Product Description

SEALIFE DC 600 DIGITAL UNDERWASTER/LAND CAMERA

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7343 in Camera & Photo
• Brand: SeaLife
• Model: SL 160/DC600
• Dimensions: 3.40" h x 3.50" w x 5.50" l, 1.20 pounds
• Display size: 2.5

Features

• 6.1 MP (2848x2136 resolution) for crisp, colorful underwater pictures, 2.5" LCD Monitot
• 3X optical/4X digital Zoom, 12 Land Modes + Sea Exposure Mode with White Balance for richer color, AV1 Movie mode @ 30 FPS
• Spy Mode for nature shots allows continious shots at pre-set time intervals
• Engnomic rubber armored housing rated to 200ft/60m, uses SD memory card up to 1GB
• Expandable with all SeaLIfe Accessories

Customer Reviews

Decent starter camera
I bought this camera as part of the "elite" package, which came with the wide angle lens (very useful), and the stobe light (which is a must have IMO). Without strobe lights, the camera is almost useless. Even at 20' of clear water, the built in flash is too weak (again, IMO).

The picture quality is decent, but not great. It seems pretty poor at setting exposure settings reliably, i.e. one picture can be good at a certain setting, and the next one is not usable. I find it very difficult to get the macro mode to focus properly, it's almost a crap shoot if it will focus at all at 12" or closer. You're better off staying back, and zoom in it seems :-/. This is quite disappointing to me, and probably the weakest feature of the camera.

The housing is really easy to use, and requires minimal maintenance (since the O-rings and lubrication free). You still need to keep it clean of course. The strobe light works well too, although it takes a fair amount of "trial and error" to get the proper strobe light settings for different scenes. Make sure you don't set the "backlight" feature on the LCD too high, or you will think your pictures are overexposured when they really aren't.

Battery life is pretty short, and is another problem IMO. If I can get 50-60 pictures on one battery, I'm lucky. I really wish it had a "hot" shoe, so you didn't have to use the built-in flash to trigger the strobe light. The camera does take standard sized batteries, which has higher capacity, which I'm using. The documentation also says that the camera only takes up to 1GB flash cards, but that's not true, I use 2GB Sandisk flash cards with mine, and it can use the entire disk (about 550 pictures at the best resolution setting).

I'm hoping that Sealife will come out with an updated camera, preferably 8MB, with better camera features (like, a Canon quality camera), and make it fit in this case. The odds of that happening is probably slim to none

Looked solid, but had bad image quality
I purchased this camera from a local dive shop prior to going on a trip recently. (I didn't buy it from Amazon because I needed it *immediately*.)

The casing seemed solid, and looked like it would seal well, but I never ended up trying it under water, didn't take it on my trip, and returned it as soon as I got back.

The problem was noise in the image. Under reasonable shooting conditions -- indoor with a reasonable amount of lighting, plus flash, at the "ISO 100" setting, the noise was intolerable. It was worse than I've seen at ISO 800 or higher using name-brand (canon, etc.) dry-land low-end consumer digital cameras. To demonstrate this, I've uploaded a sample image (cat at water dish).

In my experience with underwater shooting with disposable cameras and an occasional underwater "consumer-grade" rental, there are enough things underwater which show up as visual noise on pictures -- little bubbles, silt, water salinity variations, etc. I suppose there's an argument that says that the camera being noisy will, therefore, not have much of an impact. My feeling is that adding a lot of noise will just make the image that much worse. My feeling is that the ISO 100 results were unacceptable, and shooting underwater would often use higher ISO settings (which, for digital cameras basically mean more noise), so this camera was a no-go for me.

Underwater must-have.
This camera is easy to use, takes good quality pictures even if you feel like you're shaking or are not entirely buoyant. It takes a little practice and reading to make sure you use the right settings to get the best quality you can get, but with just a little adjustments in photoshop you can bring out amazing detail and color even without the external flash. I used this in Cozumel up to 90 feet and had no leakage. The digital camera takes great pictures on land as well and has many features to suit anyone's needs. I would recommend buying this with the wide lens.