Good Little Digital Cameras

[Fondueset]

Opinions? I'm using a little casio now - but am thinking of an upgrade that won't starve my children.

[Shadowkiller]

Surveys have shown that the children of divers are fitter, leaner and more able to fend for themselves. Indeed one diver surveyed didn't even realise that he had kids, but was simply grateful to the stranger that his wife made him take along, and he made sit in the car to prevent theft, when he went out each day to his favourite spot.

So yeah, priorities my friend, get them straight!

Also try the Sony Cybershot range, they come with polycarbonate housing and won't break the food budget for more than a month or two.

If you want a recent SLR camera, sell one of the kids.

[eckaflx]

Hi Fondueset ,
I use a Sony P200, which is a fantastic little camera. Its 7.2 Megapixel and takes pretty decent video aswell. It cost me just under £200, so you can probablly get it cheaper in the states. I use an Ikelite housing, which cost about as much as the camera did, but is amazingly well engineered and will last a lifetime!
Check em out on the net!
Ed

[Mr. X]

Fondueset, I am not a camera buff but I did look into compact digital cameras for a family member last year. I talked to several friends who have compact digital cameras & looked at numerous reviews.

Canon Powershots did very well in the general on-line pro & user reviews of digital cameras. (I have no Canon bias, in fact I always use Olympus for 35mm film). The A75 seems good value (esp. if you shop around). Lots of features -- too many for my tastes. There are higher res./spec. models (A80, A85, A90,A95,A610, A620 -I think they also have a flip-out-able LCD screen, which I didn't care for) the A75 seems more than enough for our needs though (the earlier A60 & A70 did v. well in reviews, you may be able to get upgraded A65 & A75s too?). You'd want to get some good rechargeable batteries to use with it. The pictures are excellent. We'll probably stick with this product range in the future (although I might take a look for a simpler sub-compact).

Have never used one in the water but I did see a good on-line spearo movie that was shot on the earlier A70 model with waterproof housing (or bag?). Have never tried the movie feature - might be a nice addition to your gallery though? Memory upgrades are pretty cheap & readily available now too (& getting cheaper all the time) [...somebody - a Sony owner - told me non-standard memory was an issue for the Sony cameras - is that right?].

[Don't know anything about Casio cameras but their Japanese watches were impressively robust (although I did accidently destroy one under...extreme impact conditions & a store owner broke the seal on another, but replaced & upgraded it -- interestingly the watch continued to work even with dirty Illinois lake water half filling it ) ].

[Jorg]

I did a lot of research into this. Take a digital camera with a Canon DIGIC-2 processor. Because this processor is just the best for the blueish underwater color to process. I've bought myself a Canon IXUS 700 (american name I think SD500) and it's just an excellent camera. You can buy a canon underwaterhousing which you can take to 40 meters for only 175 euro.
The beaty of the camera is that you can take very good video's with it as well!

Some photo examples: http://www.shark.nu/gallery/browseimages.php?c=4 (the top 8 categories are made with this camera)
Some video examples: http://www.shark-bait.com/media-video-nemo33.html

Full review of my camera at http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canonsd500/ where you can find much more usefull reviews of cameras. It's already 1 year old so canon already has some succesors to this one.

My opinion about Sony camera's: I've tested quite a few sony cameras for underwater work, but all the time I was very dissapointed by the color blue. Sony just doesn't work out half the quality on the blue as the canon does.

[matrixed82]

I have the canon A95 with the underwater housing but I haven't had a chance to try it underwater yet. I'm no camera buff but I'm really pleased with it.
The only thing you should consider is that the videos can only be 3 minutes long, regardless of the memory card size. For freediving however I don't think that will be a big problem since my dive times are no where near 3 minutes (yet ).

[Cliff Etzel]

When Nico and I were in New Mexico training with Aharon Solomons at the Blue Hole in January of this year, We both shot video along with stills on our housed P/S cameras. I shot with my old Olympus C3000's in an Oly housing with an Inon 100 degree w/a lens and Nico shot with his Canon G6 in an Ikelite housing with my Inon Lens. I would say the Canon was far superior - especially when being able to shoot video since there was no timelimit on the video. Also shoots in RAW format which is a major plus in my opinion. My camera was limited to 128 Smart Media while Nico could use 1GB CF card. Definate plus as well.

HTH,

[fjohnson]

Fondueset,
I just completed a ton of home work on exactly what you're asking.. I posted questions on a local dive site and a site called http://www.digideep.com and what came back was the canon A95.. which is the predecessor to what I bought, the Canon A610. I took about 100 pics, mostly flash, and about 5 minutes of video or more before I changed the batteries.. great. The A610 is actually less $$ then the A95 but has more features.. unlimited video, 3 qualities of video, good battery life, AA batteries, 5megpix, reasonable underwater housing.. I got new camera/1gig card/16meg card for $250u.s. at e-bay and an underwater housing good to 40mtrs for $165u.s. from an internet site.. that's a cheap setup for sure for all the stuff it does and the quality of photos I'm getting. I was glad for the advice I got. Good luck to you..
Fred

[matrixed82]

Definetly go with the canon A610 over the A95, the A95 only has the DIGIC but the A610 has the DIGIC-II processor.

[Fondueset]

Thanks all - great info - the Canon looks outstanding! This has turned out to be a really informative thread!

Looks like the upgrade will probably be another casio - the exz600. I've been pretty happy with the ones I've used - particularly in low light. I got some amazing shots one night after sunset under dark overcast at about 25 feet of depth when the water was quite cloudy - fish I could barely see - and with no flash. Plus it'll do 640x480 movies and has the 2.7 diag lcd.
Housings haven't quite hit shore yet but are expected anytime.

I originally went with the casio because of the pentax lens and reputed good low-light.

[Fondueset]

Back at it - got the exz600 - seems slower to focus than the exz57 - and this one did not focus properly.

I'm looking at the canon 620 and the sony dscn-1 opionions welcome again!!

[Jon]

I'm still using my olympus 5050. I know thatthere may be better, and smallr, cameras out there by now, but Ihave somuchmoney invested in my INON lens, and dome port, that there will have to be a pretty big jump in technology to get me to sell it off and move up into something else.

My wife has a little Casio Z55 and I have had the chance to borrow a housing for it and shot a few picutres under theice this pasrt winter. the camera is SMALL and you hardly even notice carrying it aorund. the main downside is that there is no rapid fire mode and I do miss that while freediving. There are also no wide angle lenses that fit the housing for underwater use- that I am aware of. as a result I let her keep that as her land camera. It does have a nice video mode and now that you can get larger cards for a lot less moeny than a couple of years ago it does become a pretty nice little package- although the special batter that it takes is a bit of a drag.

I know that Ted (UNIRDNA) sold off his 5050 and just bought a new Cannon S-80 with a housing. there is a way to attach a wide angle lens to it and it does have a really good video mode so he seems to be pretty happy with it. I think he said he just bought a 4gig card to use with it so he'll never run out of memory. I've seen the housing and it is smaller than the OLY PT015, but still no where near as small as the Casio.

My father-in-law just picked up a Sea+sea DX8000. it has a wide angle lens that can be added on and is just about the same camera as the S-80 when comparing video modes and rapid fire features. The housing is about the same size as the S-80 and the hosuing is rated to 180' instead of 140'. The video quality has been so good that he has hardly been using his underwater video set-up at all, especially since this thing is 1/10th the size!

Maybe in a couple more years I can get a camera the size of the Casio with all the features of the S-80, a 10 gig memory card, and have a wide angle lens on the front- all for less than $100.


Jon

[unirdna]

Originally Posted by Jon

I know that Ted (UNIRDNA) sold off his 5050 and just bought a new Cannon S-80 with a housing. there is a way to attach a wide angle lens to it and it does have a really good video mode so he seems to be pretty happy with it. I think he said he just bought a 4gig card to use with it so he'll never run out of memory. I've seen the housing and it is smaller than the OLY PT015, but still no where near as small as the Casio.

Yep. Video (1024x768), wide lens, small housing, and manual controls sold me on the S80 setup. I sold my 5050 with housing for $600. My S80 with housing cost $600. I would have broke even were it not for the TWO, 4GB 150X Transcend SD cards I bought. The video (motion jpeg) for this camera is roughly 20X bigger than QT files taken by the 5050.

In one month Connor and I are headed to 'lil Cayman. Until then, you'll all have to settle for a look inside my aquarium

*You'll probably need to use IE to open the video.

** Video file was compressed from 1024x768 Motion Jpeg to 640x480 1000KbPS Windows Media.

Housing Photo

Aquarium Video

[Fondueset]

For some reason that video is hilarious.

I checked out the S80- it has a 2.5 inch lcd - which I like - my exz57 actually has a 2.7 inch lcd - and it really helps with framing shots. There is an olympus and a sony with 3 inch lcds - which would be great - but I did allright with my other casio - which was 2.5.

They say the s70 is better because it will shoot in raw mode - but I'm leaning toward the S80 anyway.

Thanks - and all further ideas welcomed - THIS IS A FREAKIN NIGHTMARE OF DECISION MAKING!!

[unirdna]

If I'm not mistaken, the s70 comes up very short on video (320x240, 15fps comes to mind). If video is something important to you, that might make your decision easier. True that the S80 "lost" its RAW mode; this might be important to someone who prefers RAW. I never took one photo that wasn't a jpeg when I had my 5050, so that [lack of] feature had no impact on my decision.

The only drawback I've noticed about the S80/housing combo [so far] is the inability to change video size modes while the camera is in the housing. You can still switch photo modes and get to all the menus. But, the toggle dial to switch video modes does not have a corresponding wheel on the housing.