Comments about Sea and Sea Sea & Sea DX-860G Digital Camera and Housing:

I purchased this Camera & Housing combo to replace a lost Pentax Optio S5i, thinking as they are designed from start by the manufacturer as a diving set, the results would be fine. The housing is well designed, easy to use and ALL controls well marked and giving access to all camera functions, something that not always happens. The main shortcomings of this camera are that the shutter lag is too long, nearing a second if you use flash (mandatory to fire an external strobe), making it seless for any moving subject (fish?); then the screen goes black at the very moment you press the shutter and doesn't come back until the photo is done, negating any framing of subject. The Autofocus also freezes when the shutter is half-pressed and the camera lacks a focus-track function (very basic P&S). Other problems come from the narrow angle of view provided by the 35mm equivalent lens (wide setting) and the flat port. This results in a 50mm equivalent angle of view. Not very good underwater. Then, the housing was designed with aproprietary bayonet for supplementary wide-angles, negating the use of older lenses by the manufacturer (a warning I would have appreciated from LeisurePro, since I own some). The camera comes with a supplementary close-up lens that does the job, but other cameras have a better macro setting that make the use of external lenses unnecessary.

In all, it's a decent rig for the price, albeit mediocre. Don't expect to put Stephen Frink or Norbert Wu out of business with this one. :-)

Comments about Sea and Sea Sea & Sea DX-860G Digital Camera and Housing:

I consider myself an accomplished photographer with more than 40 years experience with all kinds of equipment. My previous UW cameras include the Sea&Sea Motormarine II (not recommended), the Nikonos V (somewhat recommended) and a housed film Nikon AF SLR (very much recommended). However, some years ago I purchased a small Pentax Optio S5i Point & Shoot and then a housing for it. It was an epiphany! The camera took very good pictures with absolute ease, time after time; even lifesize macros, and it was a joy to handle underwater. Unfortunately a couple of months ago I dropped it and it started to fail until it gave up the ghost.

Unable to replace it, as it has been long discontinued, I opted for the Sea & Sea DX-860G believing it would be an improvement over my previous rig. Oh disappointment! The shutter lag when using flash is sooooo long that the camera is only good for static subjects; the close focus feature requires the use of an irritating supplementary diopter that -when not attached to the housing- tends to dangle in front of the lend port and ruin your pictures. The housing design makes difficult to obscure the built in flash when using an external strobe, thus causing more backscatter than necessary. In sum, if you want a Point & Shoot UW rig, get an upper echelon Canon or Nikon P&S model that offers a decent housing as an accessory(many outsource from Sea & Sea) and save you grief. Pay special attention to a short shutter lag and a wide aperture at the long side of the zoom. A lens with an aperture of f/2.8~3.5 is as good as they come in this kind of cameras. Avoid anything under 4.0 at the long setting.