good camera for topside & underwater in australia

in june i'm leaving for australia for a month. i'm going to be doing mostly snorkling (around 5-6 hours a day) and a little diving (once a week). I'm looking to get into photography besides the simple point and shoot (i've used a canon s200 underwater while diving). I currently own an olympus c-60 which is a nice camera and has some options (apeture and f-stop). I know i can get a underwater case (olympus pt-024) for this camera, but was wondering if it'd be wise to sell the camera and get something with more options. I don't want to spend a lot of money. I was thinking of an olympus c5050 or c5060 and its accompanying case. I know i'll be going down 1 megapixel. Any advice to whether or not this is a good idea, or should i stick with the c-60. Maybe another camera i wasn't thinking of. I'd like to be able to use lenses (i really like macro photography).

Thanks for your help,

Mike

Hi Mike,

You might consider this offer from Kasey.

Definately budget for an external strobe unless you only want to do macro.

Not sure about the offer from Kasey...

As far as I can tell, a new Olympus 5060 goes for about $550, and the PT housing for same is under $200.

Unless I missed something, Kasey's offer is about $400 to high. Now if it included a strobe I would understand the numbers.

BTW, I don't know the C-60 to be able to tell you what is "better", but if it has a usable housing, manual setting capabilities, and some method of syncing a strobe, it is probably all you need for your described use.

If you want a camera with more capabilities for above and below, I would probably recommend the Fuji 810, as you will be hard pressed to find a camera that gives better images in a point and shoot, and still has a very inexpensive housing solution.

Woops - didn't mean to recommend a rip-off - sorry about that!

I agree with Richard on the F810 - great little setup. I have used a package with the Fuji housing and an INON D2000 strobe - very nice. Good low-light autofocus, fast RAW processing and great quality images.

As far as the C60, I can't find anything about macro attachment lenses, but you could check www.inonamerica.com