Sea&Sea DX8000G
⊕ I'm quite happy with how my three year old Sea&Sea DX8000G (Ricoh Caplio GX8) performed on this trip, taking plenty of pretty snappy shots. Of course, conditions were rather favorable for natural light underwater photography: mostly sunny weather, shallow water, relatively good visibility and plenty of fascinating supermodels. Actually, my subjects cooperated so well, i.e. got so close, my 17mm equivalent WAL often could not frame them.
⊗ If it wasn't for its sub-standard, not to say useless, 320x240 pixel video-clip resolution, I would have no real need to look out for another multi-purpose compact camera.
⊕ Also worth mentioning, is that this camera uses two available-everywhere AA batteries. In my case that means two Ansmann 1.2V 2100mAh max-e NiMH rechargeable batteries. They provided enough power for my camera to be almost always on, even on 2h long dives! Remarkably better than my supposedly more powerful, but unreliable, Sanyo 2500mAh NiMH batteries, which suffer from self-draining, even though not in use.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS5
⊗ I was surprised to see this otherwise nice little camera suffered from shutter-lag, a problem I had not anticipated in a camera this new (Feb.2008), making it useless for action photography.
⊕ Luckily I'd taken it along for its video mode (848x480 pixel @ 30fps) and here it performed as hoped for, that is, not too bad. Except for a rather distracting dust spot in the middle of the sensor/lens, that I was not able to get rid of. Note though that Panasonic did pick-up, fix and return the camera free of charge (it being still within warranty) after we mentioned this annoying issue.
Remarks
• I basically shot in full-automatic mode with both cameras, without use of any strobes or underwater lights.
• I used Sandisk Ultra & Extreme SD(HC) memory cards of various capacities (512KB-8GB) and so far have been satisfied with them.
