Underwater/Land camera combo

I have a Nikon D3200 and will be cruising from LA to Tahiti in Jan of 2017 on the Oceania Sirena. I am looking for an inexpensive but decent underwater camera for snorkeling and on land should we have rainy days. I don't want to go over $200 and have read some reviews of various brands and to be honest the more I read the more confused I get! Does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks

Loggerhead Turtles

I have been real happy with my Fuji XP. Anyway we got it at Costco for about $170. It has an underwater mode a video mode and is Wi-Fi capable. I've only used it store clean however and it's rated to 30 feet. Maximum resolution is 12 megapixels so the photos can clean up pretty nice in Picasa or a photo editor of your choice.

The best reasonably priced Underwater camera for non-professional use is without doubt the Olympus Tough TG4. It has 16.8Mp and more importantly can capture images in RAW. It is the best camera for beach use along with my Sony 7r for most other photographic uses.

Thank you for the info. I had done some research and the Olympus TG4 kept popping up. After reading your reply to my question and I did a little more research and decided on the Olympus TG4. I have taken some test pictures using all the features and so far am very pleased with it. Looking forward to giving it to the grandkids to take pictures with it in their pool for the real underwater test. Thanks for the advice.

We got the TG4 before our cruise last month and loved it. Underwater pics were fantastic.

I am glad I scrolled before posting this question. I am going to check out the TG4, glad to see many people are happy with it!

Yes, I've been very pleased with my TG4. RAW capability is very important to me to allow for post-processing whitebalance adjustments as well as better ability to pull out shadow and highlight detail. Since it offers RAW+JPEG you get the best of both worlds; use the jpegs if everything is fine and still have the RAW files for further tweaking if desired.

When travelling I use the Olympus Sport Holder attached to a backpack strap to have it always at the ready.

Just a humorous observation that to the 0.1% of camera owners the participate in forums, the ability to shoot RAW is so very important that a camera model without this feature cannot possibly be considered.

I remember when this was considered "RAW" and paying attention to your settings was still important...

:)

Dave

I remember when this was considered "RAW" and paying attention to your settings was still important...

Print film was pretty forgiving. Very few people did their own developing or printing of C41 process color print film. Slide film was the more unforgiving.

I didn't mean to suggest RAW means you don't need to pay attention to settings. I was referencing the ability to refine/enhance the resulting image, as well as the ability to go back and reprocess ten year old RAW files with more modern tools for detail enhancement and noise reductions.

FWIW, thirty years ago I was shooting bulk-loaded Tmax on an OM1n then doing my own development and prints. That background is what makes me a fan of RAW.

FWIW, thirty years ago I was shooting bulk-loaded Tmax on an OM1n then doing my own development and prints. That background is what makes me a fan of RAW.

Did the same B&W path as well as a ton of Fujicolor/Fujichrome and Ektar. I shoot RAW when I'm pushing ISO past the comfort zone or when I know there will be a problem with mixed light sources. In general I shoot JPEG 95% of the time and after extensive real-world testing, I find that you can correct a good, x-fine JPEG more than enough to make up for even some pretty significant exposure issues. White balance is where RAW can come in handy when you set the camera for flash and shoot without flash but honestly, AWB generally gets you close enough that JPEG retains enough color to get to neutral. In the worst case like naturally-lit deep water, old-school fluorescents, mercury or sodium lights, shooting RAW won't help because the necessary colors are completely missing and aren't captured in the first place. JPEG engines and Lightroom tools have gotten very good over the years to the point that it's hard to tell which type of file I'm working with. As a result, with all things being pretty equal, I choose to shoot JPEG to allow access to things like in-camera HDR, Sweep Panorama and Multi-frame Noise Reduction which aren't available when shooting RAW.

Bottom line: RAW vs. JPEG has become a personal choice rather than a technical necessity.

If anyone is interested, I wrote an article that lays out the advantages/disadvantages of both:

http://www.pptphoto.com/articles/rawvsjpeg.html

Happy shooting! (RAW or GPEG :) )

Dave