Looking for underwater housing for Sony H50

[spidey07]

I know nothing about underwater housings but would like one for snorkeling and diving. Ikelite seems to be a top maker but their web site says they won't be offering on for this camera model - Sony DSC-H50.

Any ideas?

If there isn't one I'd could buy another camera and a housing for that one as long as the camera was decent and had full control.

 

[spidey07]

After some more looking around I'm going to get a SeaLife DC1000. It's an all in one solution with custom features to make shooting underwater easy - white balance, flash, etc. The specialized software does most of the work for you to produce pretty good pictures with accurate color. You input your depth and shoot away.

http://www.amazon.com/Sealife-...&qid=1245420004&sr=8-1

 

[dug777]

Cool, would be great to see what you produce

My folks are pretty keen UW photographers, but slide film not digital (Couple of Nikonos Vs with SB104s, SB105s and the whole range of lenses).

Have taken some astounding stuff, let me see if I have any scanned...

EDIT:

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/dug777/leafysmall.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/dug777/Flabellinasmall.jpg

Old man wants a Nikonos RS still, and you can find some tempting looking ones on ebay once in a while...

If you could drop a digital back (Nikon FX sensor?) into the Nikonos V body, you'd have the ultimate rugged UW camera, and there are billions of them in good nick on ebay for very reasonable prices these days...

 

[spidey07]

Light is going to be the big problem. The internal flash is really weak. I did pick up a flash diffuser and a wide angle lense. I'm starting to learn that when you add "underwater" to it the price automatically increases 5 fold. Most all decent underwater photography will have at least one external flash/strobe if not two. But this little camera seems to take decent video so that will be fun.

Nice pics dug, that slug looking thing is called a Nudibranch. Thousands of different species.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Light is going to be the big problem. The internal flash is really weak. I did pick up a flash diffuser and a wide angle lense. I'm starting to learn that when you add "underwater" to it the price automatically increases 5 fold. Most all decent underwater photography will have at least one external flash/strobe if not two. But this little camera seems to take decent video so that will be fun.

Nice pics dug, that slug looking thing is called a Nudibranch. Thousands of different species.

Flashes are so important to good UW photography, and that's why the SB104s are king UW

Yeah, nudibranchs rule :beer: Chromodoris in their many forms are my favourite, I think.

We get some excellent ones here, but I think that fella was in the Solomon Islands.

 

[spidey07]

Thought I'd bump this. Took over 8 GB of pictures on scuba and snorkeling with the new camera. No Strobe.

Pros:
Can take incredible underwater pictures - if you can get the focus right.
Overall very happy with it, there are shortcomings but for what I paid pretty damn happy

Cons:
FOCUS! It takes 2-3 seconds for it to focus and maybe another second to take the picture. Underwater it's incredibly difficult to hold the camera steady especially if there is any current. The time to focus and take the shot is painstaking, there is no reason for it to take so long.
No control - pretty much point and shoot
Built-in flash is useless on land and underwater, totally useless. That's expected though as it supposed to be used to trigger an external strobe and not kill the camera battery in the process.

Examples to follow. If you can keep your focal distance and camera steady it does pretty well. Snorkel mode was too red so I manually set white balance with a white card underwater. Scuba mode was much better in terms of color.