Underwater camera recommendations

[NigelC]

For the past few yaers I've been using this combination, not very seriously as you need to be a good diver before you can get any decent underwater pictures. However, now my underwater control is better I've just about reached the end of my tether with this combination. Raw is unusable on the 8080 under or over water, which loses me the the flexibiity of changing the WB later. Secondly, the menu system on this camera is slow and a  bit glitchy anyway which makes fast changes underwater diifficult. The built in flash is useless, however, I'm not prepared to get an external strobe for the camera as the u/w auto focussing is also hopeless. Manual zone focussing is very diffficult and I haven't succeeded with this.

I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to the expense of a housing, port and external strobe for my 5D. The G9 takes an underwater housing but with external strobe that looks quite expensive, although it does have usable raw. Another one is the Ixus 90 (Elph790 in US?) . Seems to me priority is; 1. AF that works u/w; 2. decent macro mode;3. either Raw or decent underwater WB setting, 4. connection for external strobe

[stever]

you need to visit wetpixel.com

Olympus supports their point and shoot (and even the new 520) with reasonable priced and well made housings and i think flash as well and are very popular, particularly with Japanese divers.  These cameras can produce very good macro images.

For macro with flash, RAW is not so important (but a good TTL flash is).

But if you want to do available light only or with a fill flash i think RAW is a must.  And the low noise at ISO 400 and 800 from a Nikon or Canon SLR open up an extra range of possibilities.

After frustration with point and shoots UW (admitedly not as good as they are today) i invested in an Aquatica housing for my 20D with Inon flash.  When you add up the housing, port(s), flash it's a big investment.  And as soon as you've bought it a new camera body is introduced that doesn't fit.  So i also have a backup 20D and plan to shoot this setup for a long time.  I'm very satisfied with the results from nudibranchs to whale sharks.