Re: Good Little Digital Cameras - Canon A620
This a little bit off-topic, but I thought I would add it to this thread.
I would recommend the
Canon A620 to anybody considering entry-level underwater photography at this time.
I gave my girlfriend an A620 for her Birthday in May and my work gave me a Canon SD550 (aka Ixus750 for Europeans)
They are the same Internal electronics, both use SD memory. The A620 is cheaper, they are both 7.1 Mega Pixel Cameras with no raw format, and a built in underwater mode for color correction. Both do "unlimited" 640x480 video
The A620 does better in low-light, it focuses faster, it has a bigger zoom (not of much use for underwater photography), and it can zoom while doing video. I suspect most of those differences are because of the larger physical lens.
The only real advantage of the SD550/Ixus750 is the smaller size, and Fancier battery. But getting high-end rechargeable double-AA give the A620 a good amount of battery life, and once you add the underwater housing the size difference between the two really dissapears.
I have used other compact Canons and Nikons underwater and have been very pleased with the current generation of Canons.
The lack of Raw format is not really an issue with Fine-mode with this number of Mega-Pixels and the size of lenses you are talking about.
The "Underwater mode" does a good job of reducing the use of flash, and basic color correction enough to make pictures viewable without post-processing (If you really want to show off details doing color normalization aftward will help)
I also think the "weight kit" is useless, even the A620 in its case that is suppose to have need 3 weights does not have much pull in Salt Water, and honestly I like have a camera that floats upwards.
I don't use strobes, I do use a flashlight at times, the flash is very weak (way too close to the lens, not enough lighting power) except for a few macro shots.
The video is surprisingly good, but you don't get any color correction with it.
With that said I generally use the SD550/Ixus750 because it is "mine"
Here are some sample pictures.
http://flickr.com/photos/robinslomkowski/tags/underwater