Pretty pictures
In case you haven’t guessed from scanning through this Blog, I enjoy taking photos. Most of the pics that are posted here were shot on a Canon EOS 30D Digital SLR. When we don’t feel like dragging that heavy, expensive camera around, or don’t want to risk dropping it in the water, we resort to a small point-and-shoot camera. Yesterday we decided to upgrade that smaller unit, and although we try to be careful with stuff, we felt that getting one of the newer waterproof, shock-proof, FREEZE-PROOF* models might be a good idea. The Olympus Stylus Tough-8000 12 MP Digital Camera is what we chose, and although we really haven’t had the chance to fully test it out I think it should work great!
*With the exception of a few ski/snowboard vacations, we really hope to NOT test out the Freeze-Proof feature of our new camera!
Nice!
The camera didn’t do too badly in DPReview’s underwater camera test either:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q209waterproofgroup/
Make sure that you have plenty of storage cards and buy a spare battery – and charge both batteries up while you’re on shore power so that you have lots of juice for the camera when you’re sailing and need to conserve your on-board power supply.
Also carry some CDs/DVDs on which to back up your images, and if you can swing it, an external hard-drive for image storage. That way, if you have to dump images off your computer to make space, you’ll have at least another 2 copies of them on CD/DVD and hard-drive. 1TB hard-drives are quite cheap nowadays.
You know, that link you just posted is making me wish that I bought the Canon D10 instead of the Olympus. I was looking at both of them and the salesperson told me to get the Olympus. That review and every other one I have subsequently found favors the D10. Perhaps she got a higher commission on the 8000? I may just exchange it tomorrow. Thanks for the tip.
We have both the 8000 and the previous model the 1030SW. They have been pretty good overall, the small size makes it easy to take them anywhere, and the fact that they are waterproof let’s you take some pictures using the water in creative ways. We kind of laughed at the “Beauty” feature which essentially takes a lower resolution image to “soften” the image.
Here is one critical tip: after a snorkeling session in salt water, immerse the camera in a fresh water bath for 10 minutes.
Fair Winds,
Mike
Thanks for the tip on the fresh-water bath, Mike. That makes a lot of sense!