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Which Underwater Camera? Compact, Prosumer, Compact System Camera
or D-SLR?
By Steve Warren

One of the great myths of photography is that it's the photographer who makes the image, not the equipment. It's completely untrue. And it's usually attributed to photographers who own and use top of the range camera equipment. The reason that the statement does not stand up to scrutiny is that photography isabout controlling the look of your image and the term photography covers a very wide range of subjects under many different shooting conditions. For a land photographer these subjects might include photographing a rock star at a concert, a dragonfly on thewing, architectural structures, a football match or reportage.

Mark Koekemoer evaluating a Lumix underwater
Compact System Camera onthe Thistlegorm

To cover so many different types of subject many variations of camera systems have been developed. Each system excels in its own field. However the more specialised a camera system is the less easily it may adapt adequately to other shooting requirements. A landscape photographer might select a field camera that sits on a stand and has to be reloaded with film for each shot. An advertising photographer might use a medium format studio camera with a £40,000 digital back to shoot a roadside poster campaign. A photojournalist might choose a D - SLR with a zoom lens to compete in the press scrum surrounding a disgraced celebrity arriving at the Old Bailey. Without the right equipment for the task in hand, even the most creative and gifted photographer simply cannot get the shot.

Underwater photography is much more equipment dependant than taking pictures on land. And, unusually, it's often practised by people whose passion is not really for photography at all. They are divers who simply want to record what they see under the water. Understanding underwater photography techniques and the impact of using the right - or wrong - underwater camera equipment isn't something that they have felt they really need to confront. It's understandable because for casual holiday snapshooting on land a simple compact camera set to auto often works extremely well. Usually on land, if you can see it you can photograph it. But this approach won't work underwater.

Extreme close up of a Lionfishes eye is more easily done with
a CSC or D- SLR than a compact - photo Steve Warren

In Ocean Optics experience, divers looking to get into underwater photography often aren't quite sure what they should be asking for in an underwater camera system and what kind of results they can reasonably expect to get from it. Aggressive marketing of underwater cameras in the diving press can seem to make choosing an underwater camera dead easy. But from our experience of running INON UK Level One underwater photography courses, making underwater photography techniques presentations to dive clubs and at dive shows and conferences and answering questions at Ocean Optics showroom, we can state that many - possibly most - divers buy the wrong underwater camera when starting out. In this article I'll try and explain where it all goes wrong. It is only a very brief overview - Mark Koekemoer and I will be happy to discuss the finer points in much more detail with you personally. Just get in touch with us at Ocean Optics.

In this basic introduction to underwater cameras, we'll look at the key differences between compact, prosumer, Compact System Cameras and D- SLR cameras from the very specific perspective of using them beneath the surface. We'll explain the basic pros and cons and talk through where each type of camera system sits in the hierarchy of underwater camera equipment.

Basic Compact Cameras

Panasonic Lumix FT-3 is a capable point and shoot underwater camera

Let's deal with compact cameras first. Compact cameras offer a low cost entry into underwater photography.  Many modern compact cameras can be equipped with an underwater camera housing. But this does not automatically mean they are good cameras to use underwater. The reason is that own label housings, though normally rated to 40 metres, are chiefly aimed at the casual land shooter who needs to protect their compact camera from rain, sand, snow or dust. If the camera manufacturer was specifically targeting divers, you'd see them also offering essential accessories for underwater photography, such as lenses and strobes. Instead these vital accessories are provided by specialist independent underwater camera companies like INON.  Most compact cameras work fine on land for taking good quality holiday snaps. If a photographers ambitions exceed the compact cameras capabilities, then they need to upgrade to a different camera that can handle those requirements. For example a serious wildlife photographer probably wouldn't choose to use a compact - even one with a very powerful telephoto lens built in - for an African safari. He'd have to many problems with shutter lag, download time when shooting in RAW and limited motordrive capability. He's more likely to use a Compact System

Camera or D- SLR

Canon full frame SLR in Subal underwater housing is a fully professional system for the commercial underwater photographer

However for many divers, compact cameras can produce exceptional and hugely satisfying results under the water. And they can do it on a modest budget. The trick is to choose the right camera and underwater housing. Two very important criteria for choosing a compact camera for underwater photography are having   control of the F stop and the facility to accept specialised close up and wide - angle lenses. Neither would normally be important for casual photography on land for which a compact camera is usually designed. The F stop works like the iris of your eye to control the amount of light reaching the camera sensor. In low light the F stop widens to let in more light and under bright light it gets narrower so the light isn't overpowering. For most land photography, this function works faultlessly. The compact camera can be left on auto and will almost always deliver a good photograph. Underwater there's a major complication. This is because we often take our underwater photographs in comparatively bright light, but want colour in our images which we often restore using an underwater camera strobe or flashgun. The bright light causes the F stop to narrow like the iris of our own eye in strong sunlight and this restricts the range of the underwater camera flashgun. So, to give ourselves maximum flash range (in itself usually only 1.5 to 2 metres) we need a camera where we can select a wide F stop. Compact cameras that will let you choose the F stop yourself, rather than choosing it for you, offer aperture priority exposure or manual exposure. In reality few compact cameras offer this feature and there's some confusion caused by some compact camera manufacturers talking about "manual" control when they really just mean you can choose a different automatic or scene setting which is not the same thing at all!

Fast moving subjects like dolphins need cameras that focus and shoot fast. Mark Koekemoer used a NIkon D300 SLR for this picture

Advanced and Prosumer Compact Cameras

One of the main differences between compact cameras and prosumer compact cameras is that prosumer cameras give more control of the cameras exposure functions to the photographer. Prosumer cameras are made for keen photography enthusiasts with a good working knowledge of photography techniques, including controlling exposure. Prosumer camera owners often also own D - SLR cameras, choosing to use their prosumer camera  as a back up or when the D- SLR would be to bulky and heavy to cart around or would draw unwanted attention to them.

Mark and I are aware that photography jargon like exposure, F stops, sensitivity and so on can be intimidating - even boring. But to take good underwater photographs consistently, rather than relying on dumb luck, you need to understand and apply this information. Mark Koekemoer and I developed the INON UK Level One underwater photography course taught by Ocean Optics and other INON UK Underwater Photography Academies to guide non-photographers through this must have information. Think of learning the photography basics like doing your open water scuba course. It was all new when you started, but it's vital information that you now rely on every time you dive. An INON UK Level One underwater photography course fulfils the same role, giving you the knowledge, skills and practical experience to take great underwater images - which is your goal, right?

Both compact and prosumer cameras usually have built in zoom lenses. These cannot normally be removed and replaced with another lens, the way lenses can be interchanged on a Micro Four Thirds or D - SLR camera. Both compact and prosumer cameras may have built in lenses that negate any real benefit of using interchangeable lenses anyway. This is because more and more compact and prosumer cameras have very long range zoom lenses that extend from a modest wide- angle to a super telephoto built in. This makes these "superzoom" cameras suitable for photographing a whole range of subjects from a scenic of the Cornish coastline to a tightly framed shot of Big Ben's clock face in Westminster. Unfortunately, it's the extended zoom range of many compact and prosumer cameras that makes them unsuited to underwater photography.

Panasonic Lumix in INON X2 professional level housing is a lighter, smaller and less expensive alternative to a conventional D- SLR outfit

Underwater Lenses - Let The Confusion Begin

Other than for close up or macro photography of small subjects taken at short distances like nudibranchs, or fish images normally taken within a metre or so of the camera, almost all successful underwater photography depends upon the use of extreme wide - angle lenses. While compact and prosumer cameras often have zoom lenses which are commonly as wide as 28mm with some going as wide as 24mm (comparisons are based on the camera industry equivalent to a 35mm film camera lens), these are not nearly as wide an angle lens as underwater photographers usually need. An underwater photographer would consider an 18mm lens as merely moderate.  A topside photographer would deem this an extreme wide - angle lens and might go through their entire career without ever needing or using one.

Andrew Pugsley took this very creative image of a grouper
with a Olympus C50 compact camera

For so many subjects an underwater photographer relies completely on his or her wide-angle lens. A golden rule to avoid soft, hazy, defocused, disappointing images is to only shoot over about 25% of the distance you can see under the water yourself. So in "clear" conditions typical of the tropics where you might see 30 metres, your camera will only take a clean photograph at a maximum distance of about 7 to 8 metres. If you own a compact camera, there's a simple test you can make to demonstrate the reality of this limitation. Set your camera on its widest zoom setting. Now find a rock garden or bush and imagine it is a coral reef you want to photograph. Looking through your camera pace out how far away you have to be from your subject to get the shot you want. Add 25% to that distance. Then multiply that distance by four to work out how good the visibility needs to be to nail the shot.  Like wrecks? Do the same exercise using a suitable vessel at a harbour or substitute a double decker bus (I'm doubtless required at this point to formally warn you not to fall into the docks
or get run over - Ocean Optics takes no responsibility etc.....).

When it comes to working out which compact and prosumer underwater cameras can really accept genuine wide - angle lenses, you've a lot or

research to do if you want to avoid being misled. Since no compact camera,
at the time of writing, offers a built in wide -angle lens that will really meet the needs of most underwater photographers, you have to work with add on lenses. These fall into two categories; add on land lenses made by the camera manufacturer which fit inside the housing, or external wet lenses, like INON underwater lenses that mount outside. Another option, which aren't really wide-angle lenses at all are dome ports. Dome ports cause a lot of confusion...Fantasea's Big Eye is the best example of a dome port for compact underwater cameras.

Wet lenses are dedicated underwater photography lenses, though INON's range also work in air. Ideally, they are matched to the built in lens of the camera you are using. Normally the angle of view of the lens under the water will be specified. The underwater view of a moderate wide-angle lens is usually around 100 degrees. However some camera/lens combinations require you to zoom in and a significant benefit of owning an underwater wide-angle lens is lost. Wet lenses have the massive advantage that they can be fitted and removed underwater. So you can add and remove lenses to exactly suit your subject, ranging from, say, an INON UWL100 super wide - angle lens for shooting scenic's to an INON UCL165AD close up lens to take a shot of a ghost pipefish.

Steve Warren took this basking shark portrait using a Fuji
compactcamera fitted with an INOn wide - angle lens

Some compact and prosumer cameras do accept wide-angle lens attachments.  These attach directly to your cameras built in zoom lens. Obviously they fit inside your housing. These can be quite effective if the housing you have accepts a dome port.  But if the port is flat, much of the advantage of fitting a wide - angle lens will be lost. This is because a lens behind a flat port behaves like your eye behind your facemask and objects appear nearer and larger than they do in air. You'll lose about one third of your wide-angle lenses field of view if your housing only has a flat port. Obviously, once the lens is fitted, you are stuck with it for the whole dive.

Dome ports are hemispheres, which help correct refraction. Traditionally dome ports have been used to maintain the angle of view of a lens when it is taken under the water. So there's no appreciable difference between how much your lens sees in air and how much it sees underwater. Underwater stills, cine and video photographers use them extensively. Crucial to a domes effectiveness is having the right wide- angle lens behind the dome port to begin with. The reason domes are often ineffective for compact and prosumer camera users is because the cameras own lens is not a true wide-angle as an underwater photographer would understand it. Some dome units are being aggressively marketed and both dealers and end users have misunderstood that they cannot make a cameras built in wide -angle lens see any more than it already does. This is a huge limitation. For example a camera with a built in 28mm wide-angle lens used with a simple dome port sees about 75 degrees under the water. When fitted with an INON UWL10028- AD true wide - angle lens it would see 100 degrees, with the option to increase this to 150 degrees if needed.

Olympus XZ-1 represents the state of the art in
underwater compact cameras

The Move To Compact System Cameras
or D- SLR's - Is It For You?

Stepping up from compact and prosumer cameras should be done for a reason. There are gains and losses involved and it's important to understand how these will impact on your own underwater photography opportunities.  Four common reasons for moving up to an underwater D - SLR or the newer Compact System Cameras are: to operate at greater depths, improve image quality, photograph small fish, and overcome shutter lag. Let's explain these benefits in more detail.

Officially, most own label compact camera underwater housings have a depth limit of 40 metres. Many divers will be satisfied with this limit, but many others will want to go deeper. Some compact underwater housings from independent camera housing manufacturers can go to 60 metres or more. However it may be less easy to fit lenses to these models without some restrictions and it is very important to check the small print before you make a purchase. Ocean Optics can advise you. At deeper depths there will be less sunlight, so you may have to use higher sensitivity levels increasing noise. Housings for Compact System Cameras and D- SLR cameras often operate out of the box to 60 to 75 metres or so. For diving beyond this, some manufacturers, including Subal who Ocean Optics represents in the UK, can be equipped with modified controls making them easier to operate in the 100 metre plus range.

For this action assignment for "The Times",
Mark Koekemoer used a NikonD300 professional SLR

As you move away from compact and prosumer cameras to Compact System Cameras and D- SLR cameras, you'll also see an improvement in image quality. This is a result of using a much larger image sensor. Although there's been a heavy marketing campaign to promote the idea that the more megapixels your camera has, the better the picture will be, this isn't quite accurate. Compact cameras have very small image sensors - about the size of your thumbnail. The more pixels you cram into this tiny space, the smaller each pixel has to be. Generally, this increases noise. Quietly, compact camera manufacturers have recently started to reduce the megapixel count a little to recover some image quality. 10MP seems to be about optimum.

Because Compact System  Cameras like the Panasonic GF series and D- SLR cameras have much larger sensors than compact and prosumer cameras, the individual pixels can also be much larger. Sharpness is better and noise is less. So, given a compact camera offering 12 megapixels and a Compact System Camera or D- SLR also offering 12 megapixels, the Compact System Camera or D- SLR will offer a higher quality image with much less noise. The last big breakthrough in D- SLR technology for underwater photographers and a reason many existing, experienced D- SLR  underwater photographers have upgraded their cameras recently, has been the leap in low light capability. In the limited light in which we take our photographs, the ability to shoot at very high sensitivity levels with little or no obvious noise is a benefit that cannot be overstated.


Cuttlefish photographed with Fuji compact camera by Steve Warren

Higher quality image sensors also let you crop your underwater photographs more radically without great losses of quality. This can be really useful if you could not get close enough to your subject and need to enlarge it in post. Magazines and books often crop images to better fit their layouts, so may need a high quality original image to begin with to let them do this without sacrificing picture quality - especially for cover shots. RAW, preferred by most publications and image library's,  is also more practical for Compact System Camera and D- SLR owners. You can shoot faster and for more frames when using these cameras compared to compact and prosumer cameras. Though some higher end compacts and most prosumer cameras will take pictures in RAW, there's usually a gap of several seconds or more before you can take the next picture while the file is written to the card. Since so many of the subjects we want to portray underwater are moving quickly and our own time is extremely limited, this can make RAW largely impractical as a tool for photographers using compact and prosumer cameras underwater.

D- SLR and Compact System Cameras also benefit from interchangeable lenses. A choice of lenses let's you shoot from fisheye to super telephoto. These lenses are optimised to ensure they compliment the larger, higher quality sensors used in these cameras. It would be asking a lot of a compact or prosumer camera to yield such an optically perfect image when you consider many Compact System Cameras and D- SLR camera lenses cost far more than a compact or prosumer camera does. But the sensor is only as good as the picture the camera lens delivers to it. Lenses used by Compact System Cameras and D- SLR owners are expected to deliver pin sharp, blemish free enlargements that a photography enthusiast can display on a wall at home or in the office or in an exhibition - think of the wonderful underwater images on display at the dive shows for instance.  The images may be entered into high-level competitions where poor technical quality may mean automatic rejection. And, for a professional underwater photographer, a technically flawed image may be unsalable, no matter how striking the subject.. Compact camera owners aren't expected to demand such high quality nor routinely enlarge their images much beyond postcard size. So neither sensors nor lenses need to be as good as those used by keen amateur or professional photographers. For the underwater photographer, the choice of optics on his underwater camera housing will also be a major factor in whether those superb lenses qualities are actually maintained under the water or are compromised.

Compact System Cameras and D- SLR cameras are also much more effective for small fish photography than most compact and prosumer underwater cameras. This is because of a limitation in compact cameras that hasn't been entirely solved in our attempts to adapt them from casual topside cameras to serious and versatile underwater photography tools. Small reef fish, like hawk fish, angels and anthias, create a set of problems for underwater photographers. They are only about the size of your palm and aren't easy to get really near to. So we may only be able to get to within 50cm to a metre of them. At this distance if we shoot them using a wide - angle lens they'll look tiny in our photograph. But, if we zoom in using our compact cameras built in lens we may lose focus.  Even if we select macro on our compact cameras menus, we may still be unable to take a frame-filling portrait at these distances. This is because the nearest point at which your compact or prosumer cameras lens can focus gets further away as you zoom in. So anything close to the camera may well remain stubbornly out of focus, unless you zoom out making the animal look small again....

Compact System Cameras and D- SLR cameras easily solve this problem. Because they have interchangeable lenses, you can fit a dedicated macro lens to the camera body. Unlike the macro feature built into most compact and prosumer cameras, this lens can focus easily from just a few centimetres in front of the lens to infinity. By using a tele- macro lens, like the Leica 45mm for the Panasonic GF cameras or Nikon VR105 or Canon EF100 for popular D- SLR's, you can easily take a stunning full face study of a small fish at near to moderate camera to subject distances. These macro lenses are also better for taking close up photographs of subjects like porcelain crabs and nudibranchs than using the "macro" setting on a compact. They usually offer lifesize magnification (1:1) meaning a small subject will be recorded real size on the cameras sensor. Compact cameras usually can't shoot at such high magnification ratios. Moreover, they must often be placed almost on top of the subject, making it impossible to light your photograph properly.

Although these problems can be solved to a great extent by adding a close up lens, like an INON UCL165 or INON UCL330, you'll only be able to shoot sharply focused images at a very specific distance - around 10 to 20cm. Anything nearer or farther away will be out of focus. Macro lenses built for Compact System Cameras and D- SLR cameras can focus seamlessly from their closest focusing point to infinity, so can easily track a moving subject without ever losing focus. There's also more scope for extreme macro photography far beyond lifesize - literally filling the frame with subjects barely 10mm long.

A quirk of compact camera lenses, interchangeable macro lenses and some of the specialist close up accessories used with interchangeable macro lenses is that on some settings they will reduce the amount of light reaching the camera sensor. Zooming in using a compact camera and many zoom lenses used on Compact System Cameras and D- SLR cameras normally results in a significant reduction of light - often as much as two F stops. Macro lenses also normally lose one and a half to two stops when focused at their minimum distance.  Adding teleconverters will cause the loss of a further one and a half to two stops.  The problem for the underwater photographer is that to compensate for the loss of light all these workhorse lenses can cause, they may have to increase the sensitivity of their camera and so increase noise. For close up underwater photography an INON S-2000, INON D-2000 or INON Z- 240 strobe is powerful enough to light your subject even at very low ISO settings. These powerful underwater strobes let you shoot extreme close ups at small F stops to increase depth of field while using very low sensitivity settings to ensure extremely fine, noise free, detail in your subject.  However when shooting at longer distances, photographing fish for example, even using high power underwater strobes may not be the entire answer. To light the subject while zoomed in, you may have no option but to increase the ISO. So selecting a camera with really good noise suppression become very important.

Very low light conditions called for a camera with excellent noise
suppersion - in this case a Nikon D- SLR. Photo Mark Koekemoer

Shutter lag is often a driving force that pushes underwater photographers using compact and prosumer cameras towards Compact System Cameras and D- SLR models.  Shutter lag is created by technical limitations of compact and prosumer cameras. Time and again compact and prosumer camera users miss the shot because of this delay. Compact System Cameras and D- SLR overcome this major problem almost entirely, taking pictures near instantly. When combined with their better RAW facilities, built in ability to shoot sequences at high speed and when fitted with a fast recycling underwater strobe, such as an INON Z-240, aCompact System  Camera or D- SLR camera becomes a very effective toolfor shooting fast moving subjects including fish, seals and cetaceans.

Many underwater photographers will find that a well-chosen compact or prosumer underwater camera system will meet all their immediate and future needs. They enjoy the benefits of lower costs, versatile wet lenses that can be changed underwater, and outfits that are more easily transported as hand luggage. But some underwater photographers will find compacts and prosumer cameras limiting. For them, D- SLR's and Compact System Cameras may be the only solution. D- SLR owners must invest much more and accept less versatility underwater as lenses cannot be switched during the dive. Their cameras will be heavier and bulkier for air travel. But they can take technically superior photographs and can more easily shoot small and fast moving creatures.  Compact System Cameras sits inbetween. The Panasonic GF camera in its INON X2  or Subal SGF housing is smaller, lighter and less expensive than a conventional D-SLR. Yet the specifications and capabilities are very similar - high speed shooting, even in RAW, interchangeable lenses and a pro level housing system.

Following Up...

Ultimately, the underwater photographer who will be using the kit and shooting the pictures must make the decision as to which underwater camera system will best meet their very specific needs. Mark and I can only advise, honestly and to the best of our knowledge and experience - as our Ocean Optics enthusiast and professional clients endorsements pages confirm.

Steve Warren and Mark Koekemoer of Ocean Optics are respected underwater photography specialists. Despite being in the business of selling underwater camera equipment, they are known for their objectivity - happily losing sales if they can't supply the right equipment for the job. Their extensive media credits include writing and photographing for books and magazines and filming for television.