Olympus SP-350/Canon S-70

It seems what's missing from this thread is the color rendition differences between the two cameras. I would state that Canon, to my eye has the better colors underwater, at least between the Oly 5050-60 and the s50, 60, 70's Ive seen areound the 'net and in print. The Oly's are very popular because they have faster lenses for low light but again not sure if the 350 has the 1.8 lens. JMHO.

P.S. Dru - I didn't think you could add any more stuff to your rig I'd like to see that!

Sounds like the S70 is a nice camera that is faster than the SP350. I did find that the 350 will take two RAWs in about 2 seconds with a flash. I think I posted before that it was without flash. In any case its not lightning quick between RAW exposures with about 10 seconds of write time. Canon definitely made a mistake not allowing the S-80 to have a RAW mode.

What is a fast 1.8 lense?

The Oly P&S 5050-60 have a f1.8 lens and the s50,60,70,80 has a f2.8. Given the same lighting, the f1.8 will allow faster shutter than f2.8.

Then I can tell you that the SP-350 has f2.8 similar to the canons. It comes with a built in infrared for focus in low light but I'm not sure how that feature would work underwater, if at all. Seems the Inon with a focus light is the way to go.

I just returned from our aborted SD/Mexico trip. With 15 foot waves even at La Jolla cove and just getting worse, there was no diving available except for an iffy dive at La Jolla shores (although a guy who took that dive brought back pictures of mating squid).

My son brought down the SP-350 mid trip, and I got to play with it a little. CE4Jesus isn't kidding when he says there are lots of settings. If you just park the thing on automatic, you get whatever the camera gives you, sometimes great sometimes crap. Using the scene settings gets you really close to whatever white balance, etc you want without manual formatting. You can get some really nice pictures. My UW case isn't here yet, but as soon as I get to Monterey with it, I'll try out the preformatted UW wide 1, wide 2 (fixed focus at 15 feet for fast shots) and UW macro.

I can tell you that on Super-Macro setting, you can get half an inch away and have perfect focus and light above water. I plan to compare this with the manual settings, which are pretty unlimited and can be preset with the MY mode.

This is probably a different thread, but I haven't used a raw translator. The camera comes with one and can also be adusted in raw mode on camera. I have PS7, and downloaded the Raw "negative" program. I don't have CS. I have also seen a free raw conversion program called "raw essentials", which also has a $99. photoshopable advanced program available. Any suggestions out there. (I'm a bozo on photoshop, so the simpler the better, probably.)