist, which is the best place to carry weight anyways. We learned about the weight belts through this forum about 2 years ago and are grateful for the advice.

The weights definitely added significant weights to our bags. We really play with our checked luggage spreading the weight around to keep each bag under the 50 lb limit. We carried more of the soft weight then we ultimately needed since we wanted a variety to fine tune the perfect weight for each of us, and it turned out our oldest son didn’t need any weight. Next time we’ll bring just what we need since we now know what will work.

A word of caution, weight belts should only be used by good swimmers and experience snorkelers and you should always maintain positive buoyancy, else you will sinking into the coral, hurting both yourself and the coral.