Underwater digital cameras

Hi guys, am planning a W. Caribbean cruise soon, an am lookin at goin to the stingray city sandbar in the Cayman islands, an was thinkin about gettin a underwater camera, an since there's quite a few of you here with the knowledge of cameras, thought I'd run the question here first. 1. Don't got alot of money to spend. 2 How well do the pictures look after they been developed. Found on line at Best Buy a Nikon coolpix in 13.2 megapixel camera, an also at Walmart, a Kodak pixpro FZ53, 16 mp 5 x optical zoom. Any suggestions?

Virginia

I had an underwater camera in the price range you are talking about, and a really expensive one as well. I could only get halfway decent shots of things that were still no matter which camera I had. I’m a fairly good photographer too. My shots of fish were always a bit fuzzy (enough that you could see it on a 4x6 photo).

What I had to do, is get a GoPro, put it on video, and take stills from that video later as my picture. GoPro is the software that I’ve seen that does this the best. Looking on Amazon, I found one for $90- a bit higher than the others you mentioned, but in my experience wrestling with the camera underwater is not fun, and the ease of doing a GoPro underwater makes it so worth it.

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Hi, thanks!!

I had an underwater camera in the price range you are talking about, and a really expensive one as well. I could only get halfway decent shots of things that were still no matter which camera I had. I’m a fairly good photographer too. My shots of fish were always a bit fuzzy (enough that you could see it on a 4x6 photo).

 

What I had to do, is get a GoPro, put it on video, and take stills from that video later as my picture. GoPro is the software that I’ve seen that does this the best. Looking on Amazon, I found one for $90- a bit higher than the others you mentioned, but in my experience wrestling with the camera underwater is not fun, and the ease of doing a GoPro underwater makes it so worth it.

 

 

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Ya know, celoplyr, went to Walmart today an asked about their underwater cameras, the salesman told me to look online.:rolleyes:

Get yourself a Olympia TG5 underwater camera. The reviews are excellent. In the $300-$400 range.

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Olympus TG5 best, Nikon Coolpix next, Fuji ok for budget camera

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Unless you spend the money to get a high quality underwater camera, your pictures will turn out fuzzy (at best) or non-existent (at worst). As celoplyr mentioned, a GoPro would be a much better option - if you have the time, patience, and know how to make the stills from the video.

Looking to replace our old Nikon Coolpix AW100 with the new Panasonic Lumix FT7 which has a viewfinder, a first for this class of camera.

Have not seen any reviews or comments from our CC members.

I love my go pro, (bought the first one when they were first released)

The Olympus mentioned above is worth a look.

daughter has a Canon D30 that seems OK.

my advice is avoid using flash underwater with a basic camera, far too much particulate matter to bounce and diffuse light.

I've had a Nikon Coolpix AW100 for a few years now and for the price I got it for and the years it already has under it's belt I was quite ok with it. Recently I got myself an Olympus TG-4 and have been very happy with it, especially for the camera's ability to capture pics in RAW format son I can later play a but with them using Adobe Lightroom. Just this past week I returned from a cruise and took my new GoPro-clone camera snorkeling for the first time. It's an Apeman 4K camera and I still have not played with editing the videos or trying to take still from them. We'll see how that goes.

These are a few shots using the AW100. They have seen some post-processing using Lightroom but if you want nice quality pics underwater, post processing is almost a necessity.

I don't have access right now to my TG-4 pics but if you're looking for a budget option, Nikon's AW-series and Olympus TG-# (single number) series are very good if you get them at good prices. I'd recommend you stay within the Nikon-Olympus-Fujifilm cameras since they're usually the best bang-for-the-buck.

I believe we are about to go with Nikon coolpix. For the past 7 years we’ve used a Canon. Definitely stay clear of the really inexpensive cameras. We never got good pics from our super cheap one. 

I picked up an Olympus TG-4 a couple of years ago and I've been fairly happy with it on the couple of snorkeling outings. (One of them Stingray City.)  Like someone else mentioned, post-processing helps a lot to get good results.