First Camera

[Jipps]

I have been looking to get into underwater photography. I have looking at getting an olympus camera and housing w/ a sea & sea strobe. The two ive been lookin at are the olympus 770 and the sp-550. Anyone have any thoughts or advice?

[bversteegh]

What's your budget and interest level? If you get a camera that has a hot shoe (for external strobes), shoots manual, and can shoot raw, you can grow for quite a while with that camera. Oly, Canon, Fuji, and Nikon all make good P&S cameras that can take stunning pictures when used properly.

If you get an Ikelite housing for your camera, there is a good chance it will provide TTL strobe control with Ikelite strobes (but the housing will cost more than an Olympus or Canon housing). Advantage of TTL - the camera controls exposure, so one less thing to worry about. Shooting strobes manual isn't hard, but I really like TTL for macro shots.

Look over some of the posts in the equipment section of the forum. Also, you might try the following site:

Digital Diver Network - Your source for digital underwater photography information!

Lots of good advice in their forum. HTH

[Jipps]

thanks for the info, ill look into those sites. I like the Ikelite housings but ill probably get one of the olympus ones, cant afford the ikelite atm, lol.