2014 Waterproof Camera Roundup

I purchased the TG2. It is an okay camera. It has one sales breaker which I suspect most have, including these new ones. When I am in bright sunlight (down the beach or snorkeling and swimming or down the park with the kids and the dog) the LCD display is impossible to see. I mean impossible, not difficult or a little bit bad, I mean impossible. Too many reviews I have read either ignore this fact or fail to emphasize this fact strongly enough. Particularly in the conclusions section. It makes framing pot luck, click and hope if you like. My strong advise is only buy these types of cameras after trying one in the sun.

Purchased the Olympus TG 3 on Friday and returning it on Tuesday. Very disappointed. I gave it a quick test (video & pix) around the house and it seemed to be working perfectly. Used it again that evening and it had trouble focusing quickly, maintaining focus, or not focusing at all. This applied to pix and video. Tried it again the following day and it seems to be "almost" in focus. Using the video in a quiet situation and you record the motorized zoom. I have a TG 830 that has worked perfectly, in and out of the water. Maybe this was just a defective device but I think I'll look long and hard before making my next purchase. By-the-way, your reviews are great, They are very useful in my decision making.

Just to be pedantic:
the abbreviation for "continued" is "cont.", not "con't".
It should not bother me, but it does.

I thing that underwater cameras like this are more like a "toys" than "real underwater setup". Many of my shots http://bluecorner.pl/fotografiapodwodna/ I made quite deep. It is impossible to achieve such good effects without good setup. Many interesting species live deeper not on shallow depths. When you go deeper you need strobe because it is getting dark.

I think that RX100 I/II with housing is more expensive but much more flexible option. You can go much deeper. You got RAW editing, external strobe options, wide range of converters for macro or wide angle to extend your setup in the future.

Cameras like this are good for holidays or snorkeling. If you dive a lot, probably you got money to buy and carry much better setup :).

Why so few underwater shots in the samples galleries, especially for the Olympus, which you declared to be the winner?

Funny why no Panasonic lumix I got one and it works really good!

I'm not enthused about any of the above. Back to the drawing board. May have to consider a AW1. Wish Canon would make an equivalent.

DO NOT BUY ANY OF THESE!!! is the best advice I can give you.

I purchased the best of the past years' roundups, the Panasonic, figuring that it should be a little bit better than the dismal tiny-sensor cameras out there.
Boy was I wrong, and it was wasted money. It became an expensive hand-me-down for my 8 year old girl - at least she can drop it, we can take it out on the inflatable kayak, and she is delighted with all she does with it (stop motion video, pictures of her dog...) and she's just too delighted to discover what she can do with a camera to worry about IQ.

If you are to get yourself a waterproof camera, get at least something with a 1" sensor or larger if any are available. I haven't researched this in the past months, but I do remember Nikon has the waterproof version of their Nikon-1. That is what you should get.

If you're going to have crappy image quality that these things deliver, you may as well just get the Sony waterproof smartphone and use that instead.

Bought AW120 and returned it within a week...
It's awfully flare and glare sensitive that you cannot see any details, and the flash is inconsistently Overexposure.

I can vouch for the Pentax WG-3 (basically same as Ricoh WG-4). None of these cams look good at 100%, but I narrowed it down to the Oly TG-2 and the WG-3. Chose the Pentax on the basis of better user interface and much lower cost (at the time was like $200)!
It handles well, allowing me to program quick access via the 'Green' button to ISO, EV, WB, AE metering as well as the standard 4-way controller for AF, flash & drive mode which includes BRACKETING!!Tthe Dual SR system really does help, and I can take decent shots from a moving kayak at night at ISO 800 f/2 1/4 to 1/8 sec exposures - not bad for this little cam:

http://kayakfari.wordpress.com/trips-sea-stories-pics/random-gallery-2/florida-south-florida/urban-paddling-in-south-flaariduh-florida/kayaking-the-boca-raton-holiday-boat-parade/

http://kayakfari.wordpress.com/trips-sea-stories-pics/grass-paddling-in-the-east-everglades-expansion-area/

You can check out the full-screen panoramas and zoom in to see the IQ!
-Flex

I cannot understand why manufacturers do not use the larger sensor from the G series Canon or the Lumix LX 7 for example. The cameras would still be very pocketable (the zooms are only very modest anyway) and the IQ would be very substantially improved. These cameras are often the ones you have with you in wonderful unspoilt countryside with great landscape opportunities yet you are rewarded with images of such mediocre quality (even at ISO 100) that anything bigger than A4 is not contemplatable.

And the value winner is...the Pentax WG3. Same lens and other specs as the re-badged WG4, but sells for $249 on Amazon. Look no further.

With such small sensors, If manufacturers would keep the megapixels LOWER the image quality could be much better! 10MP or below is perfectly good for cameras like theses.

I have Olympus TG1 and an earlier Tough camera (TC130?)

I wonder if it's better to just use your smartphone if you have waterproof ones like the SGS5 or the Xperia Z lineup. I mean none of these have anything particularly stellar in terms of image quality, and since most people would downsize them anyway, imo a smartphone would be good enough.

I want a waterproof camera to take kayaking, etc. I may drop it in the water,but won't be diving with it. I would like to have the highest quality pictures I can get in a compact...that can be dropped in the water.

Are there other cameras that I should consider?

Seems that these rugger water tight cameras are left behind - not much has happened in the handling or IQ department over past few years - contrary to high end P&S and mirror less cameras.

Including the AW1 using JPG unfortunately will not show what is really possible with the AW1 as the JPG engine is not the best. Developing AW1 RAWs with DxO is another thing.
Of course the f/2.0 lenses of the compacts are one stop better than the 10mm fixed AW lens and one and a half stop better than the AW zoom but in the end (having good light) it is possbile to capture way more detail with the AW1 than with any of the compacts hence even under ideal conditions (good light, base ISO) IQ does not get any better with the compacts.

Another comparison that would be worth making is against a mirrorless or small DSLR (or even a high-end compact) and an underwater casing.
As people might already have that camera plus lens, the *opportunity cost* of just the casing could well be *lower* than buying one of those specialised cameras.

Then of course it should be no contest regarding image quality (esp because such cam will shoot RAW) but it would be interesting WRT handling.

As mentioned below, pity you didn't (couldn't, maybe) include the Nikon 1 system waterproof version.
Would have been great for two reasons:
1) does the larger sensor REALLY blow the rest out of the water (no pun intended) quality wise?
2) is the extra money worth spending for those that want a better all-round and more flexible underwater/rugged system?

What's with people demanding RAW on a camera with 16 million pixels on a tiny 1/2.3" sensor? Look at the pictures, they have noise (VISIBLE IN JPEG!) even at base ISO!
What do you expect from RAW, more encoded noise? Because JPEG at max quality already encodes 12 bit/pixel, and those tiny pixels don't have even 10 bits of information (as opposed to noise) in them!
Want to correct the picture - go ahead and correct the JPEG. Same thing. RAW is not going to turn these 16 mpix into 16 mpix from D4s!
Besides, except on Oly and Pentax at the very wide end, these pixels are way smaller than Airy disks, and even then Bayer-interpolated! Downscale 4:1 and stop fooling yourself.

If the videos from TG-3 are still clicking noise all the time...

I recognize that beach! Hope you had fun on the Big Island Jeff ;-)

My old Powershot D10 was killed by sand in a door :-(
But, seriously, take a look at the 2009 group test:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q209waterproofgroup
IMO, IQ was better 5 years ago. Or not worse.
I'm think of all the marketing gadgets (WiFi, GPS). I ordered a AW120 to replace my D10... and returned it after one week. IQ is bad beyond imagination, even in bright sunlight. The D30 does not look much better. The D10 was less compact but the lens was decent and I got very nice images from this camera.
Five years later, all we get is bad IQ, awful periscopic lenses, useless gadgets and slippery cameras.
Sigh.

Low light comparison is useless, 2 cameras at 1/50s, one at 1/40 and one at 1/15s. Riiight. And zoomed in to boot, like it is how low light shots are done. How about wide end, Low Light handheld scene mode (or Auto on all 4) and see what they can really do.