• Welcome to the DeeperBlue.com Forums, the largest online community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing. To gain full access to the DeeperBlue.com Forums you must register for a free account. As a registered member you will be able to:

    • Join over 44,280+ fellow diving enthusiasts from around the world on this forum
    • Participate in and browse from over 516,210+ posts.
    • Communicate privately with other divers from around the world.
    • Post your own photos or view from 7,441+ user submitted images.
    • All this and much more...

    You can gain access to all this absolutely free when you register for an account, so sign up today!

Good Little Digital Cameras

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
Thanks Ed but I still think the Sealife looks good.
 

Attachments

  • P1020581(1).JPG
    134.4 KB · Views: 161
some said in dubai prices are cheaper than oher countries
.N1sony here should be 850$ only camera price., how much dit ya pay sara?
 
Last edited:
SEDATE said:
some said in dubai prices are cheaper than oher countries
.N1sony here should be 850$ only camera price., how much dit ya pay sara?
Click to expand...

550$ for the camera and 192$ for the housing
 
Their DC500 is quite comparable to some of the Casios - though it has a smaller lcd screen. I can't remember the name of the company that makes the DC500 for Sealife - but the reviews on the camera itself that I saw were good. It's chief feature is very fast focusing - which is a huge help underwater. The housing is also quite solid with nicely color coded buttons - but otherwise about the same size and layout as the housing for my little casio.
 
I've seen the DC500 advertised for £250 (ex Vat) as opposed to £340 for the Casio and housing. Big difference. Like the look of the DC myself and at that price .

Dave

Beats my original home made housing for my old Pentax K1000.
 
Last edited:
The DC500 seems to be less than ideal from reading the link posted by jurrasic.

Additionally ([ame="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A8RDZW/103-2632461-6910233?v=glance&n=502394"]Amazon.com: Reef Master SL155 Sealife DC500 Underwater Digital Camera Pro Set: Camera & Photo[/ame]) and also it is a 5MP camera which takes movies in the following format (MPEG4-VGA/30 frames per second, File format:AVI) - I think that VGA is 320 by 200 pixels ?

At any rate I don't have a digital camera so would want one for land use too. The Casio is 10MP (I know resolution is not that important for 72dpi computer usage but you may want to print a few pics and this gives you a max resolution of 3648 x 2736).

The movie mode is 640 x 480 (HQ), 640 x 480 (Normal), 320 x 240 (LP).

Dont know the difference between HQ and Normal ? Anyone ? But perhaps it is interlacing options like the HD formats 'i' and 'p'... ? Not sure.

I think the numbers indicate that the DC500 is about half of what the EX-Z1000 is... but I know numbers aint everything..... Guess the draw of the DC500 is the small size, convenience and price.
 
On mine it's image quality - mine also does 640x480 at 30fps - you can adjust the quality down to make the files smaller. It also does 1024x768 but only at 15.

The exz1000 is going to be about the same size as the cd500- with and without housing.

Wow! bad reviews. I haven't used an exz1000 - but have used the exz50 and 57 quite alot - everything on my site up to where it says 'new camera' was taken with these casio models. They are quite fast and the batteries last an incredible amount of time. You do have to charge them in the cradle but it's no big deal when you can take 3 or 400 shots on a charge.

The speed of focus on the Casios is really fast - noticeably faster than my Canon s80. In fact I hardly ever waited for them to focus and just hit the shutter button all the way for quite a few of my pictures. They also did well in low light. The only problem I had with any casio was a memory card read error caused by my using the card in a computer slot that scratched the contacts.
 
Last edited:
Reactions: Old Man Dave
I broke down and just bought the new Z1000 and housing. The whole thing together, in the housing, is about the same size as my Olympus 5050 OUT of it's housing!

I am not sure how good the photo quality will be, as I just received it, but it is so small I will have to carry it everywhere. It can live on the spear gun during hunting as it will create a lot less drag than my PT-015 housing did. I am also thinking about putting an old spare mask pocket, from my trimix days, on my belt to carry it with me at all times- it's really that small. If the photos turn out at least as good as the ones from my 5050 I will be a very happy camper.

I plan on using it at the full 10 megapixle setting most of the time. I am not planning on making any poster sized prints, although I do already have a few of them hanging in my house from my film days, but am more interested in cropping out a part of the shot and having enough data in the picture to blow it up to a normal sized print- somewhere in the 4x5 to 8x10 range. Having a ton of data in the image to start with will enable me to do this with much less loss.

Tedski (unirdna) emailed me a link for a 4GB card so I can store some serious images on this camera- especially compared to the 512MB card I was used to for these past few years!:head I can do an hour at high res video and almost 4 hours on low res video. Shooting at max size I can get over 1,000 shots on a card and on low res, 640x480, I can get somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 on a card!

I let you know how the camera works sometime in the next few weeks. IF it works as well as I hope I guess it will be time to throw the old stand-by up on ebay.

Jon
 
I look forward to the review. If it's like the other casios I've used it's bound to be pretty good. Really nice size too. Without the housing it's almost too small - with it it's just about perfect. I see the 1000 has the same size ccd as my s80. Should make some good pics!
 
Last edited:
looking for online reliable shop to get canon S80 from UK. Any info? I saw few e-bay.co.uk member shops with quite good feedback but i just want to get it from "proper" shop since i read few things about S80 E18 error. It cost almost 500 GBP here camera alone:head
 
Has anyone got experience with the Canon S410? I bought mine about two years ago and am very happy with it on dry land. I notice that there is an underwater housing available for it as well. The housing costs about $180 US though so if this is not a good UW camera I won't bother.

EDIT: Sorry, I just did a search and found a few people used the s410. Nothing recently posted though. Has anyone got any recent experience??
 
Last edited:
Hi folks,

Looks like I've settled on the S80 at last. Man this camera selection business is exhausting. My priorities: video, low light, lenses, manual settings, photo quality and versatility. I've seen on different sales websites that the s80 will be discontinued, but yet the s80 is still on the canon sites (Canada and USA). Odd.

Anyway, I wanted to get everyone's ideas on buying the camera and sourcing. Please let me know if you know of a more reputable or cheaper source than what I have listed:

Canon s80: on ebay $400-$450 USD
Memory card: on ebay $35-50 USD for 4GB
Canon housing: on most sites $160 USD
Extra Lithium NB-2LH Battery: on ebay for $10 USD
Wide angle lens: $25-40 USD
Shipping for all the above: $100 at least
Duty?

Tyler, where did you get your S80?


Anything else that I'm missing? I have yet to research strobes at all. Anyone have any experience with Inon or Ikelite or other brands.

Thanks!

Pete
 
I've been happy with mine. I've got some more movies and pics up at the bottom of my site.
Key in digital cameras is the size of the CCD (processor) - moreso even than megapixel. The Canon is good this way - and also has great optics. I've been playing with a Sea & Sea strobe - it's easy enough to get going - but I am not yet pleased with the results. I like my pictures to look like they were taken underwater and it looks like the strobe is a whole art in itself. It's also quite bulky. I can see the potential though, and this particular one has a nice intensity dial on the back and is very simple to setup.

Pete, those prices look about right to me. If it would help I can pick all that up for you and ship it. I also have a spare housing for the S80 that I thought was ruined - but seems to be fine. It was left in the sun and got condensation between the lenses (it's a sandwich type lense) but this dissipated after two days and has not returned regardless of humidity, temperature changes etc. etc. I had to take some pictures for a local marine sanctuary within about 5 days of the fog incident so I freaked and ordered a new one. PM me if you are interested.
 
Last edited:
Hey Pete,

Good prices. I am glad you have finally come to the light on your camera selection I purchased my S80 at a local shop in Vancouver for $600 CAD, when it was selling everywhere else locally for $699 CAD(last December). I purchased an extra battery, which cost a lot more than 10USD, I believe more like $80-100 CAD.

The housing I purchased in July for $250 CAD at a local shop, which was $50 cheaper than anywhere else locally.

I was concerned about duties, since the camera is not made in the states I believe there will be duties bringing such products into Canada. It could be significant, although under the customs tariff schedules, it claims digital cameras are "free" of tariffs, I assume that is for ones made in the US. For reference here is the link to the documents:
http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/general/publications/tariff2006/01-99/tblmod-1-e.html

However, besides duties you have brokerage fees, which are insane, and I know little about other than they have been a royal pain in the %$# when I have ordered items, especially of smaller values.

What wide angle lens are you looking at? The one made by Canon is not for underwater use, you are aware of?

Cheers,

Tyler
 
SEA&Sea makes ab adaptor that fits onto the front of the cannon housing so that you can use their conversin lenses.

It's the one thing that's missing from my new Casio Z1000 set up. My video quality is way better than my old 5050 and the whole system is a 1/4 the size, but the wide angle lens is really nice when your up close or in crappy vis.

Chris, I've freedove with housed cameras and strobes before and find it too taxing for anything deep. Since you can manipulate the imgaes so much afterthe fact these days i on't even bother with them. The ONLY time I have thought about adding one back on was while swimming through the inside of a shipwreck last summer- too dark to get much to turn out. Since there's no way I could have gotten that farinto the wreck without a tank on it didn't seem to matter much to me.

Jon
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…