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(More customer reviews)I picked this camera up about a month ago at samys.com (much better price than Amazon) and took it on a week-long trip to the Bahamas. Since I forgot to bring a decent memory card, I was limited to a 256 mb card that I had in the camera, so I took all of my pix at 4mp under the medium quality setting. I found the image quality to be perfectly acceptable and got about 300 pictures and a few very short videos on the card.
Many other people have left great reviews of the camera, so I'll concentrate on the waterproof aspects. I had the camera in the water for an hour or more on each snorkel, typically twice a day, and never had any problems with water getting inside. This is about twice the recommended length of 30 minutes in the water. I don't dive, so never had the camera below 5 feet. I attached a floating key ring (available at any marine store for a couple of dollars) to the strap so that I wouldn't have to worry about letting the camera go and having it sink to the bottom. The camera is light enough that the key ring would actually keep it at the surface--I'd expected that it would simply slow it down on the trip to the bottom. This was a nice bonus, since I could just leave the camera floating while I dove to the bottom to get shells. I'd recommend a closed-cell foam float instead of the hollow plastic kind, as the plastic will eventually fill up with water and lose buoyancy.
In the water, I found the camera quite easy to use, although the buttons could have been a little bigger. The camera seemed to struggle to focus in areas where I was shooting fish from a distance or fish that blended in with the water (like a barracuda), but the pictures came out pretty well at the end. Snorkelers will note that it takes some practice to get a picture of a fish as the camera moves around with the smallest waves and there is just enough shutter delay to make things difficult. I found that by prefocusing (press shutter halfway and hold, with a green box indicating the focused area) and then waiting for the right moment, I got much better results. I couldn't tell a difference in photo quality between the camera's underwater setting and the normal setting. I used the macro setting for some close ups on land and was quite impressed with that.
If you'd like to see some underwater pictures for yourself, here is a link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/turgeon/sets/72057594083368500/ Remember that I used the 4 Mpixel setting and 2 star quality setting to save space.
I rinsed the camera off at the end of each day but did not soak it as recommended and I haven't had any trouble or seen any signs of salt in the battery compartment. Speaking of the battery, I was a little disappointed here. I didn't like that I had to bring a bulky battery charger on my vacation--would much prefer that the camera ran on AAA batteries. I found battery life to be so-so. I could go about one full day, taking lots of pictures, then editing out all the bad ones, shooting videos, and keeping the camera on for hours at a time. But if I didn't charge it that night, it would quickly die on the second day. The battery level indicator is useless--it goes from full to half to dead in a matter of minutes, so keep the battery charged and if you're going to use it a lot, buy a spare. One other note about the battery--since you have to charge it every night (out of the camera), you can't use the camera's alarm clock feature. This was an issue for me, since I don't wear a watch, wasn't able to use my cell phone in the Bahamas, and had planned on using the alarm. The alarm isn't really loud enough to wake a heavy sleeper, by the way.
All in all, this camera does what it sets out to excellently. This is a camera for active people who want to take good quality snapshots while snorkeling, playing in the rain, kayaking, etc. It's not a camera for professional photographers or divers, but it doesn't claim to be.
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