localdivah
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Hi all,
Last week, I had my beloved Fuji F11 stolen. Given, it's 4 years old, but it had amazing low-light capabilities, had full manual ISO, shutter speed, and aperture control, and took some really good photos.
Now, I am looking for a replacement and housing and need some advice from people who are actual users. I've read a lot of reviews, but there are few P&S underwater reviews.
Here's my criteria:
* P&S -- at this point, I travel all the time and light and can only have one land and sea system. I've accepted the limitations of P&S, and was able to coax good photos I was happy with from my F11
* Good low-light capabilities. I was spoiled by my Fuji
* Manufacture-produced housing. My wife has the LX3, which I would think would be a terrific UW camera (fast lens, wide angle, RAW), but amazingly, Panasonic has declined to produce one, while it has for the more consumer, automatic, superzooms like the ZS3. I am seriously bummed by this and the only third party housing is the 10bar which runs about US$600+.
* Compact -- again, this has to be pocketable, as it would be my land camera too
One option seems to be the new Panasonic ZS3 which has some pretty amazing dryland features (12x optical zoom, HD video in a highly compressed format), but supposedly unimpressive low light capabilities. It does have a Panny housing, so the package would run about $640 (the cost of the Lx3 housing alone).
Has anyone used the Lx3 underwater?
Has anyone used the ZS3 underwater and could comment on shutter speed and low light capability?
I would hate to take a step backwards compared to my 4 year old Fuji -- otherwise, I might as well go on ebay and buy someone's old F11, since I still have the UW housing...
Thanks -- I need to make up my mind and order this stuff within the next week or so.
Unfortunately, I'm deployed to the middle east right now and am not able to get my hands on anything to try it out. I can't even get onto this site most of the time, but that's another story...
Louie
Last week, I had my beloved Fuji F11 stolen. Given, it's 4 years old, but it had amazing low-light capabilities, had full manual ISO, shutter speed, and aperture control, and took some really good photos.
Now, I am looking for a replacement and housing and need some advice from people who are actual users. I've read a lot of reviews, but there are few P&S underwater reviews.
Here's my criteria:
* P&S -- at this point, I travel all the time and light and can only have one land and sea system. I've accepted the limitations of P&S, and was able to coax good photos I was happy with from my F11
* Good low-light capabilities. I was spoiled by my Fuji
* Manufacture-produced housing. My wife has the LX3, which I would think would be a terrific UW camera (fast lens, wide angle, RAW), but amazingly, Panasonic has declined to produce one, while it has for the more consumer, automatic, superzooms like the ZS3. I am seriously bummed by this and the only third party housing is the 10bar which runs about US$600+.
* Compact -- again, this has to be pocketable, as it would be my land camera too
One option seems to be the new Panasonic ZS3 which has some pretty amazing dryland features (12x optical zoom, HD video in a highly compressed format), but supposedly unimpressive low light capabilities. It does have a Panny housing, so the package would run about $640 (the cost of the Lx3 housing alone).
Has anyone used the Lx3 underwater?
Has anyone used the ZS3 underwater and could comment on shutter speed and low light capability?
I would hate to take a step backwards compared to my 4 year old Fuji -- otherwise, I might as well go on ebay and buy someone's old F11, since I still have the UW housing...
Thanks -- I need to make up my mind and order this stuff within the next week or so.
Unfortunately, I'm deployed to the middle east right now and am not able to get my hands on anything to try it out. I can't even get onto this site most of the time, but that's another story...
Louie
