New to underwater photography. What kind of camera to get?

[Byte Me]

cmneus: You'll get a bunch of opinions on this but right now I really don't think you can do better than the Oly E-PM1 and housing. A STEAL at $500 includes housing, zoom ring, ket lens and body. You can shoot RAW or jpg, auto to full manual. It's a great "starter" kit that you can easily add to as your experience and skill mature. Zen makes a dome port for the housing so when it's time to add other lenses (Oly 60mm macro, 9-18 Wide Angle or Panny 7-14mm Wide Angle) you can fit them all behind the dome port (at least you can on the E-PL2 that I've got). Add a strobe or two and you've gone from $500 point and shoot kit to a setup, that while more expensive than $500, will still be "reasonable" compared to a DSLR AND you can still fit it all in a backpack for travel purposes. Oh, and you won't need an above and under separate camera - it'll do great for either!

Here's the link to Oly's site: http://www.getolympus.com/us/en/e-pm1.html

PM me if you have any more questions!

 

[cmneus]

Depends on a lot of things. List your budget... hard to make suggestions without that.

List your expectations also. Are you wanting shallow water / ambient light shots? On Camera flash? External flash? What depths will you be shooting at? Resolution / megapixels wanted? Do you want mostly just easy Auto... or do you want full control.. or somewhere in between?

How often do you dive.. and will this be used often? If not, renting is probably the best way to go.

Yeah, I'm thinking maybe I will just rent, I go on about one trip per year. And really, I don't know anything about photography, I just take pictures! I don't know how many megapixels, what resolution,
so just auto is what I want to work pretty well. I'm sure if I get one I'll be able to learn a little about the setting before I go but won't be able to practice. I think renting might be my best option.