User:Elbie/Gear
Contents
Camera
After my parents' old Sony Cybershot DSC-S650 began viewing the world with a tint of purple, and without focus, I decided it was time for a new camera.
Ordinary point-and-shoot
I wound up buying a Nikon Coolpix S220, a slim, elegant-looking point-and-shoot for nearly 200$ at London Drugs (including tax). It's a fine camera, the picture quality is sound, and it's a light and transportable camera. However, it's also a fragile one -- thus rather unsuitable for Vancouver geohashing. It's mildly weather-proof (read: survived being in a raincoat pocket that filled with rainwater), but certainly not water-proof (read: did not survive brief immersion in the Pacific Ocean), heat-proof, freeze-proof, shock-proof, or geohasher-proof in any way.
Waterproof point-and-shoots
So, with my Nikon having become a casualty of geohashing, I set off to find a camera that wouldn't. There's a fairly large amount of waterproof cameras out there; Olympus is the major producer of them. However, I found the Olympus cameras were also the crappiest. After days of comparing cameras at the electronics stores in town, and on the internet, two options emerged:
Both cameras are waterproof, shock-proof, and freeze-proof. However, the Pentax is known to survive deeper waters, and colder temperatures. The Pentax also seems to get leaks less often the Canon. I'm guessing this is largely since the Pentax was built from the bottom-up to be waterproof; the Canon, however, is a Canon PowerShot that got a waterproofing make-over.
The Canon has a normal optical zoom lens, and to accommodate it, it has a really bulky bulge at the lens area. It makes the Canon really hard to fit into a normal pocket, let alone a PFD or pelican case. By contrast, the Pentax has a folding lens, so no bulge is needed -- the camera has a nice, compact rectangular box shape.
The Canon has a better picture quality than the Pentax overall -- however, the Pentax has a wider-angle and better close-ups, as well as better landscape and panorama options. The Pentax's picture quality indoors is pretty crappy (not quite as bad as a cameraphone, but not by much), but it does a lovely job outside.
Fact is, waterproof cameras are not built for picture quality -- the Canon is noticeably better here, but it's still not as good as my old Nikon Coolpix.
Another problem about waterproof cameras is battery life -- they suck it pretty fast. You will need a spare battery. The Canon's battery is 20$ more expensive than the Pentax's, so be sure to factor that into any price comparisons. While both cameras often go on sale, the batteries don't. When I was shopping for the cameras, the Canon was going for 349$ at Future Shop and Best Buy (on sale), and the Pentax for 359$ at London Drugs (also on sale.)
