Best camera for high impact activities.

In short: Use high mAh rechargeable battery, work-around some minor flaws, and you will love it. Highly recommended for people who are into doing things and want a solid camera to capture their ...Read complete review

In short: Use high mAh rechargeable battery, work-around some minor flaws, and you will love it. Highly recommended for people who are into doing things and want a solid camera to capture their best moments and don't have to worry about breaking it. NOT recommended for professional or people who take pictures every step of the way or do macro-photo (anything closer than 2ft will be blurry).These are my experiences:- Unreliable battery indicator: 2/3 bars could mean low battery, next second or next shot will become 1 bar, red-zero, then shuts down. And vice versa, 1 bar sometime could last for long, turn off and back on, it could become 3 bars. I also notice, it usually does it when the battery is more than half way done, not when they are full. So my solution: always fully charge the battery before going out and don't worry about the battery indicator.- I used to use regular AAA Energizer, it burned battery like no tomorrow, 60-80 pix + couple of flash and it was done. But since I started using rechargeable, it's been doing a really good job. I bought the Lemar 1000mAh rechargeable from [...] $10 for 2 pairs, and did a test on a fully charged pair, result: in 2 weeks, I got approximately 40min of recording, 60 pictures with flash, and over 80 without flash before the battery died completely. Not the best, but very decent. For me, that means a total of 4-5 dives, 60min each, on a single charged set of batteries.- If it encounters impact (like hitting its bottom hard onto your palm), especially when I enter a rocky beach and it hits a rock, the SD card will come loose off the slot and become "invisible" to the camera. The camera will then use the internal memory, which is very limited (plus there's no USB connector to retrieve the content on the internal memory so it's very much useless). I work around this by placing a thin piece of rubber on the SD card before closing the lid. Never got this problem again since. (careful on making the size of the rubber to avoid gap upon closing lid, causing leaking).- The pictures quality is awesome. Just don't, please don't, judge the picture quality by looking at its small screen. Download them onto your computer and then make your judgement. The screen is not big, but not too small either. They did a good job on making it that size, consider how tough it is, virtually unbreakable. Anything bigger would just be easier to break. Video quality is also great. Just one little disappointment: you can start recording with any zoom level, but you can't change it during the recording. Audio is also clear, but I haven't got into it much to make judgement.- The instant focus works amazing. I never have to wait for any auto-focus. However, the biggest disappointment is that it lacks the image-stabilizing feature.- It's solid tough, virtually unbreakable. I do mainly shore dives in Parlos Verdes Estates, CA, which is very rocky. 2 dives a week and this camera always with me. After 6 months, it still looks fairly new. Some minor scratches on the rubber body but nothing big or deep or anything that I have to worry about damage. I got a few scratches on the screen which is invisible under water, but a little annoying to look at when using it on land. So I put a screen cover on it (using the invisible shield for cell phone bought on [...]). And I never have to worry about scratching the screen or seeing the existing scratches again.- It's simple to use. Big buttons makes it especially easier when using cold-water dive gloves (I'm using 5mm Pinnacle). Setting are very simple. 1-2 and 3 ready to shoot. One thing that should have been mentioned in the manual is that: the underwater mode is only for blue water (tropical diving), not for SoCal. Dive mode makes the picture very red. I always use it on land mode for SoCal diving. Works very nice. - It's been with me on land, on surface, and as deep as 100 ft, night and day. Always work like a champ. Let me know if you want to check out some sample pictures and video, I will post it.- I do a lot of rocky shore dives. And I love this camera so far. When the winter comes, I do a lot of snowboarding on rails and boxes, and I can imagine this camera following me on the mountain already. I can toss it to my friend to take picture of me anytime without having to worry about him being able to catch it or not lol.In summary: if you are like me, doing a lot of high impact activities, you will love this camera.