GEAR TESTS: CANON 70D

Jim Decker CEO

I only shot the Canon 70D on one dive. I wasn't planning on shooting it at all this trip, but the lure of rapid fire TTL from Sea & Sea with their new TTL converter drew me in. 

The converter is a unit that fits into the top of the housing and has 2 LED lights on the front to trigger the strobes through fiber optic cables. Since the camera's internal flash doesn't fire you get the best of both worlds with rapid fire and TTL all without having to worry about flooding electronic sync cords and bulkheads.

The exposures were very accurate and it was wonderful to pull off shot sequences and then have my pick of the best ones from a large set of images. If I were only able use the internal flash of the camera on these shots I would have only 10-20% of the shots compared to the speed of the TTL converter. 

Chris Parsons Nauticam Team Member

This camera and housing went out on every single demo dive, and a lot of 70D footage from our camera ended up in the winning videos from the week. For good reason, too! The 70D is an excellent DSLR, inheriting the focus system from the lauded Canon 7D, along with the latest processor and software from Canon. For both videos and stills, the 70D is a top performer. Like all Canon SLRs, the color is terrific, with the best underwater white balance available. But on top of that, the 70D adds Canon's latest cool technology feature - a dual-pixel CMOS sensor that allows for simply the best autofocus during video of ANY SLR or mirrorless camera. 

Canon has a great range of lenses, many of which are useful underwater. Third parties, like Sigma and Tokina, chip in with some great lenses as well. For the demo here in Little Cayman, we offered the Canon 8-15mm fisheye zoom and the Sigma 17-70mm mid-range zoom. The Sigma 17-70mm focuses quite closely and can even accomplish 1:2 macro shots, while being able to zoom out to a respectable 17mm on the wide side. The Canon 8-15mm fisheye is an ideal lens for close-focus-wide-angle on the Canon APS-C cameras like the 70D. It can focus very close, and works very well optically with a small dome port like the Nauticam 4.33" dome or the Zen DP-100. 

I like this camera so much that I own one. It is the most likely camera you'd find in my daily camera bag.