S40 WP-DC300 Waterproof case & overheating

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Anyone using this in earnest?

I am concerned about possible overheating.

The camera has to be switched on before it goes in the case. You cannot control on/off once in the case.

That's fine if the case is then immersed within 1 or 2 minutes into water as the water will 'extract' the heat by conductivity.

My worry is how long the camera can be left in the case out of the water.

Why? The reason is that it is easier and safer to put the camera in the case on land than when you are in a small diveboat with the risk of seaspray and rocking of the boat by the waves etc. If I put it in on land the trip to the dive site can often be anything upto 30-45 minutes (sometimes more). I suspect it will overheat.

Maybe the answer is to do everything on land and then transport it in a bucket of water?

I am waiting to hear from Canon what their advice is.

However, if anyone else has experince please let me know.

Finally, DO NOT GET YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA WET. Canon expressly exclude water damage under their warranty. I know because that's how I lost my S20. Luckily I had a household policy with all risks cover and was able to claim under that. Check the SMALL PRINT CAREFULLY on this point. Think about buying one of those small plastic waterproof bags or just be VERY CAREFUL.

[dwillar]

Based on my experience with an S300 and the Waterproof case, I can understand your concern. The S300 can be turned off/on inside the case but the S30 cannot.

The S30 does go into sleep mode if unused for a few minutes (2?) and I would suspect that it would not get too hot if in sleep mode. The S30 will come out of sleep mode when you press the shutter button. However, I did find that if leaving the camera in the case in the sun it would get very, very hot. I always made it a practice to keep it out of the sun in a bag.

I loved the case for the S300 but I wasn't crazy about the S300 camera's photo quality. It was just OK IMHO. I just got the S30 and will probably buy the WP case soon too. I think you will love that WP case as it's great for any time you are around water or a dusty environment.

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Thanks. I plan to take the case for a deep dive without the camera to check that it really is waterproof! Then I will venture with the camera inside.

Before any of the above I am getting an insurance policy that covers water damage! I will check the small print of the full policy wording before even thinking of going underwater!

[DeadDogDoc]

Here's a little trick you can use if you like. Take a compact tampon, unused .... and place it in the case next to the camera before closing. Using a small one will not impede closing the housing. If a small amount of water does happen to get in before you notice, it will soak up the water nicely. This can be a great save if you're on a diveboat away from everything. You can explain to your wife/gf why you're buying or borrowing the tampons!

"Finally, DO NOT GET YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA WET. Canon expressly exclude water damage under their warranty. I know because that's how I lost my S20. Luckily I had a household policy with all risks cover and was able to claim under that. Check the SMALL PRINT CAREFULLY on this point. Think about buying one of those small plastic waterproof bags or just be VERY CAREFUL.[/quote]"

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Well that is a novel idea.

I have just discovered that my household All risks insurance covers all my personal belongings including my camera for 30 days in a year worldwide. It does not exclude water damage as I know this because I claimed for the S20 when it accidentally got wet in my waterproof jacket pocket whilst on a motorcycle.

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Well I am back from Cozumel and have taken over 400 underwater pictures with my S40 and the WP-DC300 waterproof case. The case works brilliantly.

The camera does switch into power down mode after a few minutes so overheating is not a problem if you can quickly slip the camera in just before diving. Two bits of advice; first make sure you have insurance cover for water damage; second, make sure you have a strap with which you can tether the camera to your BCD (Buoyancy Control Device). I used the strap from a kit bag which had clips at each end.

Underwater the camera is positively buoyant. I learnt that because the first time I went down I had not attached a strap between the camera and myself and it floated off from around my neck. Luckily I spotted my mistake after a few seconds (when 6 feet down) and was able to go back up and retrieve it.

Remember to switch off the LCD screen to save power whenever possible but there is a trade off as you can miss a good shot whilst you wait for the screen to switch on again. Best shots are when the sun is out and on the shallower dives but given the high visibility in Cozumel I achieved great shots at 100 feet by silhouetting divers against the light. The flash helps to bring colour to coral etc.

My advice is that every scuba diver should try to get one of these 'units' and make sure you have a 340 MB microdrive or you will run out of shots too quickly.

Once you return to the surface you do not need to worry about taking the camera out of the case because the battery will usually be dead. What you must do as soon as possible is wash the case in fresh water to prevent corrosion. I did this in the shower at a low pressure, for about 2 to 3 minutes, and afterwards dried it with a towel and by blowing hard into the buttons to get the water out.

Never once did I get water inside the case or even touch the inside.

I did experience fogging on two occassions but that was because the air was so humid outside.

One other thing try to find a padded case which you can use to store the case in and to protect it during travel.

Finally, remember to take your User Manual with you so that you can check different settings etc. as you will probably need to experiment to ensure you get good colour and exposure.

My maximum depth with the housing was 108 feet (32.7m) on the Santa Rosa Wall dive in Cozumel.

[Neil]

I've just returned from a weeks diving in the Red Sea using the S40 on the WP-DC300 case on about 18 dives. Some notes that may be useful:

i) Overheating - the camera gets pretty warm in the case but I found no real negative effects and this included it sitting on the dive deck (in the shade) for upward of 20 minutes at a time in temperatures in excess of 30'c. There was no evidence whatsoever of condensation of fogging - an amazing result.

ii) Controls:

Despite what it says on all of the advertising for the case - you cannot access ALL of the controls when the camera is in the case:

Power On/Off - this is fairly well documented. You can't switch the camera on/off and have to switch it on before sealing it into the case and then rely on the auto power-down function (assuming you did remember to enable that in the menu before you put in the case....). This isn't too bad in operation but means that you tend to leave it until the last moment before leaving the dive deck. I did find that I could readily flatten the battery completely in 3o-40 minutes of diving taking 30 pictures with flash and the LCD activated - it would have been nice if it lasted longer.

Multi-controller up/down: This is less well documented - the buttons on the case only activate the and select [...] on the multicontroller. For MOST functions (Menu selection and manual focus setting) there is a workaround that allows you to use the instead of the up/down (by holding the manual focus button at the same time). What you CAN'T do, however, is control the Aperture setting while in Manual mode - this is a pain as this is one of the most useful set-ups when using an external slave flash (most of which are manual only). You have a choice of either working in Aperture priority instead (where the shutter speed is fixed at 1/60 by having the flash on) OR I found that if you set the Aperture in Av mode - it gets carried over to Manual mode. So I found that the best combination was to work in Av mode most of the time except when I wanted to use a longer shutter (e.g. to allow the background exposure to come up) where I would set the Aperture in Av the switch over to Manual and set the shutter speed.

ii) Flash and Slave flash operation:

Again - reasonably well documented. If you want an external flash it nees to be a slave unit and, unless you only use the camera in Manual mode (see above), it needs to be a slave which has a Digital compatability mode whereby it ignores the pre-flash and triggers on the main flash (the S40 doesn't preflash in Manual mode so you can use normal slave flashes in this mode).

I used the Epoque 150DS which can work in either of these modes.

Unless you invest in some pretty expensive external flash equipment which controls the external flash duration to match that of the internal one - you will be working with the external flash in manual mode (no TTL capability).

I actually found that for most, reasonably close, subjects (which is what you're usually interested in), the internal flash was actually quite adequate and you have the advantage of fully-automatic operation (in Av mode). I then only resorted to the external slave (and Manual mode - see notes above) for more distant and 'landscape' type pics.

For examples - I've put up some of the pics on:

www.tarboosh.biz/tigerlily/neil.html

These were all taken with the internal flash or ambient light.

Overall - I'm very pleased with the performance of the camera and case. Despite the niggles above it exceeded my expectations and returned some very respectible results on my first attempt.

Suggestions to Canon for the next firware upgrade:

** Have a 'WP-DC300' setting on the menu which:

Allows the review slide switch to act as a power switch for turning the camera on in active picture taking mode ( I can't envisage doing too much picture previewing underwater?).

It could also provide a shorter delay before auto power-down.

Reverse the allocation of the to shutter-speed and up/down to aperture in Manual mode (if they do this the = Aperture is then consistent between M and Av).

Provide a Flash - setting for triggering external slaves using only a single minimum flash from the internal one (extending battery life).


Neil.

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Wouldn't it be great if Canon listened to our feedback and made firmware changes that incorporated the ideas posted above by Neil about incorporating a WP DC300 mode with an on-of capability. I would like it if I could set the camera to auto flash every time with automatic exposure within a WP DC 300 mode so that I can maximize colour saturation.

The programming effort is probably a couple of days work but seems like manufacturers are not inclined to invest further in the hardware/software once it has been released. However, there is a Software Developers Kit for the S40 so if there are any enthusiastic programmers out there....??

Pity because so doing would differentiate them further from their competitors and put them in a sales advantage situation. Nokia seem to understand this with regard to providing user friendly software for their mobiles. Go on Canon take a marketing step forward here!