Eagle Camping Equipment

Question by Kyle Maass: What is the best underwater camera for scuba diving?
I am looking to purchase a camera (probably not a housing for an SLR) for scuba diving. Something not to expensive, probably less than 500. Would the GoPro Hero be a suitable choice, or the SeaLife DC1200?

Best answer:

Answer by fhotoace
There are some nice P&S cameras that can be used down to 10 meters.

Most of the underwater cameras specs will tell you how deep you can dive without damaging the camera

Many are only good to 3 meters, so you will have to spend some time researching

P&S cameras — http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sidebyside.asp Olympus SW and Tough camera series as well as one Canon and a few Pentax cameras may fit your needs

GoPro Hero Surf can be used underwater up to 60 meters.

Shooting video, as you know, you will have to supply supplemental light since very little red light penetrates beyond a meter.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

Question by Bill D: How does a strobe work for an underwater camera when scuba diving?
I want to take some photos with a digital camera while scuba diving. I have heard that strobes are better to use. How do they work? Can you just buy a separate strobe and connect it to any underwater digital camera? Thanks.

Best answer:

Answer by scubabob
A stobe is either slaved directly to a cameras flash port ( if it has one) by a synch cord or it’s slaved via the cameras actual flash itself . In the former’s case, the actual on board camera flash is disabled. In the latter’s case, the onboard flash isn’t disabled but an opaque shield is placed over the flash, allowing the flash discharge out sideways, triggering the stobe’s own discharge via a small sensor.
If what you have is a normal point and shoot camera and a decent housing that has a strobe tray mount or capable of accepting some mouting hardware, you can go this route. IkeLite for example, makes a housing for many makes and model cameras, that allow the use of an aftermarket strobe. No wires, fibre optics and no connectors between the strobe and camera inside the housing. It simply triggers off the actual light flash of the onboard camera flash and an included flash shield stops the onboard illumination from heading to your subject but allows the offset strobe’s light to hit the subject instead. Voila…no backscatter in your image. The strobe’s light hits the subject at an angle relative to the camera lens, illuminating the subject but the light reflected off particles in the water outbound to the subject doesn’t head right back into the camera lens before the subject’s light, like would happen using an onboard flash. That’s how a strobe eliminates backscatter in a nutshell and why you see strobes attached to the camera housings by flexible arms. It keeps that strobe’s flash of light away from the camera lens and at an angle to it.
Here’s a few examples of strobe units.

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/1strobe_index.html

this one in particular is probably going to do the trick for you http://www.ikelite.com/af35/autoflash.html but check to make sure that your camera housing is supported for the mounts. I use the dual version of this strobe on this housing for my Canon 720 IS http://www.ikelite.com/web_two/can_a710.html .There’s no mount compatibility issues because the housing and strobe are Ike Lite.

If your camera is what’s called an amphibious camera, like a Bonica or Sea&Sea and if it’s relatively new, it may be set up to accept an optional strobe from from whatever camera manufacturer ( Bonica or Sea&Sea) you own. Older models ( 8 years ago or more) required you to jump through a lot of hoops and do some modifications to set up strobe funtionality for them.
You need to understand that it’s difficult to point you totally in the right direction here without knowing what camera you have, what your budget is and if it’s worth it to you to go the extra expense if you’re only taking a few fun shots or doing wide angle wrecks and macro life.
You don’t need to own an F1 race car to get to work a block away unless it’s imperitive you’re the fastest one on the street is what I’m saying.

What do you think? Answer below!

Question by Cameron: What is the BEST underwater camera for Real scuba diving for a pretty cheap price?
Im Going o Hawaii next year and im going scuba diving when im there. I want to catch that on film, but i want one for cheap.

Best answer:

Answer by Nick T
The problem with cheap is that you get what you pay for.

The cheapest ‘dive’ housing is little more than a ziplock bag, rated to 5m and completely pointless for diving.

If you already have a semi decent digital camera than you can probably get a housing for it. You can get ‘proper’ dive housings for most well known brands of digital camera, cannon, nikon, fuji, sony etc. They replicate all of the functions and are usually rated to between 10m and 50m with some rated to 100m. The deeper rated camera’s generally have single or dual o-ring protection and are worth the extra over a non o-ring variety. Expect to pay as much if not more for the housing than you did for the camera.

Any depth rating is a static rating, i.e. it is a measure of just the depth that the camera can be taken to and expect to survive without flooding. But if you accidentally knock the housing against something then you can easily exceed the rating and cause it to flood. This is why they tell you to never jump in while holding your camera and to always get someone to hand it to you.

Give your answer to this question below!