Great housing with a mediocre camera

The housing for this camera is great. Feels solid, rubber coating makes it easy to handle. Slight negative buoyancy; can be tossed to a buddy underwater. Most underwater pics turned out well with...Read complete review

The housing for this camera is great. Feels solid, rubber coating makes it easy to handle. Slight negative buoyancy; can be tossed to a buddy underwater. Most underwater pics turned out well with built-in flash, even at 50 feet in a quarry with 15 feet of viz. Took it to Bonne Terre mine with 58º water temps and 100+ feet viz, pictures were awesome and true to color with built-in flash. Battery lasted for two full days of diving (5 dives) before it needed a recharge.

The camera itself leaves much to be desired. My biggest complaint is the image quality. For a supposed 5 MP camera, the resolution is truly lousy. It looks more like a 1 MP camera that digitally enlarges the resolution. In other words, a 5 MP picture looks great at 33% on your desktop, but when you expand it to 100%, all sorts of noise is evident, especially in dark areas. Pictures above water are the worst. I have a 2.3 MP camera that shoots pictures 10x better than this one. The one exception is macro mode: these shots are incredible looking. So who knows what's going on . . .

The video feature (with audio!) is one of my favorites. Rreally turns out great, and it records 640x480 at a full 30 frames per second, unlike many other cameras that shoot web-ready video at half the size and frame rate. With a nice video light or HID dive light, you could get some really awesome clips.

Bottom line: Don't expect award-winning shots with this camera, but it will be sufficient to document the underwater portion of your trips.