Getting them all - The Range of the WP25

In my review of the Gates Housing for the Sony HC3 I outlined some of the issues that went into my selection of the housing, namely portability and travel.

Another concern I mentioned was to also have a port that would give me a wide range of options in shooting, from big things (such as the whale shark in the video with the article) to small things (such as the Painted Elysian in the video). Recently I had some people ask me about how well the lens worked for getting the Painted Elysian and how I approached it.

It just so happens that during my second trip with the housing and camera last month I made it a point to work on becoming more familiar with the set-up and its controls, including testing the range of the lens. People in my dive group often saw me down in the sand looking at seemingly nothing. In fact I was looking for small things to test ways I could use the zoom and the lens to capture them. Finding gobies in open sandy areas became my new hobby.

Basically I would zoom when I had the subject in view - it was usually easier to go wide and zoom in to keep the subject in view as opposed to zooming in and hunting for what I was looking for. I would estimate that I was zoomed in the 70%-80% range when I was fully settled in after minor adjustments and/or repositioning of the housing.

Later on during editing, if I felt it was needed, I would scale the image size up to frame the video more to my liking and/or to enlarge the marine life if I was not able to get close enough when shooting due to current or the critters insistence of being located in areas that were not readily accessible.

With the HDV video and the lens I found that I had a lot of play in resizing and repositioning. I tested scaling ranges up to 150% to test what was possible and how it held up. And the footage, overall, held up well. In the process I made a DVD of a clip to play on a 32" LCD television. The images remained clear.

But a picture is worth 1,000 words and will provide an example of what can be done. So I prepared the clip at the top of this article that was roughed out showing some things I captured. The scaling ranges from none to 150%. Is it the same as having a macro set-up? No. On the other hand if you want a broad range to shoot on any single dive and the size or price of the SWP35 (which is about $2,000 more and 3 lbs heavier) is a concern, this lens is one to strongly consider. So far I have not had to kick myself for not choosing this port and missing something I wanted, and I will continue to look for small things the next time out. My goal is to find a Seahorse and see how it goes

As an aside I mentioned in the main review was that I would have liked HC3 Housing had a manual white balance control. Gates added this as an option for their new HC7 housing and also offer it as a retrofit on the HC3 housing. My housing is on its way back right now from Gates and looking forward to the new control on the next trip.