Yes, I know this reply is WAY too long...
General:
I suggest either the u/w+flash "scene" preset or full auto mode if you want to shoot whatever strikes your fancy at the moment, but in time you will likely develop manual preferences. After you get quite familiar with the camera, a strobe will probably make a big difference and allow you to get shots that cannot be obtained with the internal flash.
Technical:
On the SP350 the quick menu functions in shooting mode can be re-assigned. To make switching between present "scene" modes or other pre-defined manual settings easy, I set the camera to the scene mode, then set the "mymode" slot to "current settings", repeated for each u/w scene present, then set one of the main menu functions to go directly to mymode selection. With this method I had mode changing down to 3-4 keystrokes.
Positive Results:
I pre-set the SP350 to use the 3 u/w "scene" modes as the first 3 "mymode" manual settings, as described above. However, my wife (for whom we got this camera) stuck with the u/w wide+flash setting 99% of the time, so we did not get much comparison. But the u/w wide+flash scene setting worked for a great variety of general subjects. Again, examples will be posted very soon.
In light of the flash issues (below), I suggest that you experiment with the full-auto modes too. If the SP350's general auto modes are anything like its older brother's (C5050), the "A" or "P" mode should be quite capable of deciding whether to add flash or not at depths up to 15m (45ft). Below 35ft, I would say always use at least some flash to get colors instead of all blue. Even in full auto, you can force flash. But because this must be selected by menu, defining a "mymode" preset in advance will save needed seconds and many keystrokes.
No opinion on macro here b/c my wife never tried it. At 8megapixels, though, an in-focus regular shot could be cropped aggresively for a fairly tight close-up.
Negative Results:
The U/W wide+flash "scene" works very well at range of 3-5 feet to provide fill lighting underwater in addition to ambient light, but the tiny built-in flash is not very effective beyond short range. After 3-5 feet it did not add enough light to produce vibrant colors. However, it did add at least a little white light at up to 15 feet, so I was able to bring the red wavelengths back up for many pics in post-processing (photoshop or GIMP).
On some shots, the fact that the preset mode always triggered the flash caused moderate backscatter on wide shots that could have been captured clearly with only natural light. That explains why there is a 2nd preset for u/w wide with no flash. My theory is that writing an algorithm to know whether flash was really needed u/w was not practical.
In dark places with high particulates where the flash was the primary light source (crevices, wreck penetration), backscatter was extreme and typically prevented getting any useful image. *Backscatter is usually caused by direct flash reflection off of small particules between lens and subject, so the closer the flash is to the lens, the worse it will be.
More about going strobe (eventually):
On many of my wife's attempted shots that showed scatter, I often got clear pics of the same thing with virtually no scatter using my C5050 and a YS-25 Auto strobe on a just 10 inch arm. I would bet that a small strobe like the YS-25 would do wonders for the SP350 (after you practice with it).
In time, going to a manual approach on just one setting, like speed, makes it very easy to tweak your settings on the fly without mucking about with much else. On my C5050 I now shoot full manual at 64 ISO, f4.0, and adjust between 1/15th and 1/1000th speed depending on available light , strobe power, depth and subject. I adjust the strobe's power only as a secondary approach if I cannot get the light I want by changing speed alone. When I cannot get in range any other way I change F-stop. It's tempting to bump to a higher ISO equivalent to allow a higher f-stop and thus more depth of field, but I found that the higher ISO settings reduce image quality and make getting exactly the right exposure settings critical.
When diving, the less you need to change settings, the better. I look forward to hearing (and seeing) your results... |
By Phras (New BonaireTalk Poster - Post #6) on Monday, October 2, 2006 - 2:20 pm: 
