bostondancer
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Hi folks,
I am having a heck of a time coming up with a camera to buy. I'm hoping someone here can shed light on how companies decide which camera's they are going to create housings for.
I had a Nikon Coolpix that I took on the boat and left under the seat like an idiot and it got soaked and is now fried. It had 3x optical zoom which I thought was okay but I would like more zoom and higher resolution. For underwater I used an el cheapo camera from the dive shop and the pictures sucked. I am not an amateur and not a pro. On land I take pretty decent pictures but all with automatic settings. I'm still a newbie diver (30+ dives) so I don't want to futz with settings under water. Just something I can quickly switch between video and still.
I need the camera within this week but can wait to buy the housing till Aug. My camera budget is $300 tops and housing $200 tops. I thought I found everthing I wanted in the Kodak Easyshare Z712 but then I found that there are no housing for most Kodak products.
I looked at Fuji s700 which got good reviews and is on sale at Bestbuy but can't find housing for it.
Next I found the Olympus FE240 again good ratings and what I need but no housing. Looks like both the S700 and FE240 came out recently and I guess I could call the manufacturers to see if and when they will have housing for these.
I looked at a bunch of Canons which seem to have the largest number of housings in my price range but there seem to be 50 different models all with different ratings. I thought the A710 would be a good one until I read that the noise level is high because of the Image stability feature. I don't really care about IS so I still need to figure out which model to look for there.
Any advise appreciated. Especially if you have found that going with higher than 3x zoom doesn't buy you much. There seem to be a lot of well rated older models (pre-2007) in my price range that have housings but only have 3x zoom. I think I can live with 3x for land pics, but am hoping higher zoom will help get closer shots under water.
Thanks in advance!
I am having a heck of a time coming up with a camera to buy. I'm hoping someone here can shed light on how companies decide which camera's they are going to create housings for.
I had a Nikon Coolpix that I took on the boat and left under the seat like an idiot and it got soaked and is now fried. It had 3x optical zoom which I thought was okay but I would like more zoom and higher resolution. For underwater I used an el cheapo camera from the dive shop and the pictures sucked. I am not an amateur and not a pro. On land I take pretty decent pictures but all with automatic settings. I'm still a newbie diver (30+ dives) so I don't want to futz with settings under water. Just something I can quickly switch between video and still.
I need the camera within this week but can wait to buy the housing till Aug. My camera budget is $300 tops and housing $200 tops. I thought I found everthing I wanted in the Kodak Easyshare Z712 but then I found that there are no housing for most Kodak products.
I looked at Fuji s700 which got good reviews and is on sale at Bestbuy but can't find housing for it.
Next I found the Olympus FE240 again good ratings and what I need but no housing. Looks like both the S700 and FE240 came out recently and I guess I could call the manufacturers to see if and when they will have housing for these.
I looked at a bunch of Canons which seem to have the largest number of housings in my price range but there seem to be 50 different models all with different ratings. I thought the A710 would be a good one until I read that the noise level is high because of the Image stability feature. I don't really care about IS so I still need to figure out which model to look for there.
Any advise appreciated. Especially if you have found that going with higher than 3x zoom doesn't buy you much. There seem to be a lot of well rated older models (pre-2007) in my price range that have housings but only have 3x zoom. I think I can live with 3x for land pics, but am hoping higher zoom will help get closer shots under water.
Thanks in advance!