Mountain Gal needs help buying Digital Camera

[SHOOT4U]

Buying my first digital camera which I have been researching for weeks and have not found one that does it all!
Camera should have:
1. Good Optical zoom for outdoor photos for scenics as I am a hiking guide and ski instructor (mountain/lake type scenic shots),action shots for water/snow skiing, underwater scuba shots (vacation time).
2. Ultra compact would be great (easy to pack for hiking/skiing and travel), compact will do.
3. Must have underwater housing for scuba and boating.
4. Must have video for review of snow and water skiing activities and the big shark capture!
Any ideas?

My 2 top choices were:
Pentax 555, only fault no underwater housing available which I want for my scuba trips and river trips.
Sony Cyper shot DSCP-10, has great underwater housing, perfect size, nice big LCD screen, but the user reviews are extremely bad on the flash and resulting night photos...which would also result in poor underwater photos.

[Photo-John]

Welcome to the site, mountain girl. I hope we can help you find a good camera.

Sounds to me like the critical need for you is the underwater functionality. There are third-party housing makers like Ewa-Marine, Light & Motion, Sea dn Sea, etc:

http://www.photographyreview.com/psc...S_4330crx.aspx

But Olympus, Canon, and Sony have all been marketing underwater housings with specific digital camera models. I've been seeing some good stuff from the Canon S500 and S400 although I don't recall seeing any from the Sonys and Olympus cameras. Flash is definitely an issue. But keep in mind that comparing flash from non-underwater photography isn't really very useful. Underwater photography is almost all at very close range compared to what we do on dry land.

That's pretty much what I've got right now. I don't pay m,uch attention to the video capabilities of digital cameras as I'm purely a still photographer. For more specific information on underwater photography, here's a link to a great site: http://www.wetpixel.com/

Let us know if you have more questions. I assume you do. And I'm happy to help.

[ironlegsracer]

The Canon S1 IS has good zoom and an underwater housing is available.Best thing is the S1 is reasonable.Although I just got mine and the jury is still out,I can see it has potential.No matter what camera you get you'll have to get to know it and it's settings.I saw some good shots the telephoto lens on dpreview.com. and that was with a 1.6x.I found a 3x on ebay.That would be 30x optical zoom.

[SHOOT4U]

Thank you so much for the links, they are very informative!