what digital camera for diving purposes

[Quacks]

Hi guys (non-gender specific )

any recommendation for digital cameras to bring underwater for dives?

i've got a few suggestions already
A70 (for budget)
C5050Z (cuz i think it looks NICE)

any other for me to think about and why?
oh yar.. if going on night dive, probably cannot take anything right since camera's flash is puny small.

Thanks so much...

 

[kng]

Hi Quacks

Besides the oly and canons, the other brand you can consider is Sony - they have sony $300+ housings for their cybershot cameras - eg. P9.

The 5050 and A70 are often recommended cos they have good battery life (u/w usage w flash drains batteries v fast!!) using AA batteries. Quite an impt factor cos you want to avoid opening and closing the u/w housing in between dives cos a grain of sand or hair will cause flooding. These 2 digicams can last 2-3 dives on 1 set of batteries.

As for strobes, you need to get those that are specially designed for digicams because the strobe needs to ignore the preflash and only fire on the 2nd (real) flash. These cheap housings do not allow for TTL so the strobes are slave fired. Unfortunately strobes are expensive - think Lanxx may be able to shed more 'light' on this topic??

But even without a strobe, you shld be able to take decent macro shots at night of smallish creatures - eg. small lobster.

Happy diving and shooting!!

 

[Quacks]

thanks kng