Pentax w 90
I love my w90, I just let it sit for a day and dry before before opening any hatches. Can’t beat the quick start up time either. 12 mp and 1080 video, its hard to beat.
3rd the Panasonic earlier gen and no
problems and very good pictures to date. Would like more optical zoom though for wildlife. R
Optical viewfinders
I’m with you 100%
It just seems like the LED viewfinders have become the norm because it’s cheaper to produce.
Olympus 1030…eh it’s OK
I’ve got the 1030 and it is all it’s cracked up to be.
It rides around in my pfd, swims when I swim, gets dunked from time to time, bounces around on the end of it’s lanyard. I do not coddle it at all.
So far (four yeas I think?) It has held up well.
The color is much better than my old cannon point and shoot (A60?)
But…
I went from the 3 mp Cannon to the 10 mp Olympus with the expectation that I would get much finer resolution.
That didn’t happen. I can not blow pictures up any better with the 10 mp Olympus than I could with the 3 mp Cannon.
Very disapointing!
Another Pentax user
I’ve had a bunch of them - they may be waterproof, but they don’t float.
In bright light the pictures are fine. In cloudy/rainy conditions they tend to be bury - especially when taken from a moving boat. My W90 has more features than I will ever figure out, but I do use some of the automatic settings like bright light, macro and panorama. It can be tough to see the screen in bright light, but I don’t frame pictures that closely anyway. It takes surprisingly good video (with decent quality audio) which is why I keep replacing them.
I will admit that I’ve had some problems over the years. I had a W60 that was a dud – it just didn’t seem to take good pictures. I was happy when that one sank to the bottom of the river. I’ve had the W90 for about a year and I love it, but I’m having trouble with the on/off button – sometimes it won’t turn on. It went back for service, and came back with the same problem. Before it dies completely, I’m going to replace it with the new WG-1
Here’s an interesting comparison of waterproof camera’s from one of the camera sites - its goes back to the spring, and is mostly about Pentax and Sony, but some of the other brands are also mentioned. Some interesting tips and comments - like turning on shake reduction - mine was turned off.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1028&message=38773833