Underwater Cameras

I have been very frustrated at how slow my underwater camera, a Sea and Sea DX-860G, was. There is a huge lag between the time you pull the trigger and when the shot is taken.

I compared the camera to several others during my Underwater Digital Photography class, and it was clear that mine was especially slow.

New digital cameras fire a "preflash" to help the camera set exposure settings. Most of the time, this preflash fires mere milliseconds before the main flash, so it looks like there's only one flash. With the damn DX-860, the preflash is a full 1/2 to 1 second before the main flash (which fires off a large external strobe). Needless to say, this gives skittish marine life plenty of time to get out of your shot.

The consensus was that my camera was defective and I asked the shop to send it in for repairs. The word back from the warranty center was that my camera was behaving correctly. That floored me -- it's almost worthless if you're shooting something moving, because it's so horribly slow. I'm going to try and completely obstruct the internal flash (the pre-flash) with black tape to see if I can keep from scaring off sealife, but the camera is still so slow that moving targets are really hit-or-miss.

If you're in the market for an underwater camera, I strongly recommend that you compare a few models hands-on before you buy. The DX-860 was the latest-and-greatest point and shoot from Sea and Sea, so the shop had to order it for me. As a result, I didn't have much of an opportunity to try it out. If I were doing it over again, though, I would probably go with a name-brand point & shoot camera (Canon, Nikon, Olympus) with an underwater housing from either the manufacturer or a high-quality after-market supplier. Sealife also has a couple of good models in this price range.

Your mileage may vary, but if you're looking at the DX-860 think long and hard about how important speed is, and for God's sake try it out before you buy it.