Reverting to P&S??

Perhaps this has been discussed before, but I haven't been on this board in many years. Up until 2005-7 or so was diving a lot, taking photos with a 5050 then a Canon D-Reb. Did some other things, got sick, yada yada, and just came back from a N, Channel Islands dive trip, first UW shots I've taken in over 4 years. In addition to rusting of skills, I find the complexity of the DSLR to be overwhelming (and frankly, I was as a general rule happier with my 5050 shots than my D Reb shots).

Thinking of reverting to a P&S, perhaps a housed G12, rather than continuing with my 6 MP dinosaur, or upgrading at a $3-5K price tag to a new camera body and housing.

Anyone else taken this route and have any advice and/or regrets?

I agree the size and weight alone, for airline travel these days, of a full SLR rig is daunting. Plus you have to chose what to shoot ahead of time, rather than being able to zoom from WA to macro, and enhance those with wet lenses.

The problem with the canon G cameras is their crippling slow AF lag. Slow in good light, slower in dim light.

The pan lx5 is the best p&s cam for UW today. There is a helpful write up on the 3 top compact cams today, by reef photo:

http://reefphoto.com/kb.php?id=28

For me, the sad thing about these cams is the lack of view finder makes them much less useful above water.

I would love a canon G12 (I had a g2 and g3 and finally gave up), they just don't auto focus anything like as fast as the competition.

I have slim, but not dead hopes the nikon p7100 will cure the AF lag issues of the seriously flawed p7000. The reviews are not in yet.

The mirrorless micro 4/3 cams are interesting. The oly epl2 and epl3 and oly housings are inexpensive, but they limit you to shoot one thing at a time - macro with a $600 macro lens, which focuses slowly and drains the battery on the epl's. None of the oly's come with viewfinders, so you need to plunk down around $200 just for an EVF, which does not show you live view in burst mode, so it point and guess.

The pany m4/3 cam I want is coming out early next year - a rangefinder style camera with built in EVF.

Today, if you don't insist on shooting raw, the sony cams are nice too for UW. But no viewfinders. Most of them have M exposure mode. And ikelite makes housings for all of them.

You should look at an Olympus e-620 or even another dinasour the e-330.

My wife and I were old 5050 users. Everything was fine except the shutter lag and the time to write raw files. I contacted Ryan at reef Photo and he put together an Olympus e-330 in an Olympus case with a flat port and a 14/54 lens. We used a single Inon Z-240 strobe the same as on the 5050. To get ttl we needed an Athena converter. This setup we still have and it works fine EXCEPT the Athena connections were fragile. We currently have two Athenas. I will loan this setup to you IF you are willing to purchase the flat port. It may be what you want. Very small and compact, much like the 5050. Only problem is the Athena is a pain.

My wife has since moved on to an e-620. The liveview does not produce instant focus like the e-330 did but the viewfinder is bigger. Best of all I can use an optical connection to the Z-240. The rig is slightly bigger than the e-330 but the optical connection makes it much simpler.

The Olympus e-620 is deadended. However, they are still available. Use a 14/54 in a flat port and take decent macro and wide with the same rig. Ginnie's pictures are here:

http://www.tomandginnie.com/Wakatobi-It...he%20Reefs.html