Yup, it gets asked six times a year, but until my ol' Minolta
Weathermatic 85 broke down I never paid any attention to the replies.

I'm leaving Friday for three weeks of boating in the Rockies, and I
need a new water-resistant camera; digital with a lotta memory because
we'll be driving hard and sleeping (and cooking) in National Forests so
I don't know how often I'll get to a place that can download to CD for
me [1]. This will be for on-river fotos, and must survive the
occasional full immersion.

Since te only opportunity I will have to shop will be Thursday evening
after work, I need a reliable water-resistant digital camera with a
good zoom that I can get in Best Buy or Circuit City. OK, if I really
must I'll compromise and go to Walmart for the first time in five or
six years. I need to know what I want so I can just walk in and ask
for it; I really, really don't have time to shop around (the good news
is that groceries are bought, the truck is loaded, and I'm all ready in
almost all other respects!)

[1] I'll also need suggestions about places in Colorado, Wyoming, and
Montana that will download from the camera to a CD. Drugstores?
Libraries? Internet cafes?


-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
--

================================================== ====================
Richard Hopley Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll
rhopley[at]earthlink[dot]net
OK, OK; computer programming for scientific research also matters
rhopley[at]wfubmc[dot]edu
================================================== ==================

Have an Pentax OptioWPI waterproof/resistant (haven't swam with it yet) that
works ok and fits nicely between me and my pfd. My Olympus 740 - 10optic
zoom -with housing is MUCH better but is pricey and cumbersome. The Optio
is 3 optic zoom and is an ok "snap shot" camera. Have found that on default
resolution settings, the battery will last for a 128 card with no
movies/audio/flash, 100 pictures at 2816 X 2112. Unlike the 740 you're stuck
with their rechargeable battery at @ $60 each. I found that I had to reset
all the factory stuff, i.e. digital zoom to optic, turn off auto flash on
every shot, and all the noise affects. Also discovered that the majority of
the info on the screen is too small to read with my "older" eyes without my
reading glasses. Good luck and happy paddling.

Carol Krueger

"Oci-One Kanubi" wrote in message
ups.com...
Yup, it gets asked six times a year, but until my ol' Minolta
Weathermatic 85 broke down I never paid any attention to the replies.

I'm leaving Friday for three weeks of boating in the Rockies, and I
need a new water-resistant camera; digital with a lotta memory because
we'll be driving hard and sleeping (and cooking) in National Forests so
I don't know how often I'll get to a place that can download to CD for
me [1]. This will be for on-river fotos, and must survive the
occasional full immersion.

Since te only opportunity I will have to shop will be Thursday evening
after work, I need a reliable water-resistant digital camera with a
good zoom that I can get in Best Buy or Circuit City. OK, if I really
must I'll compromise and go to Walmart for the first time in five or
six years. I need to know what I want so I can just walk in and ask
for it; I really, really don't have time to shop around (the good news
is that groceries are bought, the truck is loaded, and I'm all ready in
almost all other respects!)

[1] I'll also need suggestions about places in Colorado, Wyoming, and
Montana that will download from the camera to a CD. Drugstores?
Libraries? Internet cafes?


-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
--

================================================== ====================
Richard Hopley Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll
rhopley[at]earthlink[dot]net
OK, OK; computer programming for scientific research also matters
rhopley[at]wfubmc[dot]edu
================================================== ==================

Oci-One Kanubi wrote:

I'm leaving Friday for three weeks of boating in the Rockies, and I
need a new water-resistant camera; digital with a lotta memory because
we'll be driving hard and sleeping (and cooking) in National Forests so
I don't know how often I'll get to a place that can download to CD for
me [1]. This will be for on-river fotos, and must survive the
occasional full immersion.


[1] I'll also need suggestions about places in Colorado, Wyoming, and
Montana that will download from the camera to a CD. Drugstores?
Libraries? Internet cafes?


Kanubi:

We just completed a 3 week vacation and faced the same problem of how
to handle the photos. Our solution was to use a Flash drive. A 1 GB
Flash drive is reasonable at most big box stores. When we stayed at
hotel chains, we used their business center computers to transfer from
the camera to the drive. Holiday Inn's were best for this. They had a
nice free business center that allowed USB data transfers between
removable drives without encountering any security issues and nearly
every major city we visited had one. Note this was outside of the US,
so things here might be different.

The other thing we did was to load them out of the camera and email
them to yourself. This did not give us the warm and fuzzy feeling that
a Flash drive or CD did however. (I trust the Flash drive more than
the CD - no surface defect issues) You would have to use an ISP that
would give you 1 GB or so of storage, or you could leave a PC setup to
automatically pull down the emails as they were posted. And the
security software in both the PC and the Mail servers really dragged
down the speed of the transfer.

If I had to do it again, I would find a small and lightweight old
laptop with USB capable of running XP and use this. This would
eliminate the dependancy on others doing this. You could just leave it
in your vehicles when not in use. And you could use the Flash drive as
a small and convienent backup.

Blakely
---
Blakely LaCroix (# 86)
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

The best adventure is yet to come.

Oci-One Kanubi wrote:

Since te only opportunity I will have to shop will be Thursday evening
after work, I need a reliable water-resistant digital camera with a
good zoom that I can get in Best Buy or Circuit City. OK, if I really
must I'll compromise and go to Walmart for the first time in five or
six years. I need to know what I want so I can just walk in and ask
for it; I really, really don't have time to shop around (the good news
is that groceries are bought, the truck is loaded, and I'm all ready in
almost all other respects!)

The dunkable waterproof cameras that are worth looking at (no housing required)
are Pentax and Olympus. If you want fully submersible other digital cameras
with a housing are better, but housings are bulky. If you check out a scuba
shop (check the web first) Sea&Sea and Sealife are submersible dive cameras.

http://kayakwiki.org/index.php/Camera

You can put more photos on a memory card than a CD, so you might want to get a
couple of high capacity memory cards and sort through the images when you get
home. A 6Mp Pentax will store something like 320 pictures per GB memory card.
The camera plus three 1GB SD cards will set you back about $500 and that's
almost 1000 photos. With one 2GB SD, that's less than $400 for about 650 photos
(or 30 photos per day for three weeks).

Mike

Richard,
A shame you're so short of time. I bought the Pentax Optio WPi last week
and am relatively happy with it. It took me about ten minutes with the
"Quick Guide" to get all I needed to know, and at 59 years, I can see the
icons without difficulty, and can also see the view screen ok even in bright
light.
Buy a 1G SD card from the store you buy the camera at, try to get a car
charger and second battery (they make them, but you may have trouble finding
one in the stores you listed).

But if you can't or can work this deal, do it:

Order a 12V charger ($24.95) he
http://www.eastcoastphoto.com/nav/it...14&catid=&hid=
(watch the link; the = didn't turn blue and should have)

And the battery(ies) here ($16.95, NOT $60 as stated by someone else):
http://www.eastcoastphoto.com/nav/it...27&catid=&hid=
(same thing about the link)

Order 1 (or 2) 2G SD cards ($44.95 ea) he
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820211029

Have them all sent to you by some expedient means (USP Blue?) c/o a ranger
station where you are going to camp and they'll be there when you arrive.

I paid $330 for my WPi, plus got a $30 rebate, so expect to pay a bit more
off the shelf.

The trade-off with this camera is it not using rechargable AAA batteries,
but it is the smallest, lightest waterproof to 1.5 meters for 30 min (wp
spec #8; all the "splashproof" electronics are spec #7), can do movies and
has a decent zoom equiv. to 115mm SLR. If you want to see what I've done
with it so far I'll email you some pics.
Good luck finding what you want, and have a blast on the western rivers. If
I wasn't heading for Alaska on Tuesday I'd come chase you like you did with
me in the Tenn/NC area in '03.

Brad





"Oci-One Kanubi" wrote in message
ups.com...
Yup, it gets asked six times a year, but until my ol' Minolta
Weathermatic 85 broke down I never paid any attention to the replies.

I'm leaving Friday for three weeks of boating in the Rockies, and I
need a new water-resistant camera; digital with a lotta memory because
we'll be driving hard and sleeping (and cooking) in National Forests so
I don't know how often I'll get to a place that can download to CD for
me [1]. This will be for on-river fotos, and must survive the
occasional full immersion.

Since te only opportunity I will have to shop will be Thursday evening
after work, I need a reliable water-resistant digital camera with a
good zoom that I can get in Best Buy or Circuit City. OK, if I really
must I'll compromise and go to Walmart for the first time in five or
six years. I need to know what I want so I can just walk in and ask
for it; I really, really don't have time to shop around (the good news
is that groceries are bought, the truck is loaded, and I'm all ready in
almost all other respects!)

[1] I'll also need suggestions about places in Colorado, Wyoming, and
Montana that will download from the camera to a CD. Drugstores?
Libraries? Internet cafes?


-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
--

================================================== ====================
Richard Hopley Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll
rhopley[at]earthlink[dot]net
OK, OK; computer programming for scientific research also matters
rhopley[at]wfubmc[dot]edu
================================================== ==================

Oci-One Kanubi wrote:
Yup, it gets asked six times a year, but until my ol' Minolta
Weathermatic 85 broke down I never paid any attention to the replies.

I'm leaving Friday for three weeks of boating in the Rockies, and I
need a new water-resistant camera; digital with a lotta memory because
we'll be driving hard and sleeping (and cooking) in National Forests so
I don't know how often I'll get to a place that can download to CD for
me [1]. This will be for on-river fotos, and must survive the
occasional full immersion.

Since te only opportunity I will have to shop will be Thursday evening
after work, I need a reliable water-resistant digital camera with a
good zoom that I can get in Best Buy or Circuit City. OK, if I really
must I'll compromise and go to Walmart for the first time in five or
six years. I need to know what I want so I can just walk in and ask
for it; I really, really don't have time to shop around (the good news
is that groceries are bought, the truck is loaded, and I'm all ready in
almost all other respects!)

[1] I'll also need suggestions about places in Colorado, Wyoming, and
Montana that will download from the camera to a CD. Drugstores?
Libraries? Internet cafes?


-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
--

================================================== ====================
Richard Hopley Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll
rhopley[at]earthlink[dot]net
OK, OK; computer programming for scientific research also matters
rhopley[at]wfubmc[dot]edu
================================================== ==================

first of all, im "into" photography so i have a lot of reasons to like
one or another camera.

however, this is digital so theyre all good....but both pentax and
olympus are known for good glass. That being said, just yesterday I
went down to the camera store to get the pentax and then spent 100 more
to get the olympus for the simple reason that it is solid metal and
somewhat shock proof.

my first digital was a really good Fuji which broke 3 months later when
it got bumped. so after that i got a small, solid metal canon which I
have loved ever since.

i love pentax (my K-1000 and all my nice lenses have served me well)
but i think for kayaking it would behoove me to get a more solid
camera....a solid metal body camera in case i drop it. im sure the
pentax is fine though but the Olympus is a good choice for me.

Oci-One Kanubi wrote:

I'm leaving Friday for three weeks of boating in the Rockies, and I
need a new water-resistant camera; digital with a lotta memory because
we'll be driving hard and sleeping (and cooking) in National Forests so
I don't know how often I'll get to a place that can download to CD for
me [1]. This will be for on-river fotos, and must survive the
occasional full immersion.

The latest Pentax (Optio WPi) is your best bet. Olympus also makes
a waterproof digicam, but I have not yet seen reliable test results for it.
Earlier Olympus Stylus (waterproof) digicams were not highly competitive.

Comparison table http://cacreeks.com/cameras.htm is still online
but contains many non-waterproof cameras. Personally I've got my eye
on the Fuji F30 due to it having ISO 3200, but it is not waterproof.

Main problem with the Optio WPi is that you get blurry results
(due to slow shutter speeds) when lighting is poor. This is because
it maxes out at ISO 200 or something.

On 6 Jul 2006 11:00:42 -0700, Bill Tuthill wrote:

Main problem with the Optio WPi is that you get blurry results
(due to slow shutter speeds) when lighting is poor. This is because
it maxes out at ISO 200 or something.

Don't know about the WPi, but the WP goes to ISO 400 - still not very fast,
though.
--
Charlie...
http://www.chocphoto.com

Bill Tuthill wrote:

Main problem with the Optio WPi is that you get blurry results
(due to slow shutter speeds) when lighting is poor. This is because
it maxes out at ISO 200 or something.

Actually 400, but even ISO 200 is noisy.

The WP10 is a new model that I hadn't heard about. It weighs a bit more
but goes up to 800 ISO, so I would recommend it over the older WPi.

Dpreview.com has 3.7 stars for the Olympus 720SW, 4.5 stars for the WP10.

Bill Tuthill wrote:

The WP10 is a new model that I hadn't heard about.

WP10 may have been the name in development, but when I looked for it, the only
thing I find is W10. They seem to be the same camera based on what dpreview
and the Pentax web sites (Canada, US and Japan) have to say.

W10 and Olympus 720 SW are both JIS8 (1.5m depth for 30min). The 720 is listed
as shockproof and is 7.1Mp, while the W10 is not and is "only" 6 Mp (only... I'm
still using a 2Mp camera). I know someone with a 720 and shockproof + metal
body or not, it's so small and light it doesn't _feel_ like it would handle
paddling. That's obviously a bad bias based on the naive sensation that heavy
and bulky = tough. The 720 photos are good. The Pentax W10 does get a better
rating on dpreview, but those are buyer ratings, so take them with a grain of
salt. If I had to buy tomorrow, it would be a tossup between the two. I'd
probably fuss and worry and then think I bought the wrong one - at this time,
they look that close to me. MHO, of course.

Mike