new toy

i've been going back and forth on my underwater camera options. i think i'm struggling now because my first ever digital camera purchase for underwater turned out to be a giant stroke of luck. i was thrilled by the ability to take as many pictures as i wanted and not worry about the cost of developing the horrible, low lit blurry shots i took with my nikonos V. i knew i could never afford the rig i wanted, but i thought the nikon coolpix that was used on the ecotourist boat i worked on was a fairly decent camera. so i looked up coolpix cameras and ended up with the coolpix 4300. i bought a housing from fantasea.com and was pretty pleased with the cost of it all. because frankly, besides the cost of developing i was scared to death to take something super expensive underwater with me and lose it or flood it. so i felt comfortable with the 4300 and the housing i had. and after working with it underwater i was thrilled with the amount of success i had with it compared to the nikonos. and i decided i would buy a backup 4300 because i was so happy with it.

but i couldn't and i talk a bit more about that in this post. and i couldn't be less happy with the coolpix 5400 for underwater. and admittedly it could be operator error and the 4300 corrected for that.

as i'd been trying to get money together and my permit extended, i decided to look at a different camera for underwater purposes for my research and my book. i tried to look on flickr to see what people there are using for underwater shooting and many of them choose to hide the type of camera their using. after awhile though i did start to see a trend with canon and read a lot of user reviews of it and thought ok, i'll try the canon. of course, again, cost is a factor and yes, i know all the money over the years i spent on the 4300, 5400, housings, nikonos, film developing, etc. i could have bought a really good canon dslr and some lenses and a housing. i get it.

bygones.

i sent the specs of all the cameras i was interested in to my friend and had her make the decision for me.

so now i'm the proud owner of the Canon Powershot G7. photos taken with the 5400.