Shasta_man
Contributor
After lurking on the forum for a while, I heard about this cheap camera that seemed to take amazing photos. The photos I saw were top notch. Yes, it is mostly in the skill of the photographer, but the potential was there and Program mode does a pretty good job by itself.
The one I heard about was the C5050. By the time I was ready to purchase, we had the 5060. After consideration of Sony, Canon (which I have SLR gear for), and Fuji, etc, I figured the 5060 still was the best bang for the buck and was a good balance of $179 housing cost and $400 camera cost. (Finally, when buying some technology, I could wait till the end of the year and watch the prices drop, drop, drop until I bought!)
Just returned from Palau, on a trip on the BBE, which was truly amazing, partly because the weather was. It's the easiest trip to consider because there is no consideration. Just go.
Wow, what pictures we got. Mostly on P mode but also shooting underwater. The topside pictures were excellent with great exposure out of the box. Vivid blues, green islands. I'm still working on the underwater pictures but they came out pretty good and I still have 80 RAW photos to process. Almost more than I could hope for.
You could, with no more experience than framing the shot and holding the camera still while squeezing the trigger, jump in the water, use RAW and take some fantastic pictures for a complete underwater photog novice. Even the SHQ shots will be good with Photoshop help, if I don't get the WB down.
I'm elated to say, after concerns of flooding, the camera survived the trip with no flooding! Video camera housing too! I carefully checked and greased the O rings. I took my time when loading the camera to ensure it fit correctly. I then tested the camera in the rinse bucket for bubbles. No bubbles, so it was time to dive. Always test before going. And I took only the housing down to depth at the beginning to test it before putting the camera in and testing again.
Next I used 1 GB flash cards to minimize opening the housing between dives and to allow plenty of RAW photos. Also, I had two batteries which I swapped to put a new battery in on each day. It easily lasted the dive. And that was a genuine Olympus battery. On BuyDig, it was only slightly more than the generic but worth the reliability. After considering an archiving stand alone drive, I opted to just buy more flash cards and bought the best I could at Lexar Pro 80x cards, as the Olympus uses WA.
Oh yeah, the point of my mail was thanks to all of you for your experiences and suggestions in recommending the different cameras and why.
The one I heard about was the C5050. By the time I was ready to purchase, we had the 5060. After consideration of Sony, Canon (which I have SLR gear for), and Fuji, etc, I figured the 5060 still was the best bang for the buck and was a good balance of $179 housing cost and $400 camera cost. (Finally, when buying some technology, I could wait till the end of the year and watch the prices drop, drop, drop until I bought!)
Just returned from Palau, on a trip on the BBE, which was truly amazing, partly because the weather was. It's the easiest trip to consider because there is no consideration. Just go.
Wow, what pictures we got. Mostly on P mode but also shooting underwater. The topside pictures were excellent with great exposure out of the box. Vivid blues, green islands. I'm still working on the underwater pictures but they came out pretty good and I still have 80 RAW photos to process. Almost more than I could hope for.
You could, with no more experience than framing the shot and holding the camera still while squeezing the trigger, jump in the water, use RAW and take some fantastic pictures for a complete underwater photog novice. Even the SHQ shots will be good with Photoshop help, if I don't get the WB down.
I'm elated to say, after concerns of flooding, the camera survived the trip with no flooding! Video camera housing too! I carefully checked and greased the O rings. I took my time when loading the camera to ensure it fit correctly. I then tested the camera in the rinse bucket for bubbles. No bubbles, so it was time to dive. Always test before going. And I took only the housing down to depth at the beginning to test it before putting the camera in and testing again.
Next I used 1 GB flash cards to minimize opening the housing between dives and to allow plenty of RAW photos. Also, I had two batteries which I swapped to put a new battery in on each day. It easily lasted the dive. And that was a genuine Olympus battery. On BuyDig, it was only slightly more than the generic but worth the reliability. After considering an archiving stand alone drive, I opted to just buy more flash cards and bought the best I could at Lexar Pro 80x cards, as the Olympus uses WA.
Oh yeah, the point of my mail was thanks to all of you for your experiences and suggestions in recommending the different cameras and why.
