In Reply to: Re: Re: Digital Camera for under water photography recommendations posted by Nayan on December 13, 2009 at 13:04:32:

There are 2 types of lens, fixed and mechanical zoom. Mechanical zooms use optics and the lens moves inwards and outwards.

Then there is digital zoom with a fixed lens. Digital zoom sucks, it is not a real zoom.
But that may not be such a bad thing depending on what you want to shoot.

Like one poster mentioned, Olympus makes some cool fixed lens digicams that are waterproof to 30 or so feet. What that does for you is when you put it in an inexpensive housing, if it starts to flood, but not completely, you will probably be able to surface in time and not have a ruined camera. The key may be not waiting till the housing floods completely if you are below 30 feet. You don't want the pressure in the housing to get above 1 atmosphere.

Canon makes some nice pocket digicams that have an underwater setting that adds red to the mix, which is helpful unless you are a crazed Photoshop fanatic.

I prefer buying used cameras off E-Bay. I get $300 cameras for $50 that work perfect. If I flood it out out an assignment, I don't contemplate ritual Hari-Kari or self immolation.

Get as close to your subject as possible unless you want to take blue-green pix, and always use force flash.

Once you get a few good ones, be careful, underwater imaging is addictive! You will be pining away for a $50,000 Hasseblad 50 megapixel digital with dual strobes and a new Belgium made housing.