My Quest to Find a New Underwater Camera

One of my last shots with the Ewa-Marine U-AXP and Canon T1i

It’s been a long couple of weeks, I had some unfortunate things happen to me, but in the end, I think I will be better off for it. Sometimes the universe pushes us, albeit unwillingly, to a better place. Getting there, however, is not always pleasant, and it often requires lots of blood, sweat, tears, and research. I wanted to post about my experience in trying to find an affordable underwater camera rig because I hope that this might help others in their quest as well as help share my experiences and observations in some of the individual products I looked at along the way. In the last few weeks, I came face to face with the reality that my hobby (underwater photography) is prohibitively expensive.

For the last year, I have been using an Ewa-Marine U-AX underwater housing. For those of you not familiar with this solution, it is essentially a very strong plastic bag for your camera. The advantages with these cases are as follows: they are CHEAP, you can get your DSLR in the water for $300 or less. You can use your TTL topside speedlight I already had a Canon T1i DSLR and a Canon 580 EX flash already) in these cases. They are flexible in that they support multiple lenses and multiple camera bodies, if you upgrade, you can use the same casing. Supposedly they can go up to 20 meters (some Ewa-Marine housings are rated for quite a bit deeper). Did I mention they are cheap? The trade off is the fact that they don’t (except for one or two newer models) have support for external wide-angle domes or wet lenses, there is no external flash support, and in my experience, are of questionable reliability.

Optional BF-1 Weight System for Ewa-Marine U-AXP

In my case, my Ewa-Marine housing worked well with constant use for about 5 months. Where I started having troubles was shortly after I got the optional BF1 1.5 kg lead weight system. I suspect that the casing I was using just wasn’t really designed to handle the weight system, and the strain started loosening the seams near where the carry strap attached. This is all conjecture of course, but I did notice that they re-designed their casings to distribute the weight differently along the top and bottom of the casing in the more recent U-AXP. In my case, I had problems within a month of adding the weight. I got a leak along the bottom seam just next to where the carry strap attached which damaged my camera. I got the housing repaired (which they did for free), and within a month or so, I had it back to me. I got it back, and 3 dives later, it broke again. Same issue as before, only this time along the top seam next to the carry strap.

U-AXP with failure points indicated in red

The newer Ewa-Marine U-BXP100 - Notice how the straps have been moved to allow for the weight disrtibution to be dstributed across the bottom of the housing.

Luckily I caught the leak, and all that happened is that I had air expelled, and no water went into the housing. But that left me with an issue. I had lost complete trust in my housing, and I decided I had to look for something else. Don’t get me wrong, I had a good customer experience with the Ewa-Marine team, and I think their product has it’s place. For instance, there is a guy who I found online who photographs wakeboarders, and he uses it as a shield for his rig. There are also plenty of snorkelers who use it successfully. It also looks as if they re-designed their newer bags to possibly eliminate the problems I had, so I would be open to the idea that my experience is no longer representative of their newer products. I won’t find out however, as I have decided to move on.

I started by looking at the Ikelite Housing for the Canon T1i, but found it extremely expensive after the ports, domes, and strobes.

This is where my adventure really began. At first, I decided that the only obvious solution was to get a hard case for my DSLR camera. After much, much research I started to realize that I just can’t afford a real rig for a DSLR. It is just SO expensive. Case, port, new macro lenses, strobes, dome ports, etc. All in all, I was looking at around $5000-$1000 for a full rig, and $3500 just to get off the ground. And I already had the DSLR! Oh, and don’t forget, if you want to upgrade or change your camera, you have to start all over.

Needless to say, I was heartbroken. I started weighing other options, but was quickly finding that the only options open for my budget were point-and-shoot cases. I was discouraged by the lack of quality optics, and especially by the potential loss of RAW flexibility. It was at that point, I discovered this site: http://www.uwphotographyguide.com. This site is, I have to say, one of the best, most well organized and most comprehensive resources on underwater photographers. If you are a novice, this site is the place to start.

After digging through that site, I found some great recommendations, and eventually to a short list of potential candidates. That short list included the following: Canon A570, Canon S90,  Canon G9/G10/G11, Canon SD990, and the Panasonic Lumix LX3.  I quickly eliminated a number of options: The A570 is a little on the old side, with a 7.1 mp sensor. While an excellent camera, with a good, fast lens and a solid zoom range, I just couldn’t see myself in investing in it when compared against some of the competition. The SD990, while a veritable dream, does not have RAW support. The S90 looked very attractive, and stayed in the running until the very end. I eventually passed it up mostly because of the price/performance ratio and because of the lack of real solid reviews and information. The S90 could have been my choice, had I been conducting my search 1 year later. The Panasonic Lumix LX3 is powerhouse. Fast lens, 720p video, wide angle lens, excellent macro, RAW, etc… However, the killer for me was that the housing options were very pricey. If you have a few extra bucks, I would really look hard at this one, as it is probably one of the best compacts out there.

Canon G Series (pictured: G9)

That pretty much left me tentatively with the Canon G Series. I have to say that I was still pretty skeptical about the quality of work one could do with even a top end point-and-shoot. To ease my fears, I started trying to find photo examples from the G series. I found this site, which has lots of shots from different types of cameras, organized by type:http://forum.kapalselam.org/category/camera/canon-powershot-g9/page/1/. After much more searching, I came across a useful little utility on Flickr call the “Flickr Camera Finder” (found here:http://www.flickr.com/cameras/). And this is where the magic happened. By searching based on particular models, and then filtering by the keyword “underwater” I was able to see the results of each camera that I was looking at. See the results here: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=underwater&cm=canon/powershot_g9 I stumbled upon a world of underwater compact photography that is as active as it is spectacular.

I was particularly taken by one man’s (Brian Mayes) stunning macro work with the Canon G9 using nothing but the Canon WP-DC21 housing and stacked Inon UCL-165 Macro Lenses. You HAVE to see his stuff to believe it. He uses no strobes, no high-end housing, nothing special. Here is his profile with an explanation of his rig:http://www.flickr.com/people/brianmayes/, and here is is photostream:http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianmayes/. I also made a gallery of other peoples work shot with the G9: http://www.flickr.com/photos/83275239@N00/galleries/72157623461443090/ It was largely due to his work (and a few others, including Ammar Al-Fouzan and CK) that I ended up choosing the Canon G9. This camera features a 35-200mm effective range, a low end aperture of 2.8, 12.7 MP sensor, RAW, and most importantly excellent 1 cm macro functions. Dpreview review: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canong9/.

The biggest two limitations were as such; 1. The 35-200 mm lens is just a little short of being able to do real wide-angle shots. Most of the other options listed above feature 24-28mm on the wide end. 2. The Canon WP-DC21 housing does not come with TTL ability should I ever need it. I can always go with slave strobes if need be, or I can always upgrade to the Ikelite housing if I never need to.

Canon G9 WP-DC21 Housing with stacked UCL-165 Macro Lenses

I found an adapter online that will allow me to eventually add stacked Inon UCL-165 lenses, and I also found a wide-angle dome port made by Fantasea that will supposedly work with my housing. That last part needs some research, but I am going to explore it further when I have more time. Update: I actually found a 0.7x Wide Angle Dome one from a  Japanese company that looks like it works better. You can find it here.

I had to make a lot of sacrifices in my expectations in moving to a compact option, but in the end, compacts do have several advantages; 1. They are lighter and smaller – taking my rig with me will be much easier with this setup 2. Wet lenses: With a DSLR setup, you can’t change lenses underwater, with a compact, you can: http://www.uwphotographyguide.com/underwater-wet-lenses 3. Cost: I can do a lot more with a lot less money  4. I have a flexible rig that can do some some wide angle, excels at macro, and can zoom to 200mm effective.

Again, I had to sacrifice some things versus my dream of having a DSLR housing, but bottom line is that I can (hopefully) take great photos for relatively cheap. In the end, I managed to find a used Canon G9 on ebay for $300 USD. I found a WP-DC21 case for about $200. I will eventually be adding the  macro lenses by Inon 2X $150, plus about $65 for the adapter. Getting started will run me around $500, and if I add the Macro lenses, add another $365. Not too shabby for a decent setup capable of returning great results. While not perfect, I think it is something I can be happy with. Are there better on the market? Absolutely. Am I going to find better than what I found for the money? I doubt it.

Check out the Flickr Gallery of G9 underwater photographs.

Again, this was a long and not very fun process, and I can only hope that by retracing my steps, I can help give someone else a point in the right direction. I think there are a lot of people out there who are like me: passionate about underwater photography, but not willing to spend thousands on a rig.  There is hope out there, you just need to get educated and know where to look. So, good luck, and I hope this helps. I will be posting shots when my equipment finally gets here, which will be mid March when all is said and done. I can’t wait!