Digital Cameras and the Outdoors

We all love to capture the moments we have outside. Whether its a beautiful sunset, a huge fish caught, or a unique animal encounter. I personally am really hard on cameras. I have broken several of them over the years. Most of the time it has been due to water damage. I only carry point and shoot when off the beaten path. A nice SLR would take up too much room and I would be terrified to break it. Digital cameras have come a long ways since I got my first one. It was a 1.3 mega pixel camera. It took pretty good pictures as long as you didn’t blow them up very big. Now camera are taking pictures at over 10 mega pixels. The latest breakthrough with point and shoot cameras is that they are waterproof.

The Pentax Optio W20 came out a year or so ago. It looks like just a regular camera, however you can take pictures under water up to 15 ft. I have used it and I like the features and size of the camera. It now comes is a 7.0 mega pixel model. The only feature is doesn’t have that I would like to see is a stabilizer. When the boats rocking or the light is low, the pictures suffer. Other than that the camera is great and takes great pictures.

The next camera that I looked at but haven’t had the chance to thoroughly test out is the Olympus Stylus 770SW. It is another point and shoot digital camera. It also is a 7.0 mega pixel model. It has similar features to the Pentax. A few other features are added as well though. It is waterproof up to 33 ft and it does have a stabilizer. You can also drop it up to 5 ft, freeze it to 14 F or put up to 220 lbs. of pressure on it. Olympus is basically trying to make a bombproof as possible camera. Which sounds like the type of camera I need. However the camera is more pricey than the Pentax. I will have to test it out and put it the test to see if it is robust as it says.

We’ll see.

Written by admin on April 20th, 2007 with no comments.
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