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Waterproof Digital Cameras and Housing Reviews

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Updated: December 5, 2007 13:09

Fantasea FL-10 Housing

FL10

Specifically designed for the Nikon Coolpix FL10 an FL11. The FL-10 and FL-11 underwater camera housings are fully functional providing photographers access to all camera functions. These new Fantasea housings also have a new design and improved construction making them ideal for outdoor and underwater photographers who can now quickly access all Nikon Coolpix features for capturing fast action pictures easily and creatively.

The Fantasea FL-10 and FL-11 housings have double O-ring plated brass control buttons, O-ring for main seal, built in diffuser, anti-glare hood over LCD screen and 4 stainless steel buckles. An optional 46mm thread port ring suitable for a wide variety of filters and accessory lenses will be available in the future.

Underwater photographers can dive or snorkel and capture all the excitement of this fascinating world, while outdoor photographers also have the option of capturing the action of such activities as white water and paddle sports, sailing and boating, surfing, fishing, hunting, backpacking and camping. These new Fantasea housings protect the Coolpix cameras from water, sand, dust, and other damaging elements.

Flood Insurance:
As with all other Fantasea Camera Housings, in the event of accidental water leakage, the Coolpix camera inside is insured and will be replaced. This attractive additional protection is exclusive only to Fantasea Housings and provides the ultimate peace of mind for photographers, who want to be sure their cameras are adequately and safely protected during use in these rugged environments. 

Waterproof Olympus Stylus 720 SWOlympus

Imaging-Resource has a review on the 720W and writes"Olympus has produced some excellent digital cameras over the years, and has a broad base of loyal customers. It's a loyalty Olympus deserves, because they've produced many innovative and practical camera designs. Perhaps the most compelling design feature the company has built into small pocket cameras started when they first introduced their Infinity Stylus line of film cameras, whose main advantage was weather resistance.

This year they deliver not only weather resistance, but water proofing and shock resistance in a slim, shiny package. Ideal for underwater photography. The Olympus Stylus 720 SW offers what no other cameras offer, but that all should: The ability to stand up to the real world. I've always argued that the technology exists to make complicated machines like cars and computers withstand the rain, bumps, and spills: it's long past time for camera makers to realize that cameras no longer live in professional studios where they can be pampered and cared for like fine, delicate instruments. The time has passed, because Olympus has realized this and given us the Stylus 720 SW. " Further details on specifications are available from the Olympus website.


Nikon Coolpix L6 underwater housing Fantasea FL-6Nkon Fantasea

Fantasea Line announces the addition of a new housing specifically designed for the new Nikon Coolpix L6 to make the camera completely waterproof. The FL-6 is for use with the Nikon Coolpix L6. The FL-6 housing is part of Fantasea's new generation of fully functional Coolpix housings, enabling the underwater photographer to access all essential control functions. These housings are ideal for outdoor and underwater photographers who enjoy the camera's automatic exposure features for capturing fast action pictures easily and creatively. The Fantasea FL-6 housing provides the most compact design for easy handling and accurate access to camera functions through the critical placement of push-button controls.

 

Sea & Sea DX-750G Waterproof Digital Camera

Sea & SeaThe Sea & Sea DX-750G Waterproof Digital Camera has been reviewed by Willy Volk in Divester.com and writes "Among the many user-friendly features the set-up provides are:

The LCD is very easy to see underwater.
The whole unit was convenient to carry: A-plus for portability.
I could easily zoom and/or hit the macro button with my right thumb while holding the camera with my right hand.
The macro worked well, although it was possible to get too close.
The strobe arm was easily-adjustable.
The strobe had both a High and Low setting, which made shooting in various lighting conditions fairly easy.
It was possible to review and delete photos underwater.

Among the things I disliked were:

The knob that allows you to switch between video, stills, and playback is very delicate, hard to access, and I almost always turned it the wrong way.
The shutter lag was quite noticeable (forget shooting any nervous little jacknife fish).
Whenever the camera went into hibernate mode for longer than about 90 seconds, it reset the camera's flash to "off." Consequently, if you woke the camera in order to take a hurried photo, you had to tell it to power on theflash, otherwise you had no light.
The tray holding the strobe to the camera kept unscrewing from the camera, and I feared I'd lose some component.
The unit is negatively buoyant.


The very thin cable attaching the camera to the strobe made me nervous.
Generally, many of the images turned out much bluer than I'd hoped. Although super-basic color correction is possible in free applications like Picasa, this weekend I felt compelled to purchase Photoshop Elements 4.0 in order to get the most out of my photos. (More on Elements 4.0 later...)
Things I can't speak about:

I never tied to capture any video, although the camera is capable of it.
I never tried the manual white balance, because I was told there was none. I didn't discover until I returned home that, in fact, it DOES have white balance. I don't know if Linsey was unaware of this or considered white balance to be "need to know" information.
The housing will fit a wide-angle lens. I didn't ask to use it since I was pretty sure from reviewing the images in-camera that I wasn't ready to shoot wide-angle
."

The Sea & Sea DX-750G Digital Camera has alsco been reviewed by Heather Hammond over a period of 5 days and can be read at here>>

 

Pentax Optio W30 Waterproof Camera

Housing2Updated: December 5, 2007

The Optio W30 lets you record beautiful underwater still images and movie clips, up to a maximum of two hours and to a depth of three meters, without requiring a waterproof housing. Coupled with its reliable dustproof design,* you can take it almost anywhere — from beaches, rivers and oceans to snow fields, gardens and kitchens — without worrying about dirt, dust, sand, water or moisture. Its go-anywhere design makes it a perfect partner for active photographers.

Steves-digicams.com has an excellent review on the Pentax Optio W30 and writes"The new Pentax Optio 30 is an affordable compact camera that combines a 3.2 megapixel imager with a Pentax 3x optical zoom lens. When you first look at this camera, you might think the stylish body is metal, but with a touch or a tap you will find that it's really made from high-impact plastic. Even so it seems to be very well built and should hold up well under normal use. This is a simple to use camera that offers beginners and anyone a wide variety of fully- automatic record modes.
The Optio 30 is basically an automatic camera (meaning it has no shutter speed or aperture priority exposure modes), but it offers a multitude of recording options. You can set the focus area to Spot-AF or Infinity/Landscape AF. It has five white balance options to choose from. There's a full compliment of exposure metering options; matrix, center- weighted averaging and spot. You can create color, B&W or Sepia toned images and have a 3-step control over the sharpness, saturation and contrast.

I was happy to see the use of standard AA type batteries to power the Optio 30. Many of Pentax's other cameras use a proprietary lithium battery pack. This enables it to offer users a wide variety of power options. You can use alkaline or photo lithium one-use AA's, NiMH rechargeable AA cells, one-use CR-V3 lithium or RCR-V3 rechargeable lithium batteries. The battery life when using high-capacity NiMH cells or a RCR-V3 pack was very good even when using the color LCD all the time and frequently reviewing the pictures and making menu changes.

Overall the image quality in "Superior" mode is excellent. The lens produced sharp images throughout its range and the autofocus system works well in normal lighting conditions. Though it would be greatly enhanced by an addition of a focus assist lamp. I was very pleased with our outdoor test shots. They were sharp, well exposed, and when taking portraits the skin tones were very natural. Indoors the flash does a good job of illuminating small groups and the "Auto" white balance setting does very well. I was impressed with the Macro capabilities of this camera, I was able to focus on a dime (see our Sample Photos page) at about one inch from the lens.

The bottom line - the Optio 30 is a compact, very affordable ($199 at the time of this review) 3.2 megapixel camera that takes great pictures. This camera will make a great choice for anyone who is just getting into digital photography, or someone who wants a simple point-n-shoot camera. With its compact size it can easily fit into almost any size pants pocket or purse."

Sealife D600 Digital Camera

Sealife D600 waterproof cameraWith the Sealife DC600 6.1 mega-pixel digital camera you can take photographs as you explore the ocean world both above and below the water. This easy to use camera is good to depths of up to 200' ( 60 m ). Of course it is also ideal for taking worry-free pictures in the rain, at the beach, or on the ski slopes. The camera features a large 2.5" LCD screen. This allows easier viewing underwater and reviewing of images. When shooting underwater without flash the camera has two Sea Mode underwater white balance settings. One is for above 25' ( 7.62 m ) and one for below 25' ( 7.62 m ). With the Spy mode feature you could set the camera to automatically take photos every 3, 10, 30 seconds or 1, 5 minutes. By setting this up on a tripod and swimming away you could photograph very shy creatures. The camera housing allows access to power, shutter, zoom, LCDSealife DC 600 rear camera, menu, mode, 4 navigation buttons, OK and delete functions underwater. The sure fire flash connection system holds your fiber optic cable in the prefect position so the flash will fire every time. The camera is part of a system that will nurture your creativity and allow expansion of your underwater photography skills.

John Tackles wrote this about the DC600 " recently went on a dive in the Keys, and took the "Sealife DC600" on the trip. I am a novice diver and have taken underwater pictures on other dives with a 35mm camera. The "Sealife" was easier to use, and took better pictures. I would rate it at 4 stars, because there is always room for improvement, but it is a really nice piece of equipment. "He gave this camera 5 stars.

Hugo O wrote This camera was easy to use, yet produced great pictures as well. I liked that when the camera was shipped to my house everything was assembled, all I had to do was connect the cable for the flash between the camera and strobe. It was one of the best purchases Ive made!"

 

Canon Waterproof Case WP-DC3

housing 1

Fits: Powershot SD630, Digital Ixus 65

Features:

Reliable and easy to use, this case offers new shooting possibilities and it can help you realize the full potential of digital photography. Shooting great underwater pictures is simple. Your PowerShot camera has many features that are specially suited to the underwater environment. With the help of the WP-DC3 you can create brilliant underwater pictures at depth of up to 130 feet, even on your very first dive.

Simon Wilkes in amazon.co.uk stated: " I bought this case a couple of days ago and tested it yesterday. I used it while scuba diving, taking it to a depth of 22m in Dosthill quarry UK. The case is rated to 40m but Dosthill isn't that deep. We did 2 dives with it for a total time of around 100 minutes. I can happily report that there was not any trace of water inside the case. The case is made of polycarbonate with double glazed glass lenses and feels very sturdy. All the buttons on the IXUS 65 are available while it's in the case and although the buttons are small I had no problem operating them with diving gloves on. With the huge screen of the IXUS 65 still fully visible in the case, I had great fun taking both pictures and video, a regular Jaques Costeau. The case would also be great for keeping your camera dry while skiing but the case does increase the camera size and probably would only just fit in a ski jacket pocket.

One note of warning the case and camera together are slightly negatively buoyant, (They'll sink) so don't drop it over the side of the boat!" Awarded 5 out of 5.

 

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