I’m new to the group and photography.  I’ll be going to the Florida Keys and will be scuba diving for the first time.  I’ve got a Nikon D40 DSLR, but can not afford the $1100+ of underwater casing equipment.  Also it’s cumbersome to carry around on a scuba lesson.  I need to replace my 5 yr. old point and shoot anyway, so I’m looking for a new point and shoot compact.

One big big big concern I have is battery life.  I’m not very good, so I tend to shoot many many many shots and hope one turns out good.  But with the new compacts, there are no view finders.  That means the LCD stays on all the time, burning off battery.  And you can’t change batteries as easily when you’re in the water or dripping wet.

Any recommendations on a good compact that has good battery life?  I heard the Fujifilm FinePix F31fd can shoot 580 pics in one charge.  Given that the LCD may be running all the time, I’m estimating half that number.  And then with flash, half that.  That only equates to about 150 or so pictures in one charge.  It doesn’t sound like enough.

Any recommendations?  Or is my concern unfounded?

Hi there.

I think you will find your concern is unfounded. 

I run an underwater camera hire operation in New Zealand, and I have hired a range of different point and shoot cameras to a range of divers of differing experience levels.  Generally, the more prolific photographers manage to shoot up to 150 shots in a single dive. 

New Zealand waters are normally not as clear as the tropics (not sure how they compare to Florida however), but the camera’s flash is generally required, and all my customers have used the LCD screen rather than a viewfinder.

At the risk of generalising somewhat, new scuba divers typically don’t manage longer dives than 30 to 40 minutes, but even allowing for a 60 minute dive, 150 shots is over 2 shots per minute, which is actually pretty fast underwater!  I have managed to make a battery stretch to (nearly) 2 dives worth of photography, albeit that I don’t shoot at that rate (more like half!), and the battery did die on me towards the end of the second dive.

Bottom line, if you can change batteries for each dive, I think you will be able to shoot pretty much as many shots as you can given other limitations like flash recycle time, autofocus time, and the time you spend selecting and composing each shot.

Finally, camera endurance figures from different manufacturers are notoriously difficult to compare because manufacturer’s often use different shooting conditions. I expect most manufacturers quote endurance on the basis of use of the LCD pretty much full time, because this is how most people use their digital cameras.  The use of flash makes a significant difference to endurance, and you’re probably not far off with assuming 50% of the ‘without flash’ endurance.  There is a standardised endurance test called the CIPA battery test.  If a manufacturer quotes this, then there is a better chance of being able to compare endurance specs to other cameras.

Hope that helps

Graham

Hi,

I´m not quite sure on the current camera models and their batteries, but on my Sony DSC-P12 (about 3 years old) the battery is not the limiting factor (the memory card usually is), for one dive that is. And usually you can do some settings on your camera, which help preserve energy e.g. reduce the brightness of the LCD and if you use an external strobe you can usually set the flash to minimum, because this will be enough to trigger the external strobe.
Anyway what you should do is buy a second battery pack with the highest possible mAh (this practically determines how long they will last).

Here´s what I do one a typical day with 2-3 dives:

Charge everything overnight and start out your day with full batteries.
Change the batteries for the camera (as well as external flash if you have one) after the first dive, so you will have new ones for the second.
If you do a third dive that day, take the batteries which are least exhausted for that dive.

This way I only once encountered an empty battery, when I did over 100 shots (pretty much all of them with using the flash and even checking and erasing some pics while diving due to the limits of my memory card) in one day.

Oh, and what really helps the most is to think about if it´s really worth a shot and if it is, take a little more time in order to get a decent one right away. This saves not only the battery, but also a lot of time after your vacation when digging through your thousands of pictures and trying to decide which ones to keep

Hope that helps.

Regards, Marc

I second and third the previous posts.

Currently there are not many up2date
models left, which tend to have power issues…

I have a great point and shoot its a Casio EX-1000
Casio makes the housing its $200 which is alright
the camera does well underwater