As an outdoors adventure guide the WR33 has been brilliant. Quick and easy to use, takes movies for the full capability of the card not just a few seconds like some compacts. The quality though only 3.34 megapixels is excellent for my needs. I really like its shape. The box like shape will stand up on its own for timed shots and is great for bracing against trees, rocks etc to remove hand shake.

I have taken it down canyons through raging waterfalls, away rock climbing, mountain-biking and sailing. If it rains when everyone else puts away their cameras I just keep on clicking. I am not kind to it. I chuck it in my pack, drop it, drive over it and generally give it a real hard time. The protected corners are great for when I do drop it. Seems not to have got damaged yet but the screen is really scratched and so hard to see well now. I bought this camera after having a Coolpix Nikon camera stuffed up by a few drops of water spray whilst abseiling down a waterfall with it on my harness. With the Optio WR33 I can land in pools of foaming water pick up the camera and take a picture of the next person down a waterfall.

Negative things are the housing is not really secure. Whilst liloing down a horizontal canyon in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, we had to trek (portage) a few times through the bush. On one occassion the camera must have hit a rock or tree and the battery compartment lid opened. I did not notice this until after getting into the next pool. Oh ####! Luckily the batteries had fallen out so no electrics got in but water did - everywhere. There was water in the viewfinder sloshing around and the LED display went opaque. We stopped for lunch and I placed the camera in the sun. Home later I placed the camera in the sun everyday (we get a lot of sun here) used a hair dryer and placed it in a warm oven. Two months later it was working again. That was two years ago and it is still working but with a slight fuzzy bit in the middle of the lens not noticed in most shots. I am amazed that it survived being totally flooded.

A lock on the battery compartment lid would be a good idea. Also I always found the display to be a little small and way too hard to see in direct sunlight. This has always erked me!  I use the movie function quite a lot (action man - you know!) and am really dissappointed that the format used for the files is Apple Quicktime based as all my Microsoft XP pro programmes will not recognise them so I have never been able to edit any. That’s a real bummer as I would love to join movies together, edit the crappy stuff and add sound etc. How come Pentax do not use a more widely recognised format???

The ideal Optio for me would be 7 to 10 megapixels, same shape, ie square, have a hot shoe for external flash, be totally waterproof to 5 metres, have a large display with good daylight resolution and a slightly bigger telephoto ability. The digital zoom is useless as it pixelates everything so I never use it only the optical zoom.

[color=blue]That’s it and remember “Life is a daring adventure… or nothing” and “the only thing to fear is FEAR itself"[color]

Have fun,
Cheers from Colin