Yesterday I had my first dive with my new Canon G10 and the WP-DC28 factory underwater housing. I’ve been enormously satisfied with the results I’ve gotten over the past year with the G9 and its factory housing. Given my style, mostly available light rather than flash, the camera suited me well and always gave me good images.
The G10 camera and housing are both improvements on excellent products. The G10 seems to be much less noisy in low light conditions. Here is an example of how well it can deliver even when the photographer is not paying attention:I was far too far away for the shot, but it was near the end of the dive and I just couldn’t be bothered to take the time to get in close for a proper exposure.  Even with the poor lighting, I still have a usable image. Lionfish shots are a dime a dozen, anyway. You can see some of my other Lionfish images here, here, here, here, and here. The Lionfish also appears on a PNG coin.

Here’s an even better example, this one with flash. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a better shot of a Clark’s Anemonefish (Amphiprion clarkii):

They are very cute, of course, but devilishly difficult to shoot. They never hold still and the coal black body against snow white bars makes an impossible contrast ratio for the camera. If you click this one to enlarge, you’ll even see some detail in the black and white areas – something I’ve not been able to achieve this well before. I think I’ll do even better when I get used to the camera. More fun with Clark’s Anemonefish here (orange variation), here, here, here, here, and here.

At 15 megapixels, the camera gives you plenty of image to mess with. You can take a shot from a little farther away, providing the water is clear enough. This allows more perceived depth of field so that everything is nicely in focus. The camera focuses in an instant and almost always on what you want to be in focus. I need to fiddle a bit more with the focus settings – there are a ton of them:

I’m not very happy with the software that came with the camera. Correcting both tint and colour temperature require visiting two separate dialogue boxes. This is unlike Photoshop in the Camera RAW filter (I always shoot RAW mode for underwater – it’s the only way to go) where both controls are right next to each other in the same dialogue box and you can see the results in the preview window as you slide the controls. The only problem is that I haven’t gotten the latest version of the Camera RAW filter to work yet. It contains the code necessary for the G10.

Here’s a nice shot of a Bulb Anemone that shows the level of detail and low noise that the G10 delivers. This shot was sans flash on an overcast day at about 25 metres – pretty impressive results, I’d say:

You can see a couple of other bulb anemones here and here.

Here’s another shot that is interesting from a technical view. The highlights on the anemone bulbs would have been completely blown out (washed out blank white) on any previous camera that I’ve used. In this shot there is still  detail and gradations of shade:

I’m really happy with my new rig. People pay thousands of dollars for underwater cameras that don’t produce images any better than these. The differnce is that the extra money buys you mostly more light on the subject. If you are willing to stay within the confines of available light and limit youself to close shots when using flash, you can take professional quality undewater photos for way under a thousand US$. The G10 costs about US$400 and the housing was, I think, less than $200.

I don’t see how one could do much better. It is one of those delightful situations in which you can still get a lot for your money.

I naturally gravitate to funky little joints with lots of character. Rebel’s Rock Irish Pub in Hamilton, Ontario is just such a place:

We enjoyed Rebel’s Rock a year ago when we were in Hamilton for a while visiting our son and his family.

Last year I was shooting with a Canon G9. This year, for this post, I’m using my new Canon G10, a superb point-and-shoot camera. It has better noise characteristics at low light levels using high ISO values (1600 in the case of these shots). As the G9 was very noisy at 1600, the G10 is less so. The G10 is also far less noisy than my new Olympus SP590UZ, but has only a 5x optical zoom, compared to 26x for the Olympus. As is my habit, I used the excellent NoiseNinja Pro filter for Photoshop to clean up the noise.

Essentially, I now have two cameras that together set me back about US$800 that will, taken as a team, outperform one Single Lens Reflex camera with two separate lenses. One would have to spend far more for an SLR with lenses of similar capability and you’d still have only one camera. I like the safety factor of having multiple low cost cameras with complimentary capabilities. It also eliminates completely the possibility of getting gunk on the sensor during a lens change, as these cameras are completely sealed.

Sometime soon I’m going to write a post titled “Why You (Probably) Don’t Want an SLR.”

At Rebel’s Rock, you never know when someone will pick up an instrument and start playing:

We enjoyed good food and good company consisting of our son, Hans, one of his workmates, Sheila, and our friend, Brenda. I also rather too much enjoyed four pints of Steam Whistle pilsner beer, a very tasty brew, indeed.

Our entertainment for the evening was a local musician, Bill Becker:

My keywords for Bill would be talented, unassuming, eclectic, and brave. It takes a certain kind of entertainer to work a small room where a lot of other things are going on and not seem hurt that people sometimes seem not to be paying much attention. He pulled it off nicely, providing a pleasing and energetic background and often grabbing the room when the opportunity arose. He reduced me to tears with his excellent rendition of Pink FLoyd’s Wish You Were Here.

If you’re ever in Hamilton, a struggling steel town that approaches the culturally surreal, pop into Rebel’s Rock for a break from the humdrum.

I’ve been taking photographs underwater for a long time. In the beginning, it was nearly more torturous than it was worth. I started out with a small plastic housing made to protect 35mm throw-away film cameras. It came with a strobe light. I think it cost a couple of hundred dollars. Of course there was no focus, no zoom, no close-up capability. It was as basic as a camera can get. Add to that the hopelessness of getting film properly processed and printed in Madang, and you don’t leave much room for fun.

Nevertheless, I did take many hundreds of shots, waited for the pitiful processing, patiently scanned them into the computer and dutifully put them up on our old diving website (which is still up, but an embarrassment – I’m too sentimental to take it down). You can still find the original web site there by following the “the old web site” link. An example of the best we could manage with this rig can be found here. Compare that shot with this one.

As I began to get serious about underwater photography, I purchased an Ikelite housing and strobe for my Minolta SLR camera. It was a monster. It leaked like a sieve. I managed to flood two cameras. Fortunately the cameras were available very cheaply in used camera stores. I took many hundreds of shots with this housing and it sits in an honoured position in the “MadDog Museum of Incomprehensible Folly” at our home (admission free if you BYOB).

The rig above weighs about a thousand kilograms (rather, it feels as if it does) and is very difficult to manage underwater. Jumping into the water with it was always a risky proposition. I received several bruises and at least one bloody nose over the years that I used it. After a while I gave up the macho delight of plunging into the water holding onto a boat anchor and asked someone to hand it to me after I was safely bobbing on the sea.

The next outfit was an Olympus C8080 in a factory PT-023 housing. I never had any argument with the quality of the shots that I got with this rig. The images were an order of magnitude better than film (DIGITAL – AMEN!) and it was a quarter the size and a tenth the weight of the old rig. It was still a two hand job to handle, but at least I could enter the water with it without risking injury.

I did, however have several BIG arguments with the build quality of the housing. It broke on me twice. The first time it broke I noticed a small leak and managed to surface before I lost a camera. The whole front of the housing is made to come off so that one can (presumably) fit another type of port for the camera to look through. However, the entire front of the camera was held in place by two little cam-lock devices that hooked onto tiny plastic projections on either side of the round port opening. The projections are about the size of the little clicker thingie on the end of a ball-point pen (you can see the remains of one in the image below). When one broke, the whole front of the housing came loose. You can imagine the result:

Though I saved my camera by surfacing as quickly as I safely could, I did lose a camera the second time the housing broke. This time it was the main hinge that holds the housing halves together. The housing is intended to open like a clamshell so that you can load the camera into it. Most underwater housing are made such as this. The problem is that (again) the amount of material devoted to strength was inadequate. The hinge broke while I was underwater and allowed seawater to flood in. The result was this mess:

That’s right, a completely destroyed C8080 camera. I found another one cheaply on EBay and began with a vengeance to re-engineer the fastening together of the two halves of the housing. Here is what I devised:

The stainless steel plates and bolts replace the hinge mechanism. The other side is still held together by the original snap-lock fasteners. It works okay, but it’s a little fiddly to get the bolts adjusted just so. I still use it for teaching and as a backup.

My current camera and housing is a Canon G-9 in a factory WP-DC21 housing.  Here is a picture of the housing:

I like it very much. It fits in one hand, creates images as good as I need, and it cost me only about US$600 when I bought it new. I have no complaints.

My only problem now is that when the jerk on the street stole my camera, he (or the cop) dropped it. Here’s the damage:

It doesn’t look like much and has no effect on the usefulness of the camera until you put it into the underwater housing. Then the little thingie that allows you to control the button shown above presses constantly on it and locks up the camera. You can take pictures, but you can ‘t work any of the controls. Here is why:

The green arrow shows the button again. As you can see from the red arrow, the metal was bent in the fall and now is separated slightly from the main frame of the camera. This causes the button to be further from the frame than it was. I did manage to fix it by shortening the little plunger that is meant to allow you to push the button while underwater. So, it’s fixed now.

I have a new Canon G-10 and a new WP-DC28 factory housing waiting for me in Canada. I’ll be taking photos with it when I return to PNG in mid-June. Whoopee!