friscuba:
All three cameras are very nice cameras. The 5050 is tried and true. The 5060 had a lot of skeptics at first because the aperature range was smaller, but now underwater photographers are warming up to it. The 8080 is an unknown quantity in underwater circles as of yet because the very first housings have only been available for about 2 weeks so far.
.......[snipped]
I don't think you can really go wrong with either of these 3 cameras. Your biggest choices will be on what size of a unit you want to be carrying around underwater and how large of photos you want to display.
Aloha,
Steve
I've used a Oly 5050 for almost a year now, including a fair number of underwater shots, using the Oly housing. The quality is great, especially for the price. However, I find the delay between pushing the shutter button and the actual taking of the exposure excrutiating.
I realize that there are ways around this, such as fixing the focus, but these can be awckward, especially on dives when there is alreay enough to think about. This delay in combination with the relatively weak flash and lack of any synch fitting on the housing, plus serious parallax problems with the visual finder, rather complicated user interface, limnited wide angle and zoom range and flimsy-feeling/ sounding lens and zoom action would steer me away from to 5050 if I were buying now.
On the other hand, the 8080 seems tyo be a much more substantial piece of equipment. I tried one in a Victoria BC shop, alongside the 5060 and 5050 (they were actually selling the 60 for a hundred less than the 5050 "because of the faster lens on the 5050", they said) and also the Canon, Nikon, Konica-Monolta Dimage and Sony 8 mp prosumer counterparts. While it felt bigger and heavier than the first three, the extra heft seemed to be in the lens and it excellent zoom action, as well as general build quality. The Sony, with its impressive f2, long zoom ratio Zeiss lens, was even bigger, but much less well-balanced and did not even "feel" as well made.
Oly's underwater housing for the 8080, OTH, appears to be something the junior engineers put together out of spare parts in a rush. It may work okay, but it sure is big, awckward and ugly.
DSLR's, even with their impressive price reductions, are another matter. I have to travel for most of my diving, and already have a Nikon F80 and lenses which I don't always bother to lug along. For diving, the size, cost and complexity of the housings, interchangeable lenses/ ports, big cradles and flashes involved are not really my idea of fun, especially after watching the adventures/misadventures of others with them. Maybe, if I get really rich and obsessed, I'll eventually spring for Kodak's 14mp version of the Nikon F80 DSLR. but likely not.
Of course, quality is important...but so is something you are likely to have with you, when a photo opportunity occurs. I find that I take twenty or thirty digital shots for every one I take on the Nikon, often simply because the camera is so easy to take along.
So I'll probably spring for the 8080 with the Ikelite housing, if I can get the cash together...and still curse the shutter delay. Hope that this helps,
