Snorkel Camera Guide
Disposable Underwater Film Cameras
The most commonly used and least expensive snorkel camera you can get is the disposable underwater film camera. These are available at just about any grocery store near the water. Kodak and Fuji are the biggest manufacturers making these.
These cameras have only one thing going for them, beside how compact they are. They are cheap. Normally you can get one for about $9 for 27 exposures. But their picture quality is very poor.
Every time I have gotten back my pictures from one of these I have been very disappointed, even downright upset. The colors are really bad and the pictures are not sharp. The pictures are also always very grainy. They are grainy because the film used in them is ISO 800. I don't know why they use such high ISO film (fast film). No matter the reasons, the grainy pictures are terrible.
An additional image problem common to these cameras is that though they may be somewhat sharp in the middle they are generally soft around the edges (fuzzy - not sharp).
Also keep in mind that you only get 27 exposures. That is not very many pictures. And then you have to pay to have them developed, which admittedly is pretty inexpensive. You can get them put on a digital CD for less than $10.
Here are a couple picture examples. These were taken at Molokini, a popular snorkeling boat destination off Maui. The water conditions here are some of the clearest in the world, a perfect place to test the quality of one of these cameras. These shots were taken with the Fuji version. And some examples of similar shots at the same place and time with my digital point and shoot (and not the best examples of that camera's ability - see others around the site).
The picture above is with the disposable camera. Click on it to see a bigger version so that you can really see how grainy it is.
The picture below was at the same time with my
point and shoot digital camera setup.
Below is the disposable camera again. And the picture after that is with my digital camera (and really not the best example of what it can do). Both of these pictures were shot down through a lot of water, maybe 20 feet.
Now keep in mind, these might not look very bad to you. But that is mostly because you are seeing them in a small format on a computer screen. Pictures always look their best on a backlit screen. And when you print them they look even worse.
The only reason I can think of using one of these cameras is if you are only going snorkeling once, and you don't care what your pictures look like. Or maybe you really like the mystery of those UFO, Lock Ness Monster, Big Foot type images. Really, that fish was beautiful, if you use your imagination you can almost tell. OK. Maybe they are not that bad, but they are pretty bad.
You can read a review of three different types of disposable snorkel cameras here. Some of the results they got are much better than I have experienced.
One of the interesting points they made is how the correct film processing will make a big difference in the quality of color in your photographs.
You can read more about Kodak's Sea Processing in this article.
And you can find a Kodak Sea Processor in the list here.
What is the next step better than a disposable camera? You can get much better results for only a little bit more money by using an inexpensive
resuable/reloadable underwater film camera
for your snorkel camera.
Share your experiences and pictures with disposable underwater film cameras
here.
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