I picked up an Olympus Tough 8000 camera a few weeks ago, and just got the Olympus housing to go along with it. Here are some quick impressions and a few links to video I have posted.

Not being a camera person (always wreck digital cameras taking them offshore, and never have them long enough to take many pics...) I went w/ the Oly because of the waterproof to 33', shockproof, etc qualities above everything else. I shouldn't be able to break this one....

The camera is small, compact, and comparable in size to a pack of cigarettes. Because you can drop it from 6 feet, it is a tad on the heavy side - seems like pretty solid construction to me.

Immediately took the camera (no housing) to the pool. Easily was amazed by the video quality and was overjoyed that I hadn't wrecked another camera by chucking it in the pool and playing w/ it underwater.

Have taken a few above water photos, and have been very impressed by the quality you can get being a beginner. Macro settings worked great, and was able to capture some dragonflys and see the hair on their legs...

Got the underwater housing 2 weeks ago and have taken it out on two dive trips since. First trip w/ camera was a low viz (~30ft) dive where i traded the speargun for the camera, and followed FelixH around as he filled the stringer. Playback afterwards confirmed that on this 90ft dive with less than stellar vis and not carrying any light source that you could actually see better on the video than you did when you were on the dive! Switched to take a few photos - did not come out well using it's flash because it was all backscatter from the particulates in the water. I need to play around w/ this more in the pool before the next time out.

On Thursday 8/6/09 I took it to the Oriskany. Yes, the housing works down to 132 feet, cause I took it to that depth and it didn't flood. sweet. My luck at the O is always way worse vis than it should be - after hearing reports of 80-100ft 2 days earlier I get there and it is ballpark 35ft. Still, recording w/ the standard underwater video setting resulted in seeing futher/clearer in the video than when actually on the dive.

Still figuring out posting video to youtube, so these are SHORT clips. Chose to not degrade the original quality (640X480 and 30fps), and instead chopped up video to post. Quality when posted is definitely worse, but you can get an idea. Anyway, here are the links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w5rB1w6AaI

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQHnVURMzkM