We got a new camera for our trip to Hawaii at the beginning of August. We didn’t go out looking to buy a new camera. Here’s what happened:
We really wanted to take pictures underwater. We had two digital cameras, a Canon Powershot G6 (7.1 Megapixels, pretty expensive and we love it) and a Nikon Coolpix 2100 (2 Megapixels, cheap and we don’t particularly like it).
So, we looked into getting an underwater case for one of the two cameras. We’d rather use the Canon, but had killed its predecessor on Maui using an underwater casing. We found a casing for the Kodak, but were reluctant to spend $150 on a casing for a camera that we really didn’t like using and didn’t have much resolution.
I started to look at underwater digital cameras. At first, I thought we could find a cheap one like the disposable underwater film cameras. Nope, but I found this camera: Pentax Optio W10.
It was $260 from Amazon when we bought it (take a look in our new Amazon Store: Pentax Optio W10). It’s waterproof (though they’ll only say it’s good for a depth of 1.5 meters) and dustproof, has 6 megapixels resolution and a large LCD. The reviews looked good, so we went for it.
And we’re happy we did. The camera isn’t perfect, but for the price and for taking pictures and movies underwater, it was fantastic.
Plusses
The camera operated as advertised underwater. The only opening is a single cover for the battery and memory card. It’s easy to open and easy to close. The little toggle has orange behind it so you know when it’s closed correctly.
The LCD is large, it can get washed out in bright light, but I managed to use it underwater. The size of the camera is just about perfect, small enough to fit in a pocket but not one of the credit card sized cameras that are awkward to hold. And it’s pretty tough, it survived a 6 foot fall off the porch of our vacation rental.
It has a dozen plus modes, which were fun to play with, though it took me a few tries to get the settings for the focus and exposure like I wanted them (focusing at the center of the LCD, then keeping the focus when I recompose the shot).
The pictures looked good to me and it takes nice, high quality movies. Take a look:
Minuses
The focus was a bit finicky compared to our Canon. There were times when I couldn’t get the Pentax to focus, even on distant objects, when the Canon would focus fine. Low light focussing was also difficult.
Some people complained about the wimpy chord on the camera, especially since you’re taking it into the water. We solved that problem by attaching a boogie board leash that we could Velcro around our wrist when we used it in the water. Worked just fine. It was also easy to tuck into our wet suit.
Probably the worst flaw is the sound when taking movies. This is something I read about in some of the posts about the camera. And now I know what they are talking about. There’s a loud clicking on the sound track of the movie, much louder than anything else that’s recorded. It makes the sound function unusable. But, I know what’s causing it and how to stop it: the sound is the lens auto-focusing. To prevent it: set the focus to pan focus (which is a 4 click process, not too bad). Wish I’d researched that while I was in Hawaii and used the fix.
You can check out the Pentax Optio W10 camera (and other cameras) in the Cornercode Amazon Store.
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