Okay, now that we've been back a week from Belize and had a chance to look through all our photos and videos, and started posting them, I thought I'd provide a summary of our experience with our new Canon SD870 (IXUS 860 in some regions), as well as the Auto Magic Filter we purchased as a test for this trip.

Canon SD870IS (IXUS 860IS) impressions

• a great little convenient camera underwater - the large screen is fantastic to use, and I found the one-button video record *extremely* handy underwater; it was really easy to instantly start videoing when I saw something interesting, rather than having to toggle modes first.
• the 28mm wide angle works extremely well, I found I could take nice photos of the reef and my wife quite easily; while it was a major selling point to me, I was still skeptical that I would notice it that much in the real work, but I did. The downside is that on land, the distortion is quite noticeable with outdoor panoramic shots.
• the Image Stabilization also works really well, particularly when doing video - even swimming in current the IS helps make video look quite smooth.
• the battery life I found deceptively short - I fully charged the battery pack, and while I did keep the camera and LCD on most of the time, I actually ran out of juice towards the end of the 3rd dive, which surprised me; this was without using the flash at all.
• I wish the camera would keep the macro mode setting - since I had to start turning my camera off during the dive to preserve battery life, I had to remember to switch to macro mode each time I turned it on. It became a bit of a habit, but an annoying one to have to adopt.
• the manual controls are quite limited - essentially, exposure control, some customizing of sharpness, contrast, saturation but that's it. Meaning for experienced divers/photographers, the lack of focus, aperture, shutter, etc. might be limiting - for me I found it just fine ;-)
• the manual white balance was very easy to use, for most of the dive I just kept the function screen on and only had to press the [DISP.] button to white balance whenever I needed to.
• the ability to take SDHC cards was really nice, since an 8 GB card can go a long way underwater (unless you decide to video your entire dive from entry to exit!).

Auto Magic Filter review

• the Auto Magic Filter didn't work for me in Auto mode at all, I still had to manually white balance at anything deeper than about 10-15 feet
• for the most part, my underwater photos were too red - I reduced the in-camera red and also had to reduce it a bit in Photoshop afterwards. Perhaps the regular Magic Filter (designed for manual white balance) would have worked better since I was white balancing anyways
• the filter works really well with good available light, which is how they advertise it. However, that really means that at any significant depth (70 feet or below), or even in any type of crevice where interesting creatures can be lurking, it's almost unusable since you can't use the flash. If possible, have a dive partner with another camera+flash for those situations.
• having the filter also means that video clips look surprisingly good too, one of the biggest benefits (IMO) of this filter. The built-in flash or external strobe lights are great for stills, but don't do anything for video clips, so this was a huge bonus.
• on a small camera like the SD870, it was a little tricky taping the Filter to the lens - so much so that I just left it on the entire week of diving, so I'm glad we had other cameras for land shots.
• this filter, despite its limitations, had a great impact on the quality of photos and videos during our week of scuba diving. We'll still always dive with another camera using a flash just for those deep/crevice shots that require an additional light source. But I really enjoyed the SD870 and Magic Filter combination...

Overall the dive portion of our trip on Turneffe in Belize was the biggest breakthrough in our short underwater photography and videography experiences - gone are the days of all-blue photos and video! While I likely won't be bringing the SD870 on any trips as our only camera (and I can't imagine it getting much use on land anyways), as an underwater camera it really worked well for us. In fact, considering how little we paid for the complete setup of camera, housing and filter, it's hard to imagine a better amateur setup.

Bryan & Elizabeth

03/12/08 by visitEarth
Tags: Belize, Canon, SD870, SD870IS, IXUS, 860, underwater, scuba, photo, video