Underwater point and shoot with decent image quality?

[Jessieh04]

I've been searching for an underwater point and shoot for the beach and shallow snorkels and water parks and such but of the cameras I've seen, the image quality is terrible. Is that common? Is there something about the waterproofing that lessens the quality? Id like to use it on land shots too so that is why I am concerned about the image quality.

I've tried:
Olympus 6000, tough 1380, Fujifilms and the quality is too noisy.

My friend is going to let me check out her Pentax optio w30.

I haven't had a chance to get my hands on the Lumix TS1 though I love the orange. Has anyone tried it and does it have good quality images?

I think the canon is pretty good, but its huge! The D10 looks like a space ship lol.

Anyone have thoughts? Test shots with theirs? Thanks for any help!

[Photo-John]

How have you been comparing the image quality. While I do think the image quality is compromised on all of the waterproof point-and-shoots, I've taken a lot of pictures with them that I am very happy with. If you keep them at the lowest ISO settings and make god exposures, I think the image quality is pretty good. It may not be Canon G10 quality, but it's certainly printable. Tell me more about how you're testing the image quality so I can see if there are any holes in the process. For instance, if you're shooting in a pure auto mode that uses Auto ISO, you are likely to get noisy images. Take control of the ISO yourself to ensure that the image quality is as good as it can possibly be.

I agree the Canon D10 is too big. I'm sure it's fine on a lanyard around your wrist when you're in the water. But I couldn't carry it in my pocket. I have used the Panasonic TS1 and I think it's pretty nice. Like the other waterproof cameras, I don't think the image quality can compete with non-waterproof cameras. But I'd be happy to use it. Most of my experience has been with the Olympus Stylus SW cameras and I've been pretty happy with them. Why don't you take a look at my Olympus Stylus 1030 SW review and see what you think of the photos. If you think they look good, then you should probably take another look at the Olympus Tough cameras.

Olympus Stylus 1030 SW Pro Review >>

Hope that helps. Let us know if you've got more questions

[Jessieh04]

Thanks for your reply. I am very good with cameras and I've tried many settings to achieve a good result. I bought the Stylus tough from Best buy and played with if for 2 weeks and all the pictures I took were not what I was hoping for, I even had to pay a 17% restocking fee. I understand what you are saying about ISO and I've tried many combinations of settings. The noise is really bad even with flash. The reason I am so critical about the image quality is because it will be my main point and shoot, my fuji was stolen earlier this year.

I also love to shoot low light, and the image quality just got worse from there. I wish I could try the Lumix somewhere but I can only find it online.