My Sea and Sea 5000g point and shoot

During my early years of diving (late 90's) I decided to get my hands on a Canon Ixus 1.5mp camera and housing. I was happy shooting away at rays and sharks in the Bahamas but was very dissapointed with the blue colour I was getting. There was no manual white balance and at the time being a complete UW newbie I failed to fully understand the problems with colour and depth. After 3 months the camera flooded and I swore I would never invest in another.

Then as things progressed and I saw the huge uptake in digital pocket camera's and available housing from Sony and Cannon and some of the results that were produced, my interest peaked again. Although I was not impressed with the cheap looking housing they came in and I have seen so many flooded by the end of a diving holiday. I started to research the subject more and found that the technology had improved and now manual white balance and higher shutter speeds were available. This plus the array of accessories made a point and shoot appealing. I finally decided on the Sea & Sea 5000g and 5000DX housing. This decision was based on a number of factors.

1. Local support
2. Manual controls such as WB. shutter speed, aperture, ISO.
3. Available accessories such as strobes with a fibre optic that connect to the housing for strobe synchronisation. Wide angle lens.
4. A robust housing rated below the standard 40m depth. Sea and Sea housing have a good reputation in my eye. 55m.

At first I was happy to be taking pictures and the customers on the boat liked it very much. As the season progressed more and more people came to me asking about this and that setting on the camera and how generally to improve their technique. For me it is fun teaching people to dive and now that P&S cameras are so popular I am looking forward to another season in the similans taking customer pics and teaching more about UW photography and marine creatures.

I found that the P&S can produce some good quality shots of stationary marine life such as Nudibrachs, Scorpion fish, Seahorses etc. It allowed a good macro focus with the internal flash lit up some nice shots. With the addition of a YS-27dx strobe I found I could achieve brighter and more even colours throughout the whole frame. With this came it's own headache of having to do things manually like adjust the strobe power output, adjusting camera exposure levels as to avoid overexposed shots. I started to get frustrated with some of my macro shots as I was getting bluured pictures towards the tail end of the creature. This again was a limitation of the P&S camera and the highest f/stop was f8. This wasnt hight enough to obtain the depth of field (DOF) I was looking for. Somewhere between f/16-f/22 would be better and provide a nice sharp image from head to tail.

When it came to shooting schooling tuna or an anemone fish darting around the anemone, I found that I got many blurred shots of fish or tails and had to take so many shots to get the right one. Even though on my Sea & Sea 5000g I can change the shutter speed up to 1/1000s to freeze the action, I thought no problem. What I had not considered was the time it took for the autofocus to lock on, by then the fish had moved on and had time for a nap before the focus locked in.

Wide angle with manual WB produced some nice photos in shallow clear water to around 18m. Once the visability and ambient light levels reduced at deeper depths the grainer the the images got and at some depths below 18m a good white balance was not possible. I learned to white balance at around 18m max and then leave it for the deeper portions of the dive and if it was a good pic, post process on the PC using photoshop.

All in all the 5000g has been a good camera to cut my teeth on and allowed me to play more with manual setting to try and achieve a better shot with nice sharp balanced colours.