Camera equipment

Above water

The master piece of my equipment, the Olympus CAMEDIA C-2500L, at the time when I bought it!

The Olympus CAMEDIA C-2500L with smartcard

The technical data you can retrieve at the Olympus European Web-Site. The camera delivers pictures of 1712 x 1368 pixels in HQ mode. Using a 32 MB smartcard (the tiny piece with the golden contacts on top) that results in 54 possible shots on one card. However, this type of camera is NOT waterproof. :-))

Underwater equipment

Getting wet yet!
Since, the Olympus C-920L (and the older C-900L as well) is the only digital still camera that I know off, which you can get a suitable underwater housing for as a piece of standard accessories (saying that it is supposed to be cheap), my decision was clear: "This one I need for diving!". And, the photos on my diving pages are good enough to confirm this decision.

The C-920L (operational view)	The underwater housing (back view)
All together front view...	... and rear view.

The C-920L is not a SLR type and has a 1,3 Mio. pixel CCD (1280 x 960 max. picture size) and an optical 3x ZOOM. The under photos on my pages taken since 2000 entirely have been taken with the 920. The uw-housing is good for a depth down to 30m (it worked at 33m as well ;-). The auto-focus-function and the automatic light control are of invaluable advantage particularly under water. You can fully concentrate on to the target - and just this is difficult enough - down there.

Altogether, camera and housing, are very handy. The built in flash covers a distance of up to 2m under water. Due to the fact, that all buttons are mounted to the backside of the camera, it can be fully controlled under water, almost (even while wearing dive gloves!). The shutter release button and ZOOM handle are guided to the outside of the housing at the top of it. However, you cannot switch off the camera under water. Thus, it is highly recommended to use at least two sets of rechargeable batteries, since one set is good for about 1 hour, which is too few for two consecutive dives!

Advise: Those of you, who are diving a lot in foreign countries - as I do - should be aware that the battery charger is capable of 110V ~ 60 cps AND 230 V ~ 50 cps (Hz) as well! This hint is only valid for those who don't want to buy the Olympus recharger.

The pictures of 1999 have been taken by means of a Nikonos-V, which I lent on location. The camera itself is waterproof, thus it doesn't need a separate housing. But, what it seriously needs is something that is called "film"! :-( But, what the hell is FILM? ;-)

The Nikonos-V, non SLR without flash and auto focus

The "Niko" has no auto focus, no automatic light control and the flash goes separate, either when you buy it or when you mount it, which has to be done physically by means of an additional mounting rail. So, until you have finished setting up the distance and the light scale for the shot - the fish has been gone beyond all reefs! :-)

For those who are interested...

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Last updated: 2019-01-22