Hello all, I am new here and to micro stock in general having started a couple of months ago.
    I am in England at the moment, and have a Canon 350d with the kit lens and a cheap tamron 55-200mm.
   I  will be returning to my small sailing yacht which is my full time home in 6 weeks. The boat is stored in Florida at the moment, so when I get over there, I intend to upgrade to L glass as its much cheaper than over here.
    My main concern is that living on the water full time is going to be hard on the camera and lens, and before I commit to a couple of L lens and therefore committing to Canon I would like to ask particularly you pro's if you feel that for full time micro stock work which will mainly be tropical landscape and sailing I should aim for full frame which would mean the 5D which is just in my budget, or stick to cropped sensors.
   If I was to stick to cropped sensors I tend to think the Nikon D300 with its better weather protection for my living conditions might be a better bet, and therefore hold on the L glass and get a complete nikon setup.
   My total budget would be $4500.
   I will have the 350d as a backup if I stick with Canon, but that is not a big issue.
   I,m sure its the lens that is most important, but I want to try and get the body straight at this stage to avoid having to change again in the near future. 
   Thanks in advance, and looking forward to talking to you all in the coming months from the West Indies.

I would get the 40D if I was you

I have no experience of this situation at all, but my initial reaction is to imagine all that salt in the air and spray.  Whatever you do, salt water is going to get on your lens, either by splashes, or by simple gradual deposit simply by the stuff being in the air all around you.  Every time you clean the front element of your lens (which is likely to be frequent) you will risk a gradual build-up of small invisible scratches which over time will degrade picture quality.

Presumably there is also a high risk of salty condensation penetrating inside the lens and camera body.

Wrapping as much as possible with cling-film might help, but I suspect that whatever you do, you are just going to have to accept that the life of your equipment is going to be severely curtailed in that environment.

The quandary is deciding whether to buy cheaper gear and replace it often, or more expsive stuff and hope that the weather sealing really does work.  But nothing is going to protect the front element of your lenses when you are actually taking pictures.

Ah - I overlooked the obvious thing - put a UV filter on the front.  Yes, that will obviously help.

I don't use UV filters, which is why I overlooked that solution.  In fact I don't use any filters at all, simply because I don't want anything between my expensive Nikon glass and my potential image.

As for weather sealing: my D200 is meant to be weather proofed; when I use it in my studio it's fine, but as soon as I take it to a beach situation it has to go for a sensor clean shortly afterwards.  Even if I don't change lenses at the beach, somehow sand and dust gets inside it.  So much for weather sealing........

If you ever see.. what's his name now... Ian Hild - is that it? on line, I think he lives on a boat.  Maybe you can find an old post and send him a pm.

Oh, and I shot about 3000 frames outdoors last week and the dust was crazy, even got under my UV filter (that I had NOT removed).  I don't know how this is possible... but what a mess of everything, and I'm on the prairies - not the salty ocean.

That's a bit misleading.

There are no body seals between the lens and the body on a Canon 1 series camera. The lens opening is sealed only through the seal on the lens. Only Canon's L series of lenses have seals. Canon's 1 series of cameras have seals on all openings except the lens opening.

Thinking about this more, you should contact Jon Nash, a noted sailing photographer. He's a very friendly and approachable guy, and can probably make some very good recommendations for you.
http://www.jonnashphotography.co.uk/index.htm

... good luck!

hey there boatman please report back as to the conclusion as I am in much the same situation being a yacht skipper myself.

I recently bought the pentax w30 which is 100% waterproof up to 3M depth I have tested it and it definitely works got some great shots of my keel and some coral and stuff.
 
Only problem is that you don't have any option on lenses and not many on the setup of the camera but on the plus side you can Carry it on you're hip or round your neck whilst sailing and not miss those fleating shots.

 I highly suggest it for all those involved in boating. Whilst not the best  as you're main stock Camera great for making sure you don't miss anything on the wetter side of life.

PS: this is what I use for all my stock photography since I started +- 1 month ago. nothing sold yet but Ive only got a portfolio of about 10 pics and most of those are only from the last week

I would say a waterproof one

OLD THREAD ALERT!!!

Quote from: cdwheatley on November 07, 2015, 09:19

R.I.P. Stephen Strathdee (sharply_done)
You are missed.

Yeah I saw that too. R.I.P. Stephen. Him and Hatman standout as people who really helped me when I was starting out. It's a shame he's gone.

There's gotta be an award for oldest thread revived. 2007, 8 years!

He was a smart guy. He lived local to me and we met a couple times for coffee and some shooting.