by Alan James and
Heather Hammond

Equipment Used

• Nikon D50
• Sea & Sea DX D50 Housing
• Compact Dome Port
• Flat Port
• Extension Ring
• Zoom Gear
• 60mm Macro Lens
• 105mm Macro Lens
• 10.5 Fisheye Lens
• 12-24 Zoom Lens
• YS 90 Auto Strobes x 2
• Focusing Light
• 1GB 60x Speed SD card
• 2GB 120x Speed SD card
  

Introduction

The Nikon D50 test was carried out on Angaga house reef in the Maldives and the viz was, on most days less than perfect, As the water was very full of plankton owing to the season change making wide angle shots trying, with back scatter constantly an issue, and our aim was to produce a cross selection of both Wide angle and Macro images to the high standard that we have come to expect from the range of Nikon DSLR Cameras.

Prior to the test our main concern with regard the Nikon D50 was the lack of two command dials to allow easy adjustment of both aperture and shutter speed as required.

Overview

We found the best way to overcome this problem was to pre set shutter speed and lock in the housing control dial to permanently activate the aperture control of the camera in manual mode. The result of applying this meant that access was denied to the general Menu, Review, Enter & Delete controls, but we found that by presetting in particular the Menu options “Image Review” to the on position, still allowed us to review the images as we took them in order to check exposures. Having done this we fairly quickly became accustomed to using the rear command dial for aperture adjustments without any further problems.

The use of the 1 and 2GB SD cards overcame the problem of losing the Delete control function. The two 2gb giving us 500+ images on top quality jpeg, and on the RAW setting 260, which is in our opinion enough for even the busiest of Underwater Photographers.

The Nikon D50 Menu was set up, as per the ever-popular Nikon D100, D70 & D70S with all of the standard settings relevant to Underwater Photography applied. The DX D50 Housing and YS 90 Strobes were prepared ready to dive as per the Sea & Sea specifications.

The Rugged, compact and ergonomically friendly build of the Sea & Sea DX-D50 Housing was a joy to use. For Macro work in particular, where due to the fact that no housing tray is now required and the lens port is now aligned with the base of the housing, this allows close working conditions to the reefs and creature locations.

Dual bulkhead sync ports also allowed both strobes to be sync cord connected as opposed to one being operated on slave control. The clear panel rear housing design allowed superb visual assessment of the LCD information.

Conclusion

We think that the D50 portfolio of images speaks for itself and, as always, your Camera Menu can be set up to the specifications we use and recommend. This can be done during your Free and often lengthy product demonstration, for which we are renowned, prior to your purchase.