We are buying 20 New cameras in the next 2 months, to setup a rental shop.

We already have bought (without knowing much about them) a couple of second hand Sealife DC300/310s a DC500 and a DC600 (all with flash units)

OPINIONS on these cameras would be valuable… we paid next to nothing for them, so if they are really bottom end then we can just sell them and reinvest the cash, i wont be crushed to here that they are rubbish if they are…

We have been looking on eBay and are finding some quite cheap housings for Canon, Olympus, Nikon and others.
My BIG QUESTION to the knowledgable folks here ... Please name your top pick for a cheap digital still camera, your top pick for a midrange digi still cam and your top pick for the high end of sigi still cameras. (no need to mention SLR we already have 5 Nikon SLR’s)

Please remember that each kit we put together will have some kind of Flash unit, not just the onboard flash… also any leads on good and cheap flash units would be great

A million thanks to the kind members who helped me a few years back when i was first getting into UW photography… the sound advise meant i did not buy an Olympus 5050 with plastic housing, i blew a load of cash and bought myself a Nikon D70 with 2 ports and a couple of flash units. I have never looked back.

Hi Sneef

Where are you based?  If you are buying 20 or so cameras to set up your rental fleet, you are presumably somewhere where alot of diving gets done.

I run a small underwater camera rental operation here in New Zealand.  I started it with mostly used camera kit purchased on the local version of ebay.

Most of my customers have been novice u/w photographers; frequently their first time using a camera underwater.  Thus ease of use is a major requirement for the rental fleet cameras.  Generally my customers have used the cameras in fully auto mode, and there has been no real interest in strobes.  If you are going to offer strobes with your cameras, I would target fully automatic combinations.  Manual strobe operation seems to be too much for most rental customers to deal with.

Epoque do a camera, housing and small strobe package for a very reasonable price.  I have no idea how the quality compares to more expensive rigs.  Not sure what the model number is, but epoque don’t do many cameras, so it shouldn’t be hard to find!

If your cameras are going to be in heavy use, you might find that the Canon, Olympus, Sony (et al) housings are not designed for such frequent use, and seals start to fail due to wear.  It’s not easy to replace the seals on these housings:  housings like Ikelite seem to enable replacement and maintenance to a greater extent.

I’d be interested to hear more about your planned rental shop - how you plan to deal with security deposits / bonds, insurance, maintenance etc.

cheers

We are based in Thailand, where lots of divings gets done

Most of my customers will be much like yours, but we are offering courses also… all taught with Digital SLR housings/strobes/60mm macro lenses

We deal with Security Deposits by holding the passport of the customer, we do not rent to locals. We intend to self insure, and maintenance should not be an issue… we will just throw out what is broken and replace it with newer stock.