underwater photgraphy revisited

last year at this time i posted about all the new photo gear for the trip here

http://bajabuck.blogspot.com/2005/03/underwater-photography.html

and i never came back and talked about the results. now that im preparing for the trip again i've been re-thinking my photo gear choices and making some changes for this year.

briefly regarding the nikon coolpix 5400. i don't HATE it. but i did not get the results i was expecting considering it's a step up and more expensive than the 4300. bottom line: it's not that great of a camera for underwater usage or for single-chance shots at mobile or skittish wildlife. it was even persnickety with slow moving or stationary animals such as nudibranchs or hydroids. it took several shots to force it to take the picture i wanted and that's unacceptable to me. i would like more than 2 out of 15 shots that come out when i can SEE through the large viewfinder as opposed to a film camera where you don't know how the final shot will look until developed.

the features i did like were the two additional movie settings which allowed me to make some cool slow-mo movies or complete panoramic shots. again, not so useful for underwater.

the other reason i thought this would be a good camera is that the housing allows access to all controls and it has a large file movie feature allowing about 70 seconds of video at a time. the downfall with this option was the same problems i had with still-frame shooting.

i'm not sure how to describe what would happen that i was frustrated with but i will try. when taking a shot i could see the image on the large viewfinder screen and it would focus and set the exposure and f-stop, say 1/500 and 7.9 on the bottom of the screen. when it was focused the green light would stop flashing, telling me it was focused and the image would look very good and the colors looked how i liked it and then at the very very last second the entire image would flash and the color would de-saturate and then it would take the picture. the final image was the de-saturated one. grrrrr

i played with the manual settings and the white balance and the saturation the focus matrix, nothing stopped it from doing this. except one thing. if i was taking a macro of a color rich object i would figure out the distance i needed and focus the picture. then i would take my finger off the button. i would turn the camera towards a lighter surface the same distance away, let it focus, then turn the lens back to the color rich object and it wouldn't overcompensate, it would stay saturated.

while i'm used to doing this with my film camera for variable light conditions such as sunrises and sunsets to force the camera to over or underexpose the image to my preferences, i never had to do this with the 4300.

as you can see, this technique isn't conducive to taking macro pictures of tiny tiny fish that will flit out of the frame as soon as your lens is close enough to take the picture. the matter is exacerbated by the strobe since when it fires it SERIOUSLY over-exposes the image.

the same would happen with the video, i would be shooting video and then all of a sudden it would overexpose it. and i compared this brad who was shooting video on his sony cybershot still camera and getting clear video. mind you he's not as thrilled with the video as he would be if he used an actual video camera but it's way better than mine.

so i learned a lesson, i should have bought the equipment for what it's for and the nikon coolpix 5400 is NOT remotely useful as a videocamera. which is disappointing considering everything i use in my project was originally designed for some other purpose and i macgyver it to be a marine biology tool. because frankly, there is no marine biology store.

so next tiem ill post the new things i've bought for this year and why it's a good thing i don't have kids because i contribute to the national debt buying my research gear.