I have the sony P-9 with the sony (sea & sea) underwater pack MPK-P9. I have used it for little more than a year and taken some great photos. I recently ordered the Motormarine 2 16mm lens which i am going to use with that setup.
Is there anyone out there who has this setup and would like to share some advices, techniques, tips?
Lars I received your email, which lens do you have? If you have the 2t Macro lens from Sea and Sea it does state to place the camera settings on infiniti but I have tried this and recorded different shots with different settings. I can say that with the macro lens mounted on the marine pack with my p-10 I got a much better image with the camera set to macro not infiniti. I tried both and most of the infiniti shots were out of focus and the macro mode shots came out fine. As for the MMII 20mm lens I keep the camera settings on auto. I always take the pics at the highest res. If the auto camera settings dont do the photo any justice I dont worry and simply use photoshop or paint shop pro 8 and it fixes what I need. I have expierimented with this Sony setup for over a year. I first used the p-1 with super c video lite then the p-9, and now the p-10 with YS90. I am lucky to be able to dive about 30 or so times per month so I have plenty of time to find out what I am doing wrong.
My web site has a description of my setup on it towards the bottom of the home page click on camera setups. Hope this helps.
Mud Guppy
Thanks for your reply, feels like i know a little more now.
I have the motormarine 16mm lens. The manual says to put the focus to infinity, but thats regarding the motormarine camera, totally differnet from my P-9 setup i assume.
so would you reccomend put ALL settings on auto for the lens?
Normally when i dive, i use everything auto.
when you mean “adjust in photoshop later” do you mean, contrast, levels and that sort of tools? nothing to do there about the focus, right?
Is it not amazing what a little photoshop auto levels can do to an underwater taken image?
Please respond, and as i said i have the motormarine 16mm lens, and also the motormarine color correction filter.
looking forward for your reply again, thank you again
Lars I use auto all the time now. I dont believe any of the photo editing programs fix an original photo if it is out of focus. I use paint shop to edit the color and contrast and sharpness. Most of my wreck pics are green so I use this to add a little blue in them. The 16mm lens is real nice and Ill bet works great.
Hi there, I’ve got both 16MM and 20MM sea and sea lenes and i set the focus to 3M on the P9. Work’s a treat, depth of field is brilliant on both.
Another tip with the p9 is after i’d shot about 2000 photo’s with ithe camera the quality of the shot’s were getting worse, focus blurred ect, I found out from a friend who has a P5 that if you press the RESET button inside the battery compartment, it reset’s the camera to its original factory settings -Brilliant sharp photo’s again- Worth a try!!!! - Setting the Camera to Manual @3M also makes the camera work quicker as it doesn’t have to focus.
One question on the filters for the sea and sea lenses -what are the results like in 1- in green water, 2-in bluewater ????
-Chic -Always in it, only the depth varies!
Chic I have reset my P-10 after 4ooo pics, will let you know if I see a difference thanks for the tip. Also I will try the 3m focal setting when using my 20mm thanks again.
First i like to comment on the reset focus thing on the p9-10 cameras. i had this out of focus problem on my P9, and i tool it to sonys service center here in honolulu. They simply hit that reset button, and told me “should work fine now” and it did…
Thanks to American dive master for all you tips. Remember i told you that i ordered the lens adapter from Sea & Sea form scuba.com? I did back in june, and they still havent sent it here, seems to be some problems with the manufactor in japan, atleast so they say. I saw that you wrote in some other thread that a good tip was to glue the lens adapter to the housing, isnt the connection snug enough? i dont mind glueing if thats better though, what kinda glue did you use?
Scuba.com has a bad habit of not delivering what they advertise. I will search for one today and get back with you. The problem with the lens adapter is it just lightly snaps over the housing and when it hits the water it moves around even more and when the 20mm or other lens’ are attached it gets top heavy or front heavy and pops the lens adapter off if you just barely bump it just enough to allow light in from the sides. Not to mention you have to grab onto the housing with both hands every time you want to change lens’ because the adapter just rotates freely and twists your strobe cord etc. I used two part marine apoxy and glued the entire thing on and forgot about it. I dont plan on selling mine so I was not an issue to glue it. I love my setup and have taken some great pics but I have reached my limit with it and will be taking Andi’s advice and going to digital SLR soon after I win the lotto or find a bag of cash somewhere. I will get back with you on the adapter.
Thanks for you recomendations. Scube.com contacted me today and told me it shouldnt take more than 3 weeks now, i guess i could wait for that, but if it takes longer i will contact one of the companys you wrote down here in the forum.
I was thinking about updating my setup also, as you might remember i have the P9 setup, and i was thinking about updating to the P10, but since its almost the same camera i decided not to.
I was looking at the sony DSC-V1 before, but since it didnt have an underwater housing for it…....but as posted in some thread here in digideep, apparently there are a housing avalible now from ikelite, and it says on their webpage that Sea & Sea wide lenses work direclty on that housing. What do you think about that? atleast it will make the system update less expensive, and it should be a much better camera than the P series thinking about the lens, zoom, and manual setting modes.
so is there a conclution to which setting the 16-20mm sea & sea lens works best with? I was assuming it to be the AUTO, but after chic’s posting i started to wonder. American Divemaster>>did you ever get to try that 3m focus range?
Yes I did try it and use it along with the other distance settings. Is does not make the picture any worse but I cant see much difference. I will try messing with it some more and let you know.
Does the lens behave as the camera does? i mean in normal mode?
for example, if you are to photograph object on a 3M range, then the 3m focus setting would be the best i can figure…
I have been using AUTO when i dive becuase i take pictures at different distances all the time, or is this irrelevant when using the sea 6 sea lens.
Looking forward for you test results “american divemaster” let me know what you came up with..
Well I tried it out yesterday and took two photos of some junk under a pier here in Dili and did notice a difference. Click on link http://www.americandivemaster.com/camerasettings.html
I will try more today in regards to macro and maybe some greater distance wide angle shots and will post them in a few days.
Interesting results indeed.
the photo where focus was set to @1 meter was more detailed.
And the background was completely blue, not backscatter or out of focus as the AUTO pictures background was.
Cant wait until you post the updated test as you mentioned.
