Well, this is the fourth part of my review for the DX1200-HD. I have concluded 6 dives with this setup and now have a certain feeling of the camera. My best settings for photography are as follows:
Program Mode (P) with -1 EV correction since the camera tends to overexpose +1EV generally. ISO 100, normal sharpness, absolutely MANUAL WHITE BALANCE.
Speaking of manual white balancing, it is very easy to perform underwater (takes to press 3 buttons) and gives very good results. This photograph was taken at a depth of 68 feet in Cyprus, without strobes using a magic filter and manual white balancing. The wide angle converter lens was used as well. The photograph is not doctored in Photoshop or other software and is like this straight out of the camera.
White balancing is done by pressing the change button on the lower left, selecting the white balance mode and going to the funny icon on the left, after pressing ok, pressing the shutter button to measure white balance value and ok button to record it. It is good practice to change white balance if you change your depth by more than 6 feet.
Video mode is impressive as well, the same white balancing method works in the video mode too. The camera generates too much noise after ISO 400 and has focusing problems in low light, a focus light attached to the housing top helps fixing this problem. The close-up lens kit was not impressive as the wideangle, i had focusing problems with that and finding suitable subjects was a real challenge.
Due to enormous amounts of data being written during video shoots, a very fast SD-HC card is required, otherwise the recording is not successfull and shakes, stutters occur in the video. I have selected a SanDisk Ultra III of 8 GB capacity. A funny thing here is, the maximum single file size for a video file is 4GB so if you shoot continuously, an 8GB card will hold 2x4GB , thus two files. This causes some confusion in calculating the remaining storage space since the camera shows the remaining space in minutes and it tends to remain the same.
Ergo, this is a very capable camera for a beginner/intermediate underwater photographer and in my case a very nice second gear / back-up camera during diving to accompany my D300.
This concludes my humble review, which is available in four parts in this blog, if you read it and leave feedback somehow i would be glad.
f2.8 1/60th @ ISO 100 Manual WB + Magic Filter
Namaste,
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