I took four pictures of the pool using the blackberry and put them together with Windows Live Photo Gallery Panoramic Stitch. I had done panoramas before with Canon's stitch program so I knew good pictures were key.
I have to say the Microsoft solution is really good, especially being free.
The pool is 25ydx50m (Olympic size) and goes from 4ft to 8ft. The diving tank is entirely separate and is 14ft to 16ft deep.
Well I got the WP-DC17 housing today (from Newegg.com). Real quality item for sure. It's, at the least, worth it's cost.
Nice.
I mounted the housing to my gorillapod and wrapped the legs around a 4lb lead soft weight.
I then set it down in 4.5ft of water at the Miami Dade Community College (Kendall) pool and took a video, came out perfect (see youtube link).
The housing (with the gorillapod quick disconnect base still attached) with camera has just the slightest amount of positive buoyancy. I can understand how the little weight kit Canon sells can actually affect buoyancy lol.
The housing is really slick. A rubber-ish tube seals around the lens area when the camera is placed in there. Eliminates any light leakage and thereby reflections from the rest of the housing onto camera lens.
The lens is double paned to minimize condensation and the panes are anti-reflective coated, just like a regular dSLR lens is.
Lessons learned:
Need dSLR version of gorillapod. The camera/housing setup is obviously larger (though not much actually) and can easily overpower the neck of the compact camera gorillapod I have. In the pool it wasn't an issue but in a current the housing will "fall over".
Soft weight won't do it (again in the pool its fine) but it can potentially slide out.
Well ... something I should have started long ago given my swimming background.
Bahamas trip coming up and going to be doing the Stuart Cove's snorkeling trip, requesting the Cessna wreck dive (set used in Jaws IV) as part of their three stop afternoon session.
Trip report first week of December!
In the meantime check out the freediving youtube videos (some down the right hand side)
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