Which Camera --- A very specific question for SB

[Peter Guy]

I had a Minolta DiMage Xg and the UW housing for it. My wife has decided she really liked using it because it is so small -- with the housing it fit into her drysuit pocket with no problem. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, this camera had a "fold lens" inside the case -- so the whole thing was about the size of a pack of cards and NOTHING stuck out. Unfortunately that camera is no longer with us -- yes, the "F" word!

Minolta is out of business and the DiMage X series of cameras appear to be gone as well (which is sad because they were/are very good PnS's).

So, do any of you know of a similar PnS that, with housing, will easily fit into a drysuit pocket? I'd like to get something for her but it must be small and easy to use.

Here is a picture of the last version -- and I'd get it if I could find a housing for it:

Here is a picture of the Xg housing and I'm sure the X1 would look very similar:

 

[Charlie59]

I have seen Olympus stylus series cameras that have impressed me as small, even with their cases. 710 and 720 look nice (3.6" W x 2.3" H x 0.78" D).

www.olympusamerica.com

 

[Larry C]

And the Stylus 720SW is waterproof to 10 ft. Unless you have a total housing failure, you won't flood that one.

 

[camerasunderwater]

The 725 is waterproof to 5m. the housing is pretty small. The Oly housings have a screw thread that fits URPRO filters, and epoque wide/macro lenses

 

[camerasunderwater]

The smallest is the casio z1000 at the mo. http://www.camerasunderwater.co.uk/d_stills/casio/index.html
housings not that adaptable tho

 

[randini]

Nikon Coolpix S-series has a few cameras with that same form factor as well and there are UW housings for some from fantasea LINK.

 

[OHGoDive]

Sony makes very small housings for some of their very small cameras too.

http://store.aikotradingstore.com/sonyhousings.html

 

[Cecil]

Get a Sony T30, very small, flat, folded optics, 7 megapixel and 3x zoom. You want a Sony MPK-THC housing. Here's a link.

http://www.digideep.com/english/digital/photo/camera/Sony/Cyber-shot-T30/34/2504

 

[JamesD]

While the olympus are quite nice, they don't seem to have any zoom on the small cameras (like the 720) while I hate to recommend Sony because of the proprietary memory card format, the T33 does have a nice small case, and zoom and such.

Alternatively see if you can get another Xg from somewhere, maybe E-bay? Doing a search on froogle a few shops claim to still stock them (I love my Dimage Xt so wouldn't know what to replace it with if that broke)

 

[JamesD]

Ahem...

Take two, the X1 does have a housing, model number MC-DG1 available for about $200 or so (I've rounded up to nearest hundred to account for taxes and such).

Amazon sells the camera for $300

Although: The Xg and Xt were made by Minolta, the X1 is made by Konica Minolta which seems to add some "baggage" (at least from some reviews) I'm also not very sure about buying a discontinued product, might be better to try to find something that is recent and fits what you want.