I have really grown to like taking pictures on the water. I get out a fair bit, and I see quite a bit of weird stuff while kayaking, so I’ve gotten some interesting shots over the last 5 or so years I’ve had a waterproof point and shoot.
So I was pretty bummed when I dropped my old Pentax Optio WP60 in the parking lot in South Haven about a year ago. The battery door broke off. Camera to its credit is still functional, but it is obviously not operable on the water. I looked into getting it fixed with Pentax just before Thanksgiving. They said $100 to look at it and repair the door. So I thought about it and thought about it. I finally decided for the price of a new Panasonic DMC TS3 Waterproof Point and Shoot, $249.00, that it was more worth it to get a new camera.
Here were some of my issues with the Pentax.
- Shutter lag, shutter lag, shutter lag. The camera had terrible response to closing the shutter even in bright light conditions outdoors with the button pressed halfway down to focus the camera first.
- Poor image quality, sometimes color and crispness in photos did not turn out very well based on subtle lighting changes. Keep in mind this was mostly outdoors photography.
- Lens would fog up on the inside often. This happened a lot, at really inopportune times. Like I go out to surf one time a year in saltwater and see a dolphin, lens fogs up. Would have been a great shot… Too bad for that big smudge.
So I did a lot of research from other paddlers, and from dpreview, on their waterproof camera roundup review, and ended up looking more and more at the Panasonic DMC TS3.
I haven’t tried it out on the water yet, but I am going to give it a whirl this weekend I hope. I will post a follow up review with some photos.