Just wanted to tell you that I am joined the club for D2X and Subal. Got my D2X shipping today and Subal's housing in a few days. Will bring it along to the March/April Bahamas trip for first time testing.
I am excited and looking forward to that!!!

Congratulations Juerg!

I am very impressed with both the camera and Subal housing. I took it to the pool on Monday and it is going to Egypt on Sunday.

Once I have been diving with the system I will write a review here on Wetpixel. There is a first impressions review of the system in the current issue of UWP magazine - written before I have dived with it!

Are you getting the GS viewfinder? It wasn't in stock when I got mine but it can be retro-fitted. In anycase I could do with waiting for my bank account to recover! That said the D2x viewfinder is mych better than the D100 viewfinder that I have been using for my last 25000 UW photos - so I should be OK!

Alex

Here is a rather better image of my camera and housing.

Hi Juerg, I'm looking forward to meeting you and your new rig on the Bahamas Shark Trip .....it should be a great experience

Karl

Excellent! I'm glad there will be someone on board to balance out the Canon shooters...:-)

Cheers
James

Hi buddy, welcome to the club. Maybe Alex can think of a secret Handshake...

Gee... Rand! You were using my old 5050 less than a year ago, you said at the time that you didn't think you needed a better camera.

Herb, Uhhh. I..Uhhh. Ok, No more new cameras for me...that's final...and I mean it this time....unless the D2Y fits my existing housing.

yeah! juerg - maybe we can swap housings and cameras for a dive or two. you know, just for kicks.

I think the N-team will be well represented. Myself, Karl, Juerg. I know that you, Eric and Craig will be shooting Canon...don't know about the others.

Larry

I don't see a button on the front of the Subal housing that would allow you to access the Function button so you could switch into High Speed Crop mode underwater. Not having this feature will limit some macro possibilites underwater.

Hugh

Why would you need high speed crop mode? Only for the crop I imagine, but you can crop afterwards...

Yes, I was thinking about cropping us the High Speed Crop function. Haven't seen any tests as yet to see if you get better quality for a give area using this function. It might also be used to frame the subject better, and, perhaps, if you run low on space on your CF card while diving, you get more images wihtout leaving the RAW format.

Hugh

I noted in my UWP review that the Subal does not have a control for the FUNCTION button.

The reason for this is twofold. First the function button is in an awkward place to set up a control and I doubt many housings will support it. And second I think that this button was not on the D2h and therefore few housing manuf'ers will have designs that support it.

Don't worry though it is very easy to set access the Hi-Speed crop through the menus - especially because the D2x has a menu of recent settings - where all the stuff you usually change is sitting there waiting to be accessed. It is very easy to switch to hi-speed crop in the Subal or any housing.

I agree with Luiz that I don't see the point. A 6Gb Microdrive is only $199 - which should see most people through a dive.

Alex

The function button is on my D2h, but I'm not sure about those shipped in the UK .

Using the recent settings menu, I can't see that the crop mode is ever more than 7 or 8 button pushes away.

Further, why? No strobe can keep up with that frame rate... I think this is a marketing ploy is much as anything, but I did get an email yesterday from someone who shot an eagle w/ a 400mm lens, but because of the 2x mult., it was effectively an 800mm lens... Proof that people are buying it.

I disagree Ryan. I am well aware that the image is nothing more than a crop, however I like the thought of going out to photograph distant sailing action, and not having to spend hours cropping at home. For the shooting I do, I don't like to carry anything longer than I can handhold, so a 300 F4 is my choice. 7mp at 600mm is a high rez incamera crop that I expect to use occasionally, and sports shooters might use often.

It is also nice to see the action coming into the viewfinder before it reaches the recorded area.

I would agree that this feature has been a little overhyped, but in use it is interesting.

If you are already shooting in Raw, how much time is really saved? Granted there is a memory savings.

I guess if I want 8fps, I'll use a d2h. I don't plan on using the d2h underwater.

I was hinting at that you aren't using a 600mm lens, you are using a 50% crop of the center of a 300mm lens. It is just a nitpicking, but it drives me crazy looking at Olympus forums on dpreview and seeing people say something was shot at 400mm with a 70-200...

Here's a few instances when I used all the fps speed I could get underwater:
Competitive swimmer for a feature story
Over/under of water skiier turning around a bouy
Parachutist landing in water above me
Surfing shots.

Granted it's something that I'd know before getting in the water, so a selector switch on the housing would have limited (if any) utility. And I don't use 3/4 of the available buttons as it is, anyway.

A need for speed isn't an everyday thing, but a nice option for a few folks.

All the best, James

Seeing just outside the frame works rather well with a Leica M or when using an 80mm lens on a Nikonos III (and using the N3 VF)! The reduced image size as opposed to seeing it more magnified may be even more (than with Leicas) of an issue UW, however. Also one needs to use a wider angle lens than one intends to shoot with to 'Leica-ize' your D2X. If one is running out of CF space and is using a zoom but not at the shortest FL, one could zoom back and switch to crop mode to be able to take more shots on a particular dive - a photographic J-valve of sorts (I am dating myself)
Tom