Snorkel Camera Guide
Digital Point & Shoot Cameras with External Underwater Housings
The next step in quality in snorkel camera options is to get a point and shoot digital camera with an external underwater housing made specifically for it. I think for a snorkeler this is the best way to go. It is not the least expensive, and it will not give you the highest quality pictures, but it is a perfect balance of size, cost, and picture quality for a snorkeler's needs.
If you have not yet read the page about what camera I picked, you can
here.
When I was first deciding on what camera to get I thought that maintaining the O-rings in the housing would be a pain. And I was leaning towards getting a camera like the Olympus Stylus 770 or the Pentax Optio W30, because I thought that one piece of equipment was better than two pieces of equipment. I like keeping things simple. But after using my camera and it's underwater housing for awhile now, I find it to be so simple and straight forward that I would never consider buying a camera now that had a built-in housing.
There are so many compact point and shoot digital cameras made that also have available their own dedicated underwater housing that it would be impossible to list them all and keep up with all the new ones.
The Digifish site has a useful feature that tells you if a camera has an underwater housing made for it. But use it as a rough guide, because it is missing a lot of them.
There are brands though that do consistently appear to be better performers underwater.
Fuji is very popular and does a good job with their cameras and their housings.
Fuji Snorkel Cameras
Digifish Fuji Underwater Housing List
Canon also makes great cameras that perform well underwater and they make good housings. They have tons of them.
Canon Snorkel Cameras
Digifish Canon Underwater Housing List
Olympus also makes lots of underwater housings for their cameras.
Olympus Snorkel Cameras
Digifish Olympus Underwater Housing List
Nikon makes some great point & shoot cameras, but they do not seem to be making many underwater housings. You mostly have to get them from a third party.
Digifish Nikon Underwater Housing List
Casio manufacturers a good number of their own housings.
Digifish Canon Underwater Housing List
Besides the camera manufacturers themselves, there are a couple good third party makers of underwater housings. For example Fantasea makes many housings for Nikon Coolpix cameras that are not available from Nikon or anywhere else. And their prices appear very reasonable.
Ikelite is another housing maker. But their products always seem to be much more expensive than the housing made by the camera manufacturers themselves. And they are bulky. But Ikelite has been around a long time and is loved by divers.
My advice would be to stick with Fuji & Canon & Olympus. In the forums and reviews I have seen around the net, these three companies stand out as the most popular underwater point and shoot cameras. Pick out the features in the camera you desire, and see if it has an underwater housing available.
One camera that technically fits into this category of point and shoot with an external housing, but really is not like anything I have mentioned above, is the Digital Hero3 wrist camera, by GoPro. At a retail price at just $140 it is an enticing camera for a snorkeler to consider.
Have you tried the Digital Hero3 camera? Contribute your underwater camera experience in the snorkeling camera database.
Share your underwater camera setup here.
Well that is it for my thoughts on snorkel camera equipment for now. When I come across new cameras of interest I will post them to my Blog/RSS feed and in my newsletter.
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