It's been a while since I posted this -unfortunately. I moved on to buy a PANASONIC LUMIX DMC GF3K mirrorless SLR with the VARIO G ASPH 14-42mm lense (equivalent to ~30-85mm for the old 36mm cameras), one of those 4/3s with changeable lenses. The reasons mainly being that I like the photo quality and flexibility you get with the interchangeable lenses, yet the distinctly smaller size reduces the bulk of stuff you have to lug around when travelling. AND there is a budget underwater camera housing available for this camera made by MEIKON. Unfortunately the first one of these housings I bought was damaged during shipping, and consequently I didn't have a camera for underwater during a trip to the Philippines. But just recently I had a chance for some diving on coral reefs in the Red Sea so could give it a test. Here we go:
On first looks the housing is solid and strong. Everything fits together snug and there are no loose ends. I first took it down empty to about 5m snorkeling to see if it hold together - all working fine.
Putting the camera in there is a little fiddling with the on/off lever as it doesn't always slide right over the switch on the camera, but it's manageable. The other slight difficulty is with the lever to push the built in flash shut again. You have to really pus all the way down for the flash to shut. Still I can fix that, probably with a piece of hard latex foam glued to the lever. With the camera in the housing the set up is slightly positively buoyant.
I chose the PANASONIC LUMIX DMC GF3 over the GF2 for the convenience of a small built in flash, which comes in handy when doing close up shots under water. As I said, I am no big fan of big equipment. I like it compact. For further technical details please check on one of the many websites that discuss this camera.
Unfortunately I only had limited time to set the camera up properly. It does have the option to personalize settings which you can then recall when you need them. I figured that would be useful for e.g. the specialized settings needed for underwater photography. There is quite elaborate manual adjustment for white balance which I will still have to wrap my head around - maybe someone here has already done that?
What I liked about it on the first dives.
switch it on and off in barely a second. There is no long booting period, it's just there at the flick of the switch. Very handy and saving battery life.
I ran it in "shade" mode for the white balance. Not sure if that is optimal yet, but photos came out well at 12MP resolution.
The little flash with a diffuser works fine for close up.
I saved files in RAW (Panasonic RW2) format and jpeg. Colours come out very strong, almost a bit artificial looking. I have worked on some of the jpeg photos on the flight back but have not looked at the RAW files - need to install the Panasonic image software first as RAW is no industry standard and my Corel Photo won't open them. I will upload photos to this site once I have colour corrected them - there is already one in the gallery which I corrected from the jpeg with the Corel auto adjust. It takes quite some time to upload though.
What I didn't like
The 14-42mm lens is a bit awkward. for underwater I now wish I had taken the 14mm lens. unfortunately the housing is not adaptable.
not all the functions are accessible when the camera is in the housing and some of the options I seemed to not be able to get to.
the screen is a bit hard to see (might need to get some magnification lenses for my mask)
I did a few movie shots and the auto-focus seems to be a bit wobbly, going back and forth. Don't know if this is a common problem.
