Newbie advice

Hi all,

I'm looking for a camera, housing and strobe with the ability of manual settings and a large viewfinder. I've got about $800 to spend. Any advice would be appreciated. Presently considering the Sony Cybershot DS-7 with a 2.5 " screen, and Nikon Coolpix 5900 although it only has a 2" screen.

crose1

I would trying looking into some olympus too. When i first started out i had an olympus C770 UZ with an olympus housing. Olympus is very versatile and you can add a lot of parts to it later on if you want to. My complete setup that i had had a inon strobe, 2x and 1x macro lens and a wide angle fisheye add on. It was a great rig until my clip came loose diving one time in the appledore islands and disappeared.

Good luck hunting

The olympus SP-350 has a large 2.5 inch screen, and a manual mode. It also has 3 preset dive modes. If you go to justdiscounted.com they have coupon codes to purchase the camera off of Dell for around $305. I'd like to say I've used it underwater but Olympus and Ike have been a little slow in getting a housing out for it. I've seen the housing priced for $189. Like you, I am new to this and also with a limited budget so I purchased the Olympus flash (fl-20) and housing (PFL-01) for the flash new off of Ebay for $210. I discovered this forum shortly after making the purchase. I've been told that although the Olympus flash supports Olympus TTL that it isn't all that strong and has a narrow focus beam. So since that, I've experimented above water and discovered that at high shutter speeds and small aperture settings it struggles to provide enough light. The only saving grace is that the camera is capable of RAW format which allows you to brighten the picture through software. I've got a trip planned in January. Hopefully the housing will be out and I'll get to test it out. Later,