Nikon coolpix l30 question

[PaulaA]

Hello!
I have a Nikon Coolpix L30 (Ikelite housing) which I used for the first time recently. It seems there must be a setting on it that won't let it snap under certain conditions. It seemed when I tried to do close-up pictures it just would not snap, although it seemed to focus. Anybody know what might cause this and what setting I can change? Right now I am just using auto.
Thanks!

 

[KeithG]

Are you sure it focused? This camera is a "happy snap" camera and is not really designed for "closeup" (or macro) pictures.

Some cameras refuse to take an unfocused picture. Others are totally happy. I briefly had a Nikon Coolpix 5100 and IIRC it refused to capture an image if it could not focus. Stupid camera. It was an autofocus only camera. My current Ricoh and Canon cameras happily take fuzzy pics. I get lots of them. Sometimes too many?

You should be able to easily test my failure-to-focus conjecture. Try to take a picture of something extremely close to the camera. Like 2in away. What about 12in away? Then 36in away. Can you reproduce your strange behaviour?

A quick google reveals:
[W]: Approx. 1 ft. 8 in. (50 cm.) to infinity
[T]: Approx. 2 ft. 8 in. (80 cm.) to infinity
Macro close-up mode: Approx. 4 in. (10 cm.) to infinity

So if you do nothing but turn the camera on with factory defaults, it can not focus on anything closer than 20in (above water, I am not sure how to adjust for below water behaviour). If you want to take a closer picture, then you need to flip it into macro mode (universal icon seems to be a flower these days) but it still will not focus on anything closer than 4 inches.

Try some dry land experiments and let us know how it goes.