Sea & Sea DX-1G review (aka Ricoh GX100)

Since the death of my Fuji F810, I’ve been looking at a way to get some decent underwater photos. Kitting out my Canon 350D/Rebel for underwater use would cost a huge stack of cash – $1200 for a housing, $400-700 for a wide angle lens, $200-400 for a wide angle port. The idea of a package that bulky didn’t sound great either. I’ve also been looking for a decent wide angle compact digital camera with plenty of manual options for a while now. The Sigma DP1 looks great, but has been missing in action – turns out they are reworking the design again. That leaves only one game in town, Ricoh’s GX100. This fall Sea & Sea brought out their version of the GX100 with a waterproof case and called it the DX-1G. I finally took the plunge.

At $1000 for the camera + underwater housing package, the price was a steeper than I was expecting. Sea & Sea seems to be engaged in a bit of profiteering, charging about $100 more for their version of the camera than Ricoh does. The camera badge is different of course, and they have added some underwater scene modes, but other than that, it seems to be an exact match. In fact, Sea & Sea kind of screwed up the firmware, it doesn’t seem to register its name properly in metadata, or that’s a bug in Adobe’s system.

The camera size is quite nice – just barely thin enough to fit in my jeans front pocket. The 24 mm lens is great for me; I really love the wider angle. Zoom isn’t super, but that’s to be expected on a lens this wide. The build quality is OK for a consumer camera, but there are slight wobbles and oddities that shouldn’t be there on a camera at this price point. The manual controls are good, once you get used to their function button. It lets you set up your own custom modes, which are a nice touch. Battery life seems good, but I wish the camera was able to charge via USB, that would be one less thing to bring. Fortunately, the charger is small, so it isn’t a big issue.

Quality wise, let’s get this out of the way, 10 MP is a joke. This sensor should be more like 6 or 8 MP. This would have meant smaller file sizes (with quicker write times), less noise and more clarity. Apparently they felt they needed to compete in the megapixel wars, even though I would assume this camera is only a viable purchase for someone that is aware MP numbers are misleading. That said, with enough manual attention, it can put out some decent shots. Not at the same quality as my SLR, but I don’t think anyone expects that. The small sensor means you can find noise at anything over 100 ISO. If you really pixel peep, you can even find noise at 100 and 80. However, the noise looks slight film grain, and isn’t unpleasing to me.

This certainly is not the camera to use in super low light conditions, but anti-shake and f2.5 let me do quite a bit with it. In fact, I think it will be rare for me to use the higher ISO modes, I can get away with much lower ISO numbers compared to my SLR. For example, with its smaller sensor and lens, the DX100/DX-1G (5.1 mm) has an infinite depth of field at 6 feet with f2.5. For similar depth of field on my 350D Rebel (17 mm), I would need f9. The DX100/DX-1G can get everything in focus at a much lower ISO than my 350D Rebel – up to 4 or 5 stops. This means a lot of my ISO criticisms don’t matter quite as much for that type of photography. However, the same depth of field effect goes the other way as well. I can no longer pick out a subject and get nice bokeh, other than close and macro shots. Considering the majority of my photos are wide angle and large DOF, this is a drawback I can handle.

Exposure and focus are sort of a mixed bag. Underwater macro focus can be slow, but a full press quick focus usually works quite well above or under action shots. The camera seems to over expose by +.5 to +1.3 stops. This means I usually have it set to -1 EV in bright sun, and sometimes -1.3 underwater. Shutter speed can be an issue in bright light if you want to use f2.5. I’ve found that if the total shutter speed for the exposure with -1 EV included is greater than the camera’s shutter speed limit of 2000, it tends to just shoot at 0 EV, rather than try the quickest speed available. This is annoying, the camera would have probably benefited from ISO 50.

What is harder to handle is the RAW write time, which runs about 4 seconds. The DNG raw files are about 14 MB, and it writes a 2 MB JPG at the same time. This camera is screaming for a decent memory buffer. Memory is cheap; I don’t know why they didn’t add it. RAW files themselves are great, and hold lot of detail in the files that is wiped out by the JPG conversion. The RAW files are also essential for shooting underwater – the deeper you go, the more you lose red and other colors. Though the white balance actually isn’t too bad, adding some tint or doing custom white points in the RAW file really help to work around the effects of a screwy color space.

Sea & Sea’s DX-1G housing seems to be well made, though the back screen window does seem to scratch a bit easy for my tastes. Layout and operation is all pretty decent, and I enjoy using it underwater. I’m not sure who thought it was a good idea to make the case a dark colored; I would think it would heat up in the sun and promote fogging when you hit the cold water. Though I have yet to have that happen to me – I’ve been using old desiccants, and the housing still hasn’t fogged up on me. The size is nice, small enough to stuff in a large BC pocket if I don’t want to have it in my hands when I start the dive.

The internal flash is pretty pitiful for underwater use; I’d say a strobe is a necessary purchase for anything at significant depth, in lower light, or if 100% true colors are required. In low light you would also probably benefit from a focus light as well. I have no intention to run out a drop a bunch of money on a strobe & arm kit, so I’m tempted to rig up a LED flashlight as a ghetto focus/constant light for deeper use. Something sort of like ULCS’s tray with a spotting light adapter. That way I could use my alternate light source as a focus/video light. Not really sure if that would actually get decent results, but it is worth a try considering the cost and bulk of strobes.

Long story short, the camera has draw backs, but I still like using it.

Galleries with photos taken by my Sea & Sea DX-1G (aka Ricoh GX100):
– 2007.10.25-29 New Orleans
– 2007.10.23 San Diego fires
– 2007.10.21 Ocean Beach surf and smoke
– 2007.11.02-03 Two Harbors, Catalina Island

Underwater photos:
– 2007.11.02-04 Scuba diving and snorkeling Catalina Island
– 2007.11.24 Scuba diving Islas Coronado
– 2008.02.02-14 Big island underwater
– 2008.04.11-13 Two Harbors, Catalina