Electronics Trends

not really salt proof
My camera just died. I've had it for a couple of years and it's just been an OK camera. I called it my point, shoot and pray camera because in bright light nothing can be seen on the screen, even when snorkeling. And it hasn't been that great snorkeling either. I have only used the camera snorkling on about 4 or 5 occasions and will admit that I hadn't had the seals replaced yearly as suggested. Didn't think it was necessary with such limited water use. Well last month I was floating in the Dead Sea in Jordan. The camera was dipped in the water a couple of times but throughly washed immediately upon returning to the beach. Guess this was a torture test in 30% salt content water because within two days the camera no longer worked. The memory card was runined and the camera will no longer work even with a new card and battery. This was surprising because when I did open the back a couple of days later nothing was visability damaged.

Olympus "Waterproof" Not Really
This camera worked for a while, then got sand in it. Still under warranty, we returned it. Olympus sent us a new one. We took the new one to Brazil where we took underwater pictures in the Amazon River. A stop in Puerto Rico a few days later it seemed fine until I took underwater photos, then suddenly it went black. I thought it was the battery, so I took it home, and it turned out it had nothing to do with the battery. The so-called waterproof camera must have leaked. I do not recommend this camera. Olympus is charging a lot of money for something that only works through one and a half vacation shots.

Flooded during vacation :-(
I was never a big fan of this camera as it's menu system is not too easy to use when compared to my Canon PowerShots. But it's small size and underwater use made it an addition to our vacation travel kit. Unfortunately, on a recent trip to Brazil, the camera flooded for no particular reason and died underwater. Of course, as soon as it stopped working, I took it out of the water, removed the battery, and dried it out for a few days, but it did not come back to life. I really hope Canon starts making rugged underwater cameras smaller than their recently released PowerShot D10 which is a bit on the large size. I would love a waterproof SD1200-size camera!

Great idea, poor durability
I really enjoyed the flexibility of this camera - or at least the promise of this camera. Decent photos, no worries about getting wet or damage from minor drops. I used this for vacation including underwater photos. It's great to snorkel without lugging around a big waterproof case. Unfortunately, the fun didn't last very long. After my 2nd vaction, the camera stopped working. Water had leaked into the seal and corroded the battery and memory card connections. Camera doesn't work at all. Unfortunately, I had another bad experience recently with a different Olympus camera (not waterproof and not exposed to water) breaking after about a year. I don't know if this is bad design or bad quality. But, I know I won't be buying any other Olympus cameras.

poor picture quality
The quality of the pictures are not sharp compared to other digital cameras with similar pixel range. The waterproof feature compromised it a lot.