Upgrade from canon s120?

Hi there. I hope this is ok to ask for some advice. I've had my canon s120 and an inon strobe for a number of years now. I'd call myself a mid level photographer? (Not a complete beginner, but not an expert either.) It's ok, but lacking in a few areas. Although you can get nice photos from it, it seems to have a lot of issues with focus, over exposure and dull colours when used underwater. (I often take photos on breath hold diving so it's not always possible to carefully manually balance everything same as on scuba and some stuff needs to be used on auto where possible. I use RAW but there's a limit to how much photos can be fixed especially if areas are horribly over exposed.) Battery life isn't fantastic, but if I keep it turned off most of the dive you can work around it. Video is very, very ordinary. (My Gopro 3+ blows it out of the water for video when I decided to do a direct comparison this week. I don't usually use them together so hadn't realised just how bad the quality of the canon's video is. I mostly take photos, but it's nice to be able to take video when you see something particularly amazing, and not have it be a hazy mess too.)

Anyway, I was thinking about upgrading, but as everyone here knows, that's not a cheap task and I was hoping to do it right! I didn't want anything too large due to the freediving thing, and honestly can't really justify an SLR camera to take underwater anyway. There's so many options I've been at a loss to work out how to narrow the selection down. Can anyone recommend a better compact or possibly mirrorless that's at the mid level price range or below or recommend some pages that are good reading for this or how to go about a decision making process? (I get it's all personal preference but there's so many opinions out there.) Or unless I'm willing to upgrade to something really pricey (aka thousands of $ for the camera and case), am I better sticking with the s120. Thanks in advance

The compact market is just about dead these days, very little on offer apart from the Olympus TG-6.  Compact in the sense of small sensor compacts like the Canon S120 etc.

If you are looking for a significant upgrade in quality I would be looking a potentially at m43 system, a bigger sensor gathers more light and gives you more latitude to play in RAW.  The alternative would be a 1" sensor model Like Canon G7X-III, Pany LX-10 etc.  What will work best will depend on what you like to shoot - wide angle or macro?  Or both on the one dive.

What to recommend depends very much on your budget. 

m43 gives you the most flexibility in terms of what you can shoot - all the way from 1:1 macro to full frame fisheye - but not all at once.

the 1" compacts are not quite what they used to be as the camera makers have gone for long zooms which is good topside but means you now need to buy a system with ports to get the very best out of them as to accomodate the  long zoom they need a long port which limits wide angle capability and means the wide angle wet lenses won't do as well.    To do more than snaps you need add on wide and macro lenses which adds to the cost.

For something affordable you could look at a Fantasea housing and G7X-III, it has a vacuum system option and some wet lens options available.   The LX-10 is probably the most flexible but the housings are more limited and expensive.   All of these should work fine with your INON strobe.

BTW no problem asking for advice, that's what the forum is for.

Good compacts ended when the housings moved to a port system due to longer zooms

Currently the only one that still goes on a fixed ports are Panasonic LX10/15 and Canon that has short battery life with the S120 you know something about that

Consider a low end MFT camera with wet lenses it may give you better value especially on the used market

I currently shoot an S95 in a FIX Housing, Pair of YS-110's, wet fisheye lens, etc. I am a vacation diver, logging 10-50 dives a year depending on how many trips we go on, but I have also been considering an upgrade. I originally started looking at the high end all in ones, but most of the have removed the hot shoe. I am always frustrated by the internal strobe recharge time, so a hot shoe for an external TTL converter is a must.

The pandemic put my purchase on hold, but I ended up settling on a Sony A6100, in a Sea Frogs Salted Line housing with a dome and macro port, a sony 10-18 and sony 50mm macro. I would add the UWtechnics TTL converter, as well as the compact Leak Sentinel vacuum/leak system. All in cost in the ~1500-2k USD range, but possible to do better if you can find deals on the lenses. 

Here's a few articles that may help you make a decision :

https://www.bluewaterphotostore.com/best-compact-underwater-cameras

https://www.bluewaterphotostore.com/best-mirrorless-cameras

https://www.backscatter.com/reviews/post/Backscatter-Best-Underwater-Compact-Cameras

Thank you so much everyone for the responses! Really helpful and has given me a lot to think about. Really appreciate it

I didn't even think about the long zooms on the more recent compacts causing a lot of the issues. I guess making good compacts suitable for underwater photography isn't going to be a priority for most manufacturers. I guess my main reason for asking after them is it's nice to be able to swap from macro to non-macro shots where I usually dive as the dive conditions are pretty variable (one day you'll get in and have <5m viz and it'll be a macro day only if you want to shoot something and I don't love bringing extra camera gear and leaving it unattended in the car for long periods of time as I know people who have had problems with car break ins though I've been ok myself so far) the next you might get good conditions with rays and sharks appearing out of nowhere as you're about to photograph another seahorse. Because of the way the currents run, sometimes viz starts off ok, then becomes terrible within a relatively short period of time. Fun times! Looks like I really might need to seriously consider a cameras with changable lenses if I want to upgrade past the canon I have though.

On 6/12/2020 at 12:11 AM, Interceptor121 said:

Canon that has short battery life with the S120 you know something about that

Yeah it's a shame their battery life is so bad and it's one of my main complaints with it. I guess that's one of the trade offs with small cameras (although the s series canons seem to have a particularly bad rep compared to others from what I've heard).

@Lewis88 I used to have a s95. It was a great camera (battery life and really poor video aside). Although the s120 is better in low light (which I often need) TBH I thought the s95 actually seemed to often do a much better job at focus, colours and rarely got overblown photos compared to my s120.

15 hours ago, Jacq said:

I guess my main reason for asking after them is it's nice to be able to swap from macro to non-macro shots where I usually dive as the dive conditions are pretty variable

You can do that with many ILCs as well. Sony A6xxx series with kit 16-50mm zoom work well with wet lenses, both macro and wide, and give you a similar zoom range to a typical compact (24-75mm equivalent). Zeiss 16-70mm is another option. Micro Four Thirds cameras do similar things with 14-42mm and 12-50mm zooms - the latter even has a built-in macro mode, although it requires a very complex and expensive gear to engage while housed. The bodies are also quite small, although the lenses are unavoidably larger.

I started underwater photography with a series of Canon point-n-shoots, culminating with the s120.  (Which I still have.)  

I somewhat mistakenly thought a 1 inch sensor and strobes would solve all my problems when I upgraded the the Sony RX100 II, in a Nauticam housing with dual YS-D1 strobes, and a focus light, and some wet lenses.   It was a 10x jump in cost to a total of $5000 or so.

The strobes solved a bunch of problems, but the Sony's autofocus wasn't significantly better than my Canon point-n-shoot, and the slowness of it resulted in a lot of fish tail shots.    Other than the strobes, there wasn't enough improvement from the s120 to make it worth the money.

Since then I've moved to a D810 in a housing, and now a D850 in a housing.  I'm happy with autofocus, less so with lens choice and logistics.