Many thanks everyone for the comments - and thanks Frogfish for the torch suggestion. That sounds like an excellent tip! Pentaxophile, I think your 'underwater lomography' description is spot on - nice one.

Thanks again all

Ah, maybe I spoke to soon! I couldn't see them on my flickr photostream for a couple of hours this evening but that was working again the last time I checked so I figured all would be well. Maybe it's intermittent? I'm not too knowledgeable on these things

Some beautiful shots there! sharp and with some lovely colour tones. I really like the line of trees in number five, and the structure in number four. Love the glowing sails in the second yacht pic as well. Nice set

Regards

I was having flickr problems, but it sorted itself out about twenty minutes ago. I think it is a flickr issue rather than a forum issue...:

Hello all. Following my last two threads of pics from my holiday, here's a final thread to show some underwater shots taken with the Optio WG-1. The ability to shoot underwater was one of the reasons I got the optio in the first place and I think it has done well, I am quite chuffed. Coupled with its decent all round performance out of the water I think it is a great product.

I have to say that the underwater shots took a fair bit of post-processing. I have never done underwater shooting before and it does present some specific issues. The pictures needed a much heavier contrast boost than I would usually apply (for my tastes at least) and there were some very strange colour casts to deal with - as a result I processed a lot into black and white, which I think works better for a number of them.

Anyway, here are a handful, these were taken when snorkelling off of Peterson Cay, which is a tiny rock off the south coast of Grand Bahama:

1. First up, some Brain Coral




2. and some more, with some very pronounced 'lensing' from the waves overhead:




3. A portrait of the snorkel guide, who will clearly remain forever anonymous:




4. Some fishes, a bit deeper in the water:




5. and a stingray in repose on the sea bed...




6. Finally, looming out of the deep... it's the missus!!




I hope you like these. I hope they demonstrate the capabilities of the optio underwater too. It does have one or two limitations. I found it very hard to freeze motion very effectively with the small onboard flash (using the underwater shooting preset mode), especially deeper in the water where it was darker, and using the flash of course means that the battery life is reduced, although a full charge lasted me a morning of snorkelling. The waters around the Bahamas are also gloriously clear so the conditions are pretty good for photography of this type generally I expect. I took the camera to about ten or fifteen feet depth, but it never leaked or had any water ingress issues. Overall I was very pleased and I think it makes a great holiday camera and lives up to its billing as 'adventureproof'

Happy for any C&C, there are more on my flickr stream if anyone wants to see more

Regards,

Thanks Frogfish! here is a shot I took a little earlier than No 2, on the same day...




I think it has a little distortion which I should probably sort out, but is a landscape version...

Cheers

Many thanks everyone for the comments. Much appreciated.

Regards

Number 3 - shades - is a stunner! I love the black and white treatment as it really highlights the light vs dark, the different textures and the shadows... fantastic!

Regards

Hello again all. I thought I would post some more pictures from my holiday (apologies for posting a load - I may have got carried away). Having had a good time in New York (see earlier thread) we spent a week in Grand Bahama. I took the opportunity for one or two early(ish) mornings to escape on my own for the odd hour to capture the dawn, and I thought I would post some of the results... In general the weather was beautiful during the day but there were some overnight storms which left some decent clouds in the early morning to add some texture to the sky, and the colour variations were amazing:

1.



2.



3.



4.



5.



6.



7.



8.



9.



I hope you like these - any C&C is appreciated as ever. All were taken with the K7 and either the kit lens (18-55) (Nos 1 - 6 I think), DA15 (7 & , or the DA21 (9) - I also used a polariser and a big stopper for the long exposures (7 & 9), fired off a lightweight tripod (Velbon Luxi - which was fantastic to travel with) using a cheapo cable release designed for a Canon (according to the pack).

Cheers

I have an optio WG1 and recently took it to New York and Grand Bahama on my holiday. I found it a bit of a revelation to be honest. I originally got it because I wanted to be be able to take pictures underwater, but I ended up using it a lot in a whole range of situations and I was really pleased with the results I got, especially with a bit of PP. There are a ton of shots taken with it on my flickr if you want to see some examples. Best bet though, I suspect, is to find a camera shop and try a few cameras out. Worth searching on camera model on flickr as well to see sample pics.

The main limitations I found with the WG1 were that the optical zoom (up to 5x) was fine, although I wasn't very pleased with the digital zoom beyond that and so didn't use it; and I always kept the ISO down as low as I could as the higher ISOs seem a bit noisy. Apart from that it is fantastically pocket-able, has a number of adjustments which can be made and loads of shooting modes, and is genuinely pretty indestructible as far as I could make out, all in all I was chuffed!