Might have an Olympus 8080 for sale, if you're interested Ben. Make me an
offer, as they say!

Lack of shutter lag was one of the reasons I ended up with a Fuji S2
digital SLR. But that would be overbudget anyway.

Shutter lag only effects shots where something is moving, or you need
to take a shot "NOW". Fish shots are "NOW". Wreck shots are whenever.

Pete S.

I'm very impressed with my 300D on land.  I upgraded from a mid-range
compact, mostly because of the lag during image capture.  The Canon
has no appreciable lag. It fires a 2.5 frame-per-second burst but only
for 4 frames which I guess may be useful for fish shots.  Clearly it
can be used in any manner from fully auto to fully manual.  There's no
shutter lock-up for long exposure shots which might be a problem if
you want to do ambient light work.  Working in RAW the file sizes are
7MB so you'll need plenty of storeage, but even the large jpegs are
only 1.7MB or so

Only two issues that annoy me - it takes a few seconds to boot up when
it switches on, and after power-save shutdown, but you can disable the
power-save.  Also, the kit lens isn't truely 18-55 becuase of the 1.6
scaling factor on the CCD device.  It works out to 28-88mm.  EF-S
lenses are not back compatible to other EOS cameras, but the standard
EF lenses will fit the 300D (another reason for my purchase as I have
a bag of EF lenses

If you want more info on the 300D there is a good forum at
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1031

I'm truly envious if you can really afford a housing.........

For land photograpty the EOS 300D is way ahead of the Olympus 5060, i
personaly don't think the step between 5060 and 8080 is as big as the
difference between 5060 and 300D. However the underwater kits for the
300D is expencive. For that reason I have a 5060 for uv-photo. Today I
might even go for a 5050 if I can find one. But the 5060 have good
wide-angle possibilities, especially with a Inon 100w lens addition.

Ask your self what are you missing from the c40z underwater? As I see
it with a Wideangle adapter you can get close to 19mm eqivalent 35mm
optics, also you should be able to get a good flash (or is it strobe)
for the camera, personaly I have a Inon 180. Maybe this extra kit and
a 300D. I would say that a good flash and a Wideangle lens will give
you more that changing the camera to a 8080. Four megapixel will
probaly almost give you printed A4, do you need bigger printouts?

However this will not give you a better land camera. But maybe you
this way can free money for the funny 300D and still get a many good
uv-photos?

/ Anders

i use a 10d above the water and a 5060 below it.

the price for the housing on the 10d was prohibitive, likewise, the
possibility of flooding and destroying ?1500+ of kit on a dive was a little
daunting, especially as it gets used for other hobby stuff.

i opted for the oly 5060 in the pt020 housing coupled to a ys60 (which i
already had) via a michael finger ttl bulkhead adapator
(http://www.devilgas.com/oly5060/index.php). total cost (excl ys60) was
about ?650 - less than the price of a housing for the 10d - and i could use
my existing strobe.

comparative pros of the the 5060 against the dslr is that you can use the
lcd to frame the shots. with the dslr you'd have to look through the
viewfiinder. the 5060 will shoot video, the dlsr doesn't.
that's about it as far as the pros go as the dslr will urinate all over the
5060 in every other aspect.

have heard the 8080 is noisier than the 5060. check out the oly scuba forums
for definitive answers.

shutter lag on the 5060 can be minimised, but will always be there. if you
need instant capture, dslr is the way to go, or have a camera with a fixed
lens (my old fuji mx1200 had no shutter lag).

i'm happy with having separate systems, but do miss the ease & response of
the dslr when using the 5060.

hope that's of some use.