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In 2008 I changed my underwater photo equipment in to a  digital set. Most of my colleague photographers made the step to digital in an  earlier stage. Taking pictures with the new set was something that I get very fast used to without mentionable problems. What I have experienced is that the greatest change at digital photography is going into the workflow that follows after taking the picture. What you should expect is saving money and time by not having to develop, cutting and framing your images anymore. However both is well over compensated by other workflow and needs that you have to deal with when you go digital. You have to take care of making good back-ups of your digital picture files. You also have to think about the way you store the files and which extensions you will use (raw, tiff, jpeg). Also the market for digital cameras is developing very rapidly so you have to consider that the you are using the digital set probably a lot of shorter than you are used to with the old film cameras. This was also the reason why I have been waiting some longer before going digital. In this page are shown both the sets (with film and digital) that I use and have been using during 15 years of underwater photography. When you change to digital there is not much of the old set you can use in the new set. It therefore needs a lot of investment and as mentioned  before a lot of learning, especially in digital knowledge you have to gather for after the picture is taken.

Analog

The analog set contains a Nikon F90X body and the lenses 105mm micro Nikkor, 16mm fisheye nikkor and a 300mm telelens for nature photography. For 10 years I have been taking underwater pictures with this set.  Due to this I have hundreds of slides of different series. In the beginning I started scanning these slides into digital files but after a while it became evident that this is not the way to do it. It takes a lot of time and you never get the same quality as you have with the digital photo files coming directly from a digital camera. 

The underwater set for the Nikon F90X consisting of a Seacam underwater housing, a dome glass for the 16mm fisheye lens and a front glass for the 105mm micro Nikkor. As a flash I used the underwater flash from Seacam, the Seaflash. A leak warning system was mounted in the housing. During  the 10 years working with this set the alarm went of twice, due to this I was able to bring my camera set on board safely in time. With the exception of some problems with the underwater flash in the last year, I always have been working with great pleasure with this set and never experienced big problems during this period.   

Digital

The new digital set is a Nikon D300 Dx body, a 10.5mm fisheye lens and a 14-24mm wide-angle zoom lens. I also still use the 105mm micro lens on this set that now acts as a 200mm micro Nikkor on the DX-format. It is wishful to expand the set with a 60mm micro Nikkor. In clear tropical waters the old 105mm is still very useful but for Dutch waters I have to use the 60mm to have as less as possible water between the lens and the object. 

The new underwater housing for the D300 is again a Seacam housing, a new larger dome port for the 10.5mm fisheye wich is also useable for the 12-24mm zoom wide-angle. De front port for the 105mm exists of two parts, by taking off one part the port is also suitable for the 60mm lens. This part is also used as an extension for the dome port to make it better suitable for the zoom wide angle. Two wet dioptres make the set complete, to make extreme close pictures.

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