camera help!

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Lynsey - 19 Apr 2004 01:55 GMT

Hi,

Im looking for a new camera but havent so far found one that matches
everything im looking for! Does anybody know of a camera that:

-is of ~4 megapixels(or more!),
-can get underwater case rated to 40m,
-Can get a macro/close up lense for it (for on land use, and possibly diving
too).
-And takes good photos in your experience!

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Lynsey.

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H. Huntzinger - 20 Apr 2004 12:07 GMT

> Im looking for a new camera but havent so far found one that matches
> everything im looking for! Does anybody know of a camera that:
>
> -is of ~4 megapixels(or more!),

Well, that pretty much assumes digital :-)

> -can get underwater case rated to 40m,
> -Can get a macro/close up lense for it
> (for on land use, and possibly diving too).
> -And takes good photos in your experience!

I've seen a good number of UW photo comments about the Olympus cameras,
so apparently someone likes them for some reason, but I'm not at all
familiar with them.

Canon makes a pretty good line of digitals and the factory also makes UW
housings for many (most?) of them. One potential candidate for you is
the 4MP Powershot A80, as it has a macro mode and it also uses "AA"
batteries as its form factor, which is useful, as you'll probably suck
through a lot of power with UW photo.

However, I'm not sure offhand how deep these factory housings are rated
to, but I suspect that it might be 100fsw (30m) instead of 130fsw (40m).
If your desires for those extra 10m are imporant to you, it probably
means that you'll want to have an Ikelite housing:

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/1digital.html

(FWIW, an Ikelite A80 housing exists; it costs US$500).

Finally, after all is said and done, what's not particularly evident is
what your budget is. A 4MP camera's probably going to be $400, plus
you'll spend another $300-$500 for a housing, and what you'll have is a
system that will be okay in clear tropical water to around 15m before
the light absorption in water "blues" everything out. To restore the
colors at deeper depths, you'll need a good UW strobe, and that's at
least another $250 investment. Overall, its pretty evident that you're
looking at investing least US $1000 for this system, if not more.

-hh

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David Gintz $formerly newdiver2@aol.com$ - 20 Apr 2004 13:21 GMT

> Canon makes a pretty good line of digitals and the factory also makes UW
> housings for many (most?) of them. One potential candidate for you is
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>
> (FWIW, an Ikelite A80 housing exists; it costs US$500).

The UW housing for some of Canon's cameras goest to 100' (I've got the one
for the Digital Elph s230) but the newer ones (such as for the S400) go to
130'

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me - 20 Apr 2004 17:22 GMT

>> Im looking for a new camera but havent so far found one that matches
>> everything im looking for! Does anybody know of a camera that:
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>> (for on land use, and possibly diving too).
>> -And takes good photos in your experience!

Ck out http://www.digitaldiver.net/ for some options.

I have a Oly C-5050 (~$450) & Oly housing (PT-015) (~$150). Bunch of
lense options available too.

ML

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Dan Bracuk - 21 Apr 2004 02:43 GMT

" H. Huntzinger" <{NOSPAM-rm_to_reply}rec-scuba@huntzinger.com>
pounded away at his keyboard resulting in:

:Finally, after all is said and done, what's not particularly evident is
:what your budget is. A 4MP camera's probably going to be $400, plus
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
:least another $250 investment. Overall, its pretty evident that you're
:looking at investing least US $1000 for this system, if not more.

That's the popular theory. We have some recent evidence, right here
in rec.scuba, that you can get some pretty good results using a
digital camera's built in flash.

Mind you, you would still have that reflection problem if you got the
fish at right angles.

Dan Bracuk
If at first you don't succeed, you run the risk of failure.
The Best of rec.scuba http://www.pathcom.com/~bracuk/RecScuba/

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