Canon 1DC Underwater Review - The Digital Shootout

GEAR TESTS: Canon 1 DC

Joel Penner
Marketing/Chief Technical Guru

During the week of The Digital Shootout, I was able to shoot the Canon 1DC, as well as perform some GoPro Hero3+ testing. The Canon 1DC is an amazing 4K resolution camera that I have fallen in love with. Besides the ability to capture 4K video files that are clean, crisp and rich in underwater color, the camera also takes stunning full frame stills. I house my Canon 1DC Camera in a Nauticam 1DX/C housing. For the majority of the week, I had my camera configured with the Zen 230 Dome and the Canon 8-15 Fisheye. On the same dive, I might shoot video and then have some opportunities to take still captures. For all still captures, I used either available light or continuous video lighting rather than strobes. In the above video, I was also testing the new Orcalight SeaWolf 1560 15,000 lumen lights.

ED MEYERS

Once again, Little Cayman stands out as one of my favorite places to dive! In addition to viewing the amazing walls and friendly grouper, this week was time to get used to shooting 4K video underwater.

The Canon EOS 1DC is my favorite DSLR ever! It's been out for over a year and it still blows me away with the image quality of both stills and video. This trip, I gave the Nauticam 1DX/C housing and Zen Fisheye 100mm Dome a workout. The only lens used was the Canon 8-15 Fisheye. As with my past experience, the Nauticam housing felt great. Controls were where I naturally wanted to find them. There was a small learning curve for a few of the levers, but once I spent a couple minutes sorting it out, there were no struggles underwater. I was able to do whatever was needed. As with the 1DX, the 1DC allows up to 5 different custom White Balances to be saved. This was quite helpful. With additional, daylight balanced lights, I was able to save one setting for just the color of the lights, another for mixed lighting and several others as I went deeper. Normally, my preference is to use a gray card that is waterproof. Due to a bad job on my part, I let go of the card and it went away. As the folks at Backscatter have taught me, the sand in Little Cayman does a nice job of creating a White Balance, so I used this for the rest of the dive. Since all my hobbies seem to involve carrying lots of gear, the Zen Fisheye dome was extremely compact and light. Image quality was excellent.

Just for the record, Ed Meyers is an employee of Canon U.S.A. The opinions are his and not recommendations from Canon Inc. emeyers@cusa.canon.com

PREMIERE SPONSORS

FEATURED SPONSORS

MEDIA PARTNERS

Questions or Need Help?