Bill Tuthill wrote:
John Fereira wrote:
I just bought a Pentax W30. It's supposed to be waterproof to 3 meters for
up to two hours. So far I've only used it once while kayaking. A couple of
days ago I went searching for a geocache that was place on the only island
on my local lake (Cayuga Lake, one of NY's Finger Lakes). It was raining
the entire time and it was real nice knowing that the camera would survive
the wet conditions.

That's a nice digicam! I've seen great results from it and its predecessors.
Pentax is still the King of waterproof cameras.

Picture and film quality, I agree. But waterproof wise, I believe that
Olympus has taken over that crown long ago. The current latest models,
the Olympus 770SW and Pentax W30 have very different levels of
waterproofness. The 770SW is guaranteed to take 10 metres (~30ft), the
W30 only 3 (~10ft). The 770SW predecessor, the 725SW (which I don't
think was released in the U.S.), already was waterproof to 5 metres. The
720SW, which was two models ago, had 3 metres.

The 770SW is also crushproof (can take 100kg/220lbs of pressure), and
works well in freezing conditions. The W30 might win in picture quality,
but not when it comes to sturdiness.

I've been a long time Pentax user, having the P30 and two WR105's. In
the case of the latter I really appreciated their sturdiness and
waterproof housing. Still, now that I went digital, I picked a camera
that could withstand the punishment that I threw at the WR105 and more.
My pick wasn't the W30...

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilkoa t)dse(d o tnl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://kayaker.nl/