Nikon, Oly, or Canon Which P&Shoot?

[DesertEagle]

I'm with Alcina on the A95. I really wonder how many people using a p/s shoot RAW anyway. AA batteries, CF cards, compact...

The Olympus C-5060 is a great camera, but it's going to cost a lot more money. The biggest limitation is that the 28mm lens is going to have vignetting problems if you try to use a 67mm wide angle adapter. You can get around that by using a dome port in front of Olympus' land wide angle lens. That's a fine solution for wide angle but you won't be able to do macro on the same dive. If you're spending that kind of money, the S70 is a highly worthy camera. Inon now has a wide angle lens to fit the S70's smaller 28mm lens.

 

[TostitoBandito]

If you intend to use it UW, I would suggest you reconsider getting a P&S. You really need to be able to go manual for UW. As a suggestion look at the Oly C-765. It has a very good macro mode (very important UW for me), a 10x optical zoom (IMO very important on land and the only thing I dislike about my C5050's 3x) and you can get the PT-022 housing for it. I just priced them at B&H - Camera $335 and housing $230 or about $600 by the time you add a couple of cards and batteries. If you get into UW photography, you will be glad you spent the extra and got a camera with macro and manual modes. As it happens a dive buddy was wanting my opinion on this camera the other day so I had the figures close at hand. You can also use an external UW strobe with this camera, something you may well want to add later.

I have the C-765 as well and just got back from Coz with it. Got tons of great pictures. The zoom is very useful and I got lots of great images even from relatively far away from the subject, including a bunch using the full 10x. Great camera if you don't want to fork over the cash for an Oly C-5060/7070/8080. The Olympus white balance feature is also fantastic, though I'm sure other makes probably have similar things.

-Eric

 

[jakubson]

Thanks to everyone's responses I have narrowed my choice down to the OLY C770 (or the latest and greatest: the C-775) or the Canon A95.

What do you think about these two and which would you pick?

Thanks............. !!!!!

I have a spreadsheet that shows what is important to me (may or may not be important to you) comparing these two cameras. Send me a PM with your email address, and I'll send it to you.

FWIW, My take - Canon is cheaper, lighter, smaller, smaller housing, takes cheaper CF cards, takes AA batteries
Oly has better zoom, more powerful white balance, flash has slave mode(?)

For a beginning camera, that will also be my land camera for trips, I would still go with the canon. I bought a second digital for land, because my Oly 5050 was just too darn big for a front pocket hiking camera.

 

[Mike Veitch]

Just to throw you a curve...

Like Alcina, i see lots of people every week with different cameras, skills etc

I also get to download a lot of these photos for people and burn them onto cds so see what they shot.

What seems to be the best results that i see, and most importantly seems to have the fastest shutter lag, are Sony Cybershots.

Whatever you choose, make sure you get a red filter for the housing that will introduce colour into your photos, you will get a lot better photos that way because the internal flash is so limiting for Wide shots.

Mike

 

[alcina]

That's good to hear, Mike. Our experiences are polar opposites. By far the lowest quality I've seen is from the Sony's!! lol

That doesn't help much now, does it!

 

[Jay_SMART_Diver]

Got an Olympus Camedia C-5000, 5.0 megapixle, for $200, and the Olympus PT-019 housing for $150, adding a Sea-life slave strobe/arm/tray for $150 very soon, have been taking great pictures, love the size weight and features.