Underwater photography equipment

There are a lot of different ways to take underwater photos and videos. You can spend between 10 $ for a single-use camera to over 1000 $ just for the underwater housing for a digital SLR camera. You should opt for something in the middle.

The picture quality of single-use cameras is bad and you don't know how the pictures look like until you get the film developed (which costs extra of course).

A waterproof bag for an existing digital camera may sound attractive but it has some disadvantages: you can't see the display clearly, you possibly can't press all buttons and the surface of the bag often blurs the image.

Cheap waterproof digital cameras often produce unpleasant pictures. If they can record videos they are usually of even worse quality.

Casio Exilim EX-Z77 and the snorkel casing Casio EWC-11 are good value for money. All underwater photos on this website are taken with this camera. The picture quality is excellent - underwater or (without the casing) on land. Due to its small dimensions the camera easily fits into every jeans pocket. Another highlight is the video functionality: due to the efficient H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) codec you can store about 45 minutes (640x480 resolution) on a single 1 GB memory card.

Casio EWC-11

The EWC-11 is "just" a snorkel casing which offers protection up to 3 m (10 ft) underwater. But that's not a problem at all because it's easier to take sharp pictures (without flash) in shallow water than in deep water. The built-in flash usually illuminates floating particles in the water and they show up as bright dots in the picture. If you want to dive deeper than 10 m you'll almost certainly need an external flash. I use this snorkel casing up to 5 m underwater. But neither the manufacturer nor I can give you a guarantee that no water will enter your casing.

Accessories

You will probably not have the chance to backup the pictures on a computer during your holiday. Therefore it's important to use several memory cards because if water entered your casing you would only lose the images and videos of one memory card. I switch 1 GB SD cards every three days, so that I usually take five memory cards for a 15-day trip with me.
You should have at least one replacement battery NP-20 . Another convenient accessory is a case to protect the camera.

Alternative camera + underwater housing for up to 40 m depths (131 ft)

If you already have some experiences in underwater photography you might want to take pictures a little bit deeper than 3 m. In this case you should check out the Exilim EX-Z80 and the underwater housing EWC-130 . You can use all tips on this website with this combination as well as with the Z77 + EWC-11.
The deeper you dive the more challenging it will become to take sharp pictures. But after a few days you'll master that challenge as well!
NP-60 is the replacement battery, the memory cards are the same as for the Z77. Have a look at a compatible case as well.

All hardware is linked to Amazon . There is a convenient overview of all items in my shop .