Which Camera (for canyoning etc)?

[davemw]

Having wasted $25 on a disposable (and walking away from Claustral without any decent action shots) I'm on the hunt for a solid camera to take along next time.

Am thinking I'll need a waterproof / shockproof such as http://www.olympus.com.au/component/option,com_product/id,297/task,detail/Itemid,69/

But am worried about the image quality.

What do you use?

Dave

[Aegist]

Well, all of my videos and all of the images in the gallery here are taken with the older version of the camera you have there. I use the Olympus 790 SW. It is *only* 7.1 megapixel. The more modern one you have there is 10.1, not that megapixels are everything.

I have seen my current camera being sold for $350 at a bing lee store, you can probably get it cheaper new on Ebay or something like that.

I guess I should actually say, that I do recommend the Olympus. I have troden on mine, scratched it across every surface in a canyon, dropped it in the WOllangambe (sunk to 5m down for half an hour before I found it again, and everything else - and it continues to work fine. My only complaint is that it has very limited control (you have to pick picture modes, and you can't set the shutter speed manually, or the F-Stop manually. The best photos I take are done by setting it to Night Mode (making take a longer exposure) and then putting it on a tripod.

But anyway, browse the galleries here (images have been reduced in size for uploading) to see the quality of pictures it takes, and look through my videos to see the quality of video it takes (after You-tube-ification)
http://www.youtube.com/user/aegist

Shane

[davemw]

Thanks for the feedback, think I'll go with it

Am going for this one due to the better zoom (3.6 vs 3.0), 10.1mp is wayyy overkill.

Just out of interest was the Claustral vid on youtube taken with one of these?

[Aegist]

Yep. All of the canyoning videos were taken with that camera.

The only problems I have with the video on my camera (which may not apply to the newer version) is that it occasionally 'clicks' quite loudly in the audio track. It isn't terrible, and I think mostly a problem brought about by being in a loud chaotic environment. Either that, or it is actually just a consequence of getting water drops on the microphone input (certainly a cause, but I'm not sure if it is the only cause).

And of course, the video quality is only 640x480, so it isn't great - but if y ou wanted great video quality, you wouldn't be buying a photo camera. For being part of a photo camera, the video quality is awesome IMO.

[Timmy Hills]

[Aegist]

LOL Timmy, that is my number one complaint too!

it only happens when you put it in "Shaky Hand mode" from another mode. Nightshot Scene mode always remembers the previous setting, and I think standard Auto mode does too, but everytime you flick it over to shaky hand mode (my most common mode) it puts the flash back to 'auto' rather than 'off', so you have to turn it off *again*.

The newer one may fix this problem though.