What constitutes a good point and shoot? Unfortunately, there is no current P&S that covers all the bases. In truth there has never been one that covers
all the bases, but there have been some that were very, very close. My list of wants goes like this;
Affordable
Raw file format
Manual settings
Quality glass
Wet change close and wide lens ability
Low light focus ability
Decent shutter lag
It's possible that there was only one piece of quality glass that was sold in affordable P&S's, but most P&S consumers base purchases on megapixels, not optical brightness, so Oly dropped the extra expense and now the only quality glass is in detachable lenses.
If you move forward with underwater photography and post dive processing with Photoshop (or others), raw file formats are the only way to go. Many of the reasonably priced Canon's can be hacked to record in raw, but I prefer to shoot raw with a camera designed to shoot raw.
TTL/Auto photography is fine for non-photographers, but a true photographer uses manual camera settings and manual strobe settings, at least on occasion. The ability to save some pre-programed settings is also very nice!
28 mm lenses are only 35 mm underwater due refraction, and that is not wide enough for many underwater situations. Looking back at the history of underwater photography; 20 mm (100 degrees) is the most popular compromise between quality glass and affordability. If there isn't a 20/100 wet change option for an underwater P&S, how can it be considered good?
Low light focus goes back to quality glass I guess, and that's why modeling lights exist. Shutter lag is annoying, but there are incredible images out there from cameras with significant shutter lag; with practice an astute photographer learns to anticipate better. Manual settings help, and setting the camera to continuous burst can be a work-around, especially if the slave still fires in continuous mode!
I tell my friends that ask to find a Canon S70 and Canon housing on eBay. If they have to have ttl, then something in an Ikelite housing is appropriate (but more than twice the cost). I don't recommend anyone get an Oly 5050 off eBay, 'cause you might drive the price up when I get MY next one!
