The picture above is from the Sealife Ecoshot that I’ve been reviewing over the last couple months. As you can see it was a pretty foggy day as I paddled out of the harbor in Grand Marais, Michigan.  As awesomely moody as the shot looks,  the moment really was not quite as dark and moody as the image portrays. That’s the bit that has me holding off on writing a more detailed review at the moment. In the minutia of talking points about settings, button size, battery life and all the other stuff we all want to know about we sometimes lose the most obvious feature. How do the pictures look?? For this overview I left the images un-touched and un-cropped.

It’s fair to say at this point the EcoShot is a camera with unique personality. The shots tend to be a bit dark, a bit blue and vignetted. (Meaning they darken in the corners and edges) when shooting above the water. The image above is a great example of how you can use that to your advantage, however it’s not always a desirable effect and often hard to predict.

This shot from the Windy City symposium is a great example of how the EcoShot handles a sunny day on the water right out of the box. Again the shot is a bit dark and if you look carefully you will still see that vignette in the corners. I’ve found that with a bit of fussing with settings, particularly adjusting the EV, I can brighten the shots quite simply. There is a fidget-factor there depending on the angle and the lighting that makes it sometimes too much work on the water. Often in the moving on-water environment you just want to point and shoot and let the camera make predictable decisions.

This shot from a bright clear day in Door County  offers another great example of what you can expect. Although again the shot is a bit dark, It’s sharp and the colors are rich. Yet as you can see the vignetting in the sky is pretty extreme. IN fact the right corner pretty much fades to black. I’ve noticed this gets more extreme with the bright sun right at my back. (as it was here)

My overall impression of the images themselves is that they are fair to good with provisos. The color quality is fine, generally in shots like these the images are crisp. By adjusting the EV I can brighten the shots, however the changing conditions on the water mean that making regular adjustments can be more than I want to think about. More often than not I just take the shots then bring them back to photoshop where I can adjust the image manually. Shots that lean toward the dark side are much easier to brighten while retaining the quality than over-exposed shots are to bring back down. The vignetting is more of a problem. You can’t easily clean it up without the proper tools.

Before the digital age photographers would choose cameras & lenses specifically for their “mood”. Each camera tended to have its own feel which could be taken advantage of depending on the image you were trying to create. The Ecoshot takes me back to those days. There are times When the ECOshot is just perfect for the moment. However in our digital age we tend to want to get clean sharp photographs with the most data. We add the “feel” later in our editor. How much we can get away with depends on the raw image provided by the camera.

Later I will take you through the operation side of things. But for the moment I wanted to show you where my head was at in giving you a fair review of the Sealife Ecoshot and why you need real time to give a decent review. Each camera has it’s own ups and downs and it takes a bit of time for you as a photographer to become at ease with your camera’s personality. Something the Ecoshot has plenty of.

Related Posts:

1. ECOShot Introduction
2. HD Paddling
3. change in the weather
4. on a wing
5. these little things. . .