Pt. Lobos jellyfish maddness - diving Point lobos Great pinnacle on 10.18.2009

[blondecavefish]

Beautiful!!!

[liamfulton]

and not a fish in sight..LOL

[DocWongScuba]

Thanks, not surprising as these shots are without lights and looks like the low light capability shows up very well with some nice color without lights in our Monterey waters. Pretty impressive.

Question: Have you found the lack of auto focus and auto aperture a disadvantage when trying to video moving objects?

[midael75]

Short answer - Yes, its limiting. Having said that it could be argued that lack of AF promotes better shooting techniques: selecting/finding the scene, deciding what to shoot, preparing, executing. The problem is that its non-deterministic environment down there and the shootworthy and unexpected scene may present itself without warning and be gone almost as quickly.

[midael75]

For aperture/exposuse control 5d2 has fully manual and automatic modes. In manual mode you fully control ISO (can be set to auto), shutter and aperture. In automatic mode camera decides all with ability to over/under expose by ramping ISO up/down (seems to favor bigger aperture over lower shutter speed). In reality in our waters most of the time you end up shooting at maximum aperture at 1/30s to 1/60s when in this mode and no lights.

[midael75]

My experience with 5d2 is predominantly on wide angle uw video. Cant really comment 5d2 for macro video work - but it should be equivalent to what our warmer water cousins report since there you need the lights anyway.

For me 5d2 has worked very good. But given its limitations, I would definitively test d(r)ive it first.

Hope this was helpful! Thanks again!

[DocWongScuba]

Thanks, this is very helpful. Since my camera is typically mounted on a scooter, I think the lack of auto focus may prove frustrating but in any case I should be test driving the camera with Russ at Backscatter sometime.

Another camera I'm considering is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1, are you familiar with it?

[midael75]

Please do post some footage if you get to do that. I saw some 5d2 footage shot at the Caribeans when mounted on the scooter - it looked awesome. But with less available light here...Im curious.

Unfortunately Ive never had a chance to test those new Panasonic and Nikon DSLRs. Some of them sure look good on paper at least - wonder what are the noise charasteristics of their sensors on high ISOs.

[midael75]

Oh one more thing - DSLR housings with handles and all is not exactly as streamlined as some video housings I have come across. May become an (steady footage) issue when e.g. swimming into thick kelp! ;) And at least with Ikelite housing, no hope of "floating" the cam in from of you - it will flip upwards. But I suppose when mounted on a scooter this becomes non issue!

[DocWongScuba]

Yes, I certainly will post video when I get to that. Still, the video that you get from the 5d are pretty impressive. I know what my Sea Nettles look like in similar light situations with my Sony VX 2000 which has very good low light capability.

[DocWongScuba]

Nice, what camera were you using?

[midael75]

Thanks! :) Its shot with Canon 5dmk2 (using Canon 24mm prime while experimenting how it looks on a ikelite flatport (instead of dome))