It's HOT in Texas at this time of the year! Having lived in the Houston area for all but two of the last 15 years, you'd think I'd be used to it, but I'm not. Sure it was hotter in Libya, I recall a few days when the thermometer showed 50 Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) but that's only because that was the top of the range for the thermometer at the airstrip. I've no idea how hot it really was those days, but the Saharan heat is a dry heat, more palatable than an humid heat but perhaps more dangerous as the sweat wicks away instantly and you can easily become dehydrated. At least in a humid heat, such as the jungles or brunei, or here in Houston, you sweat. It might be unseemly, but at least you know you're dehydrating![ad name=”post”]
So we took off to the pool to cool down. Now usually water and cameras don't mix, so you can become a bystander, keeping your camera dry, or purchase a waterproof camera (such as the Canon PowerShot D10, or purchase a waterproof housing for your camera. The first digital camera my wife and I owned was a Canon PowerShot S40 a 4 megapixel point and shoot that was top of the line back in 2001. Our son, Evan, was a little over six months old and we were burning through film at an unsustainable rate so we went digital. In early 2005 we had a problem with the S40 and sent it into Canon for repair and they replaced it with a refurbished Canon PowerShot S70. The S70 had the same form factor as the S40 but has a 7.1 mega pixel resolution. What I still like about the S70, unlike the D10, is that the S70 can record in RAW. And the advantage of RAW is you get the maximum image data to support any adjustments you want to make to the image on the computer.
So Canon sell a waterproof housing for the S70 (a WP-DC40)for a little less than the D10, so that is the route I decided to take and I purchased one last year, specifically to shoot the kids having fun in the pool (it's been some time since I last scuba'd). The WP-DC40, like most of the Canon housings for their point-and-shoot range is guaranteed to 130 ft water depth. Now that would be a deep pool! As you can see, above, I prefer shaded goggles because the sun's so bright but that makes seeing the screen on the back of the S70 virtually impossible. The housing has buttons and turn screws mounted through it so you have full access to all the functions of the camera – but it certainly helps if you're familiar with the camera operation before you get into the pool. The S70 also has an underwater white balance setting which is very helpful for color rendering.
The underwater housing has certainly enabled me to get family images at the pool that I simply would not have been able to get from the poolside and without risking my gear to the unpredictable splashing of everyone else having fun. In addition to waterproof housing's from your camera manufacturer, there are housings available from other manufacturers. In the past I've used housings from Ewa-Marine for video cameras and SLRs. Ewa-Marine make two major ranges – 20 m / 60 ft and 50 m / 150 ft for snorkeling and scuba diving respectively.
So have some fun at the pool and take a waterproof camera to capture the action from a different angle.
