Digital camera

[Curlytail]

We 're getting ready for our trip, and we're thinking about buying a digital camera. I have no experience with this, any suggestions?

[DrRalph]

In July we bought a Pentax Optio 10 (http://www.pentaximaging.com/products/product_details/digital_camera--Optio_W10/reqID--7399568/subsection--optio). The camera is about the size of a deck of cards, shoots 6 megapixel, gets about 330 images on a 1 GB card, and is waterproof to 5' with no extra case. That means you can snorkel with it and shoot underwater. If you're at the beach or on the boat and it gets wet, just wipe it off. It takes great pictures, has many other useful pictures, and with the card and an extra battery, costs less than $300.

[CrossPatch]

Hi,

We bought a couple digital camera (video and still) this past yr. I just went to the consumer reports site and they have new ratings and recommendations. www.consumerreports.com (http://www.consumerreports.com) To view some ratings you need to be a member while other data you can access without paying for a membership. They have catagories for the cameras that boil down to, value, more manual settings, long range zoom, most like a traditional camera etc. Our family decided our preference was for lots of memory capabilities in the camera and very long optical (not digital) zoom. You know those snapshots you end up telling your friends, 'well imagine if you will in this picture way out there you can see a dolphin...it just didn't show up so well in this photo,' we were trying to avoid that. :rolleyes:

I agree w/ Dr Ralph that anything that is more durable would be a great idea as we now have two fancy cameras but with their price tags we're inclined to be fairly protective of them and end up buying the disposable/recyclable cardboard cameras in case we're in a situation where it's too wet, wild, sandy or kids might drop the camera.

Somewhat of a catch 22 depending what your needs are.

FYI we purchased the following. Fuji FinePix 9 Megapixel SLR for stills and a Panasonic SDR-S100 for video and it can do stills too but is spendy. The Panasonic we researched and chose, the Fuji was our only option when choosing from a prize list at work. The Panasonic has 25x optical zoom for both video and still, however the stills are only 3 megapixels.

Best,

Paul

[Charlotte Couple]

I absolutely love my Sony DSC-H1. It has a 12X optical zoom and great quality. It is not for underwater use, though.

[ericinsc]

I also bought an Optio 10 for my first trip to Elbow in June...and it leaked the first time I took it under water (totally ruined the camera)... Pentax replaced it, but I had no camera for the last 4 days of my FIRST trip.I would like to know other's underwater experience with this camera to know if I should take it under again... just don't trust it now... That being said, it is still a great beach camera, because being water-proofed also makes it sand and dust proof.

[CrossPatch]

For safety sake for our good equip and to give eveyone a chance to grab one out of a basket next to the sink on the boat if they don't want to go digital we keep a Sam's Club or Costco type warehouse store multipack of 3 or 5 each of the "disposable" cameras. A pack of the underwater ones and a pack of regular cameras. This is partially a concession to having smaller kids but actually out digi cameras are more at risk w/ the boys being 'I can do it' teenagers The u/w disposables usually hold up to snorkeling depths only.

Paul