1st underwater camera

[dness33]

Hello Everybody,

I'm hoping to get a little local advice. I'm looking for a decent and inexpensive digital camera for local dives. I mainly freedive in and around kelp which can get quite dark (don't know if this factors in or not). I'm mainly diving from shore, so I guess that should be taken into consideration as well. I'm not looking for anything fancy, just something that takes a decent underwater picture that can be transferred to my PC.

Thanks for any/all advice

Dave Ness
Long Beach, Ca

 

[scottfiji]

your 2 main options are a canon (a75/85) with the canon housing (what I have, an A70), or an olympus (Sean or Terry will probably comment on those). Either work great. total cost should be under $400, maybe under $300 if you use Ebay.

close-ups will be good, as will pictures taken in very clear, sunny water.

Scott

 

[divinman]

your 2 main options are a canon (a75/85) with the canon housing

If you are looking for something small that you can snap pics with quickly without a lot of fuss you can't go wrong with the Canons in my opinon. The Olympus cameras take great pics as well but the camera is larger and as such, so is the housing.

I would go with the A85. Small and takes great pictures.

Terry

 

[PhotoTJ]

Look at my gallery. All those shots were taken with an A80, the predecessor to the A85. No strobe, no additional hardware. Just the Canon housing. I am very happy with it.

 

[sb_diver]

I also agree with the Canon recommendation. I have the Powershot S50 and the housing from Canon. The Olympus cameras are nice too, I've used my friend's camera on a few dives. Although that camera is a bit bulkier.

 

[LegoPacific]

One more satisfied A70 user here. For the $, the A-xx line with the Canon hausings are a great buys.

 

[MissyP]

I have an Olympus Stylus 410 & honestly, I haven't been happy with the quality of the pictures.. The housing is great- no problems with it at all, but the camera itself doesn't seem to take clear underwater pics... Outside of the water, the picture quality is excellent...

 

[dness33]

I appreciate the info guys!!

 

[scottfiji]

I have an Olympus Stylus 410 & honestly, I haven't been happy with the quality of the pictures.. The housing is great- no problems with it at all, but the camera itself doesn't seem to take clear underwater pics... Outside of the water, the picture quality is excellent...

Hi Missy

It's really easy to take bad pictures underwater. I've seen people with the same camera as me take much worse pictures than me, and much better pictures than me. Most of my pictures are still bad, but there is a huge improvement from when I started 1 year ago.

Most likely its not the camera, its just you. But don't despair, there are lots of olympus users who will probably help.

when and where did you take these unclear pics? At what distance and settings? flash / no flash? are they blurry?

Scott

 

[MissyP]

Hi Missy
Most likely its not the camera, its just you. But don't despair, there are lots of olympus users who will probably help.

when and where did you take these unclear pics? At what distance and settings? flash / no flash? are they blurry?

Scott

Scott, its the quality that I'm not happy with (although I do have my share of blurry ones..hehe)..
It takes horrible macro shots, but pics taken from a distance come out fine... Not quite sure why that is...