Sony DSC-T1 or Canon S410/500??? Or other compact systems??

Hi! I just joined the forum and I am hoping all the gurus out there can help me with buying a digital camera.

I've done a lot of research on compact digital cameras, which is a must because I travel so much, and my top three choices are the Sony Cybershot DSC-T1 and Canon Elph S410/500.

The price for the casings is similiar. Sony is more expensive than the S410 but it has a marine pack photo filter. Is that even worth buying for $100?

Currently I have a

• Motor Marine II-EX Camera

YS-60 TTL/S strobe

YS-30 TTL Duo cordless slave strobe

16mm Lens

Macro Lens 2T

I am new to the digital camera world so I am not sure if there is anyway to reuse my existing lenses or strobes on the digital cameras I mentioned. It will be a definite plus if I can!

If you recommend another compact camera, I'd love to hear about it!

Thank you so much for your help!

i wouldnt bother with the red filter. i find they distort colors. your better off adjusting the colors in photoshop. auto-levels works pretty good, and you can fade it back if needed.

I don't think either one will work well with external strobes since neither have manual aperture and shutter adjustments. Having these adjustments should be at the top of the features list when you look for a camera to use underwater.

i got some decent results from my Sony dsc-p9 & ys25-dx

maybe not pro quality but not bad. im not sure how much better my results could have been since im not familiar with those settings.

All the photos taken in Terry Moore's Gallery One were taken with a colour correction filter (CCF) on a 2.1 Meg Pix point & shoot digital camera. A 20 mm wide angle lens was also used on many of the shots. These shots were taken with a Cyan/Red filter, which suits tropical blue-green water (i.e. GBR diving). As you can see the results can be very appealing. Keep in mind that these results (i.e. colour balance) could only have been achieved with the use of a CCF. Point is you can have the latest & greatest brand, model & number of megapixels, however, no flash or CCF means monochromatic blue photos below about 5 meters. The trick with a CCF is to shoot at depths between 5-20 meters. Underwater Photography made simple!

Terry Moore Gallery One - CCF examples

Terry Moore Gallery Two - Internal Flash examples

http://www.oceanearth.com/underwater-camer...ras-gallery.htm

I have the T1 - as a beginner I enjoy it a lot. It takes really nice images on land, much better than I expected. Underwater is another story - some good, some bad.

I tried using slave strobes, but haven't really being successful in double guessing the Sony programmer's assumptions in their software! I am not impressed with the video light that Sony sells - too expensive for the difference it makes. I'll continue battling with the slave strobes...

The small housing makes diving with it a pleasure - BC pocket stuff. I wish it had a WB calibration feature, and not only the few preset options. I have good results with macro and wide angle. But its not in the class of the SLRs!

Bouwe