which digital camera should I buy for underwater photography?
There are three general options for underwater photography: • Point & Shoot with shallow depth housings (up to 30 feet) • Point & Shoot with deeper depth housings (up to 150 feet) • D-SLR with diving housings The housings range incredibly in price. Canon makes underwater housings for most of their point and shoot cameras for around $200. Housings for D-SLRs tend to be over $1000. I’ve used a Canon S500 (5 megapixel) camera and the canon underwater housing for two years now and I’ve been happy with the results. The whole setup (housing and camera) only cost me about $500 when they were new. I would recommend a Canon point & shoot (the SD700IS looks nice, with image stabilization) and the matching housing. If you go to the Canon website (www.canon.com), you can see all their cameras and matching housings. If you are interested in scuba and not just snorkeling, you should also consider buying an external underwater flash (about another $20
There is a whole dive website devoted to tips and reviews of underwater pictures with a digital camera (http://www.wetpixel.com/). Overall, the brand they seem to favor is Canon, and specific cameras would depend on how much you wanted to spend. They have a lot of advice on different price points, and what makes those cameras better/worse specifically (if you had a particular subject matter in mind). Hope that helps! Sources: http://www.wetpixel.
