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Canon Powershot - S95 - The Best Underwater Compact Camera System

To take stunning underwater photographs using a compact camera, you'll discover the Canon Powershot S-95 provides the best possible combination of image quality, creative control, low light performance and lens choice. It builds on the considerable success of the Canon Powershot S-90 and adds HD video at the 720P standard. INON has developed a new underwater wide - angle lens for the Canon Powershot S-95 WP-DC38 Underwater housing. INON underwater lenses provide the flexibility to excel at photographing at the extremes - extreme wide- angle for reefscape, shipwreck , big pelagics and forced perspective imaging as well as extreme macro for revealing the hidden details in  nudibranchs, cup corals and tiny frogfish. Our Ocean Optics INON UK Level One underwater photography course provides the skills to help you get off to a great start with your new Canon Powershot S-95 underwater camera and our 2011 Philippines Photo Safari offers a wonderful opportunity to put those skills into practice and amass a portfolio to be proud of.

The Canon Powershot S-95 is a high-end compact digital camera. It's more useful to an underwater photographer than the Canon G series because it accepts INON wide-angle lenses, rather than simple dome ports. Steve or Mark at Ocean Optics can talk you through the rather confusing problems of wide- angle photography with compact underwater digital cameras.  But as it shares the same image sensor, which is much larger than conventional compact cameras, the Powershot S-95 provides exceptional photographs, even when prints are enlarged, cropped or projected.

The Canon Powershot S-95 features a zoom range that extends from 28 to 105mm. This is a good general purpose range on land and wide enough to catch the action  around dive boats. Underwater it's good for small to midsized fish, such as banner fish through to jacks. There's a built in macro facility, focusing as close at 5cm. For close up shooting underwater an INON UCL165 or INON UCL330 close up lens will provide much more flexibility by allowing you to zoom in and maintain a greater distance from your subject for easier lighting. For critter diving, a close up lens is really a must have. Along with auto focus, the Canon Powershot also lets you focus manually, which can be very useful. Pre focusing manually can be a very effective way to photograph clown fish, for example.

The Canon Powershot S-95 offers exceptional low light capability. Larger image sensors equal larger individual pixels, which reduces noise, so higher ISO's can be used. When used on it's widest lens setting, as you would when using your Powershot S-95 and INON wide - angle lens for wreck or cavern photography for instance, the Powershot S-95 has a very fast maximum F stop of F2.0. Canon have long been pioneers of professional lenses with very fast apertures, so lens quality is extremely good at maximum aperture. Image stabilisation is built in, helping with minimising camera shake at slow shutter speeds. All of these features combine to make the Canon Powershot S-95 in the Canon WP-DC38 underwater housing a superb tool for working in subdued light typical of Uk, South African and other low visibility diving locations. It's also ideal for taking pictures during the magic hours just after dawn and just before dusk when sunlight is at its most evocative, photographing wrecks and for deeper photographic dives.

Along with automatic exposure modes, which do the work for you, the Canon Powershot S-95 offers full manual exposure. By allowing you to choose shutter speed and aperture yourself, which very few compacts that can also accept true underwater wide-angle lenses let you do, you can control the look of your image. If you want to freeze shafts of sunlight or introduce deliberate motion blur into your underwater photographs, you can. Controlling the F stop lets you better control the range of your underwater strobe and increase or decrease depth of field. Our INON Level One beginners underwater photography course explains these benefits and you'll learn to use these controls on the Ocean Optics Underwater Photography Stage.

Handling of the Canon Powershot S-95 is fast and intuitive in the Canon WP-DC 38 underwater housing via the assignable dial and S button. The assignable dial is a feature found on many professional video cameras. It lets you select a function you use a lot and want fast access to and set it simply by turning a ring around the lens barrel. The assignable dial on the Canon Powershot S-95 lets you focus manually, set the ISO, choose the F stop, adjust exposure compensation and select white balance. The Canon Powershot S-95 also features a one-touch custom manual white balance setting. This makes colour correction for natural light underwater photography fast and decisive. You can greatly enhance the manual white balance feature of the Canon Powershot S-95 for truer colours by adding an inexpensive Alex Mustard Magic Filter.

The Canon Powershot S-95's built in flash can be linked to an INON underwater flash. We suggest the INON Z-240. The INON Z- 240 underwater flash provides either manual or TTL exposure with the Canon Powershot S-95 set in any of the automatic exposure modes, such as program, aperture or shutter priority. You can shoot the INON Z-240 on manual settings when you select full manual exposure on your Canon Powershot S-95. We recommend the INON Z-240 underwater flash  because you can change the synchronisation underwater. This is important if you wish to use your Powershot S- 95 to it's full potential with strobes as the camera puts out preflashes in automatic modes but not in manual exposure. This is why you must also change the synchronisation settings if you change your Canon Powershot S-95's exposure modes during your dive. Speak with Mark or Steve at Ocean Optics to fully understand underwater flash issues with the Canon Powershot S-95 in the WP-DC38 or other underwater housings.

The Canon Powershot S-95 in the Canon WP-DC38 underwater housing makes an extremely capable video camera, recording HD at the 720P standard. You can shoot in 16:9 widescreen or 4:3. You can work in manual exposure or with exposure lock to avoid distracting changes to lighting during your shot, lock and manually pull focus to avoid autofocus "hunting" and for creative effect and manually white balance for authentic colours.

Read More about the S95

See Advanced Underwater Compact Cameras

Hi Mark

Many thanks for all your time on Thursday afternoon in setting up and going through the Canon S975 with me.  That's the real benefits of buying from you guys, there's so much more you assist with rather than just a purchase.

Thank you also for loaning me the close-up lens to have a go with next

week. I will enjoy using it and of course, will take good care of it too and then return to you and hope to be able to show you some picture success at the same time?!

Have taken note of the tip too regarding the lanyard and will do that. Thanks for that advice too.

Have a nice weekend and speak soon.

Kind regards

Carol

Having bought the Canon Powershot G11 with underwater housing I had high expectations, and it did appear to have a lot of useful features that I hadn't had the confidence to use like manual exposure control initially.

However, I took a digital underwater photography course in Basildon, Essex with a company called Ocean Optics, which taught me how to take high quality images underwater. Money well spent, and that was the moment I wished I had done the course and spoken to them before making my decision.

One thing I learned from the course is that to take high quality images underwater you need to get close to your subject to reduce the amount of water the light has to travel through the water. The practice sessions in the pool proved that. The built in lens in the camera simply isn't capable of getting close enough. You need a wide angle, or even a fish eye lens particularly when shooting anything big like sharks and whales or even wrecks.

I am not suggesting you rush out and buy a DSLR for underwater photography. The housings for these are really expensive. The powershot s95 would be a far better option because lenses can be fitted to the underwater housing. Ocean Optics can give more information on this but they do adaptors and lenses made by a company called INON (Japanese I think), and the lenses can be changed while underwater. This means that you could swap lenses to get that perfect shot, and there aren't many features the g11 has that the s90 and s95 don't. I used one on the course and on viewing the pictures they were really good.

Also, the strap that comes with the dc34 housing is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard for underwater use, which proves how much Canon know about diving. It was just an ordinary strap you put round your neck. Fine if you just want to hike accross the moors in the rain, but not worth spending £200 on a case to do that, so I needed to invest in a decent lanyard from my local diving store.

I would strongly reccomend enrolling on the Ocean Optics INON level one course before making any purchase decisions to try out their equipment and learn how to use it properly. I am now considering part exing my camera and housing for a powershot s95 which isnt really what I wanted to do because it cost a lot to buy, but I am never going to get high quality images from the G11.

Steve