Planning on buying a camera

[-Phoenix-]

Hey all, I am planning on buying a camera for my next diving trip to Egypt. Now I find myself looking for a camera + housing and I would like to keep my expenses around €500. After some looking I found the Sony DSC-W300. From the specs it seems a nice enough camera for both onland photo's and hopefully also underwater ones with the proper housing.

Now I was wondering, does anybody have experience with this camera? Is it any good for underwater photography? Is the quality nice? Or is it rubbish

This is the camera

I hope somebody has this camera and can help me out

Or in case anybody has knows another nice (same price category) camera, dont hesitate to post

Cheers,
Rob

 

[maged_mmh]

canon G9+housing will cost you even less

 

[Larry C]

The DSC-W300 looks like a very nice camera. Sony uses excellent lenses, and the camera features manual shutter speed adjustment, preset or manual white balance, an underwater scene mode, focus down to 5 cm in either macro or auto/macro modes. I couldn't find whether manual aperture setting was available. It may be in program auto mode. I also didn't note whether RAW capture was available.
These are the main things that are needed in a good underwater camera. If nothing else, manual shutter speed and aperture are a must. The one touch white balance is important for shooting in natural light, and RAW allows adjusting white balance after the picture is taken in your post editing.
One thing to look for when you are checking the camera out in the store is whether the screen will show good detail of a subject in low light. Some cameras, the Sea & Sea DX1-G comes to mind, will not give you a well lit preview of a poorly lit scene. Others will enhance the preview, even though the picture is too dim without use of a flash.
The Canon G-9 has all these features, and is probably the most complete camera currently out there for underwater point and shoot. It also has a hot shoe. If the housing is equipped for it, that allows using an electic sync cord to fire your strobe. Many photographers seem to be doing fine with fiberoptic sync cords which use the cameras built in flash to trigger the strobe, however.

 

[-Phoenix-]

Thank you for both of your quick replies! The W300 indeed does not support RAW and I doubt it is possible to alter the aperture setting (it isn't in my current sony). Considering the fact that you consider them the two utmost important features that an underwater camera can have, I wont buy the W300 but look some more into the G-9.