I like diving. And I like taking pictures. It had been many years since I had first tried underwater photography, so when I decided I wanted to get back into it, I did some research and based on reviews purchased a Sea & Sea 8000G camera + housing. Learn from my mistake, friends, and do not waste your money on this camera.
Problems I have experienced with the 8000G:
- Incredible shutter lag. It takes the camera anywhere from a second to a few seconds to auto-focus, then after completely pressing the shutter button, it can take another several seconds for the camera to record the photo. During this time your subject can move (or you can move relative to your subject), and since you are no longer able to see through the LCD screen it is difficult to impossible to track your subject.
- Long delay between photos. After taking one photo it is not possible to take another until the first photo is written to memory. This usually takes 30 seconds or more. Want to take a second photo of that fish before it speeds off, or maybe a few photos of that really cool thing happening in front of you? Too bad, it's not going to happen!
- Horrible battery life. The 8000G is powered by 2-AA batteries. This sounds great because AAs are readily available, right? Wrong! They hold so little power that the batteries do not last as long as your dive. You will not have enough battery life to take the equivalent of one roll of film. This problem would be even more pronounced if you weren't waiting half the dive for the camera to recycle and be ready to take another photo.
- Poor design. Sea & Sea supposedly designed the 8000G as a camera to be used underwater. However, the camera has a built-in flash which is detrimental underwater. (Having a flash close to the lens causes particulate matter in the water to show up, looking like "snow" and turning an average shot into a horrible shot, where it is sometimes impossible to make out the subject.) The camera does have a flash shoe, but this goes completely unused. To hook up an external strobe (the correct way to take u/w photos) you need to first cover up the on-camera flash with black velcro, then use the velcro to attach the end of a fiberoptic cable which senses the on-camera flash and sends a signal to the external strobe to fire. It's a very amateurish workaround.
- Way overpriced. You can buy a better-quality point & shoot digital camera and a housing for it for less than the price of the 8000G plus housing. I believe Sea & Sea is trying to capitalize on being an "underwater" camera by charging more for less product.
- Poor image quality. All of these issues would hold less weight if you got stellar photos from the 8000G. But you don't. Despite its advertised 8.24 megapixels, the photos from this camera have crappy resolution. I'm sure there's more to photo quality than simple "megapixels", and even though I don't know the technicalities of it all, I can see the difference. See sample images below (images are full-size crops, unretouched except for adjusting levels in Photoshop).
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| Detail of porkfish. Photo taken with Sea & Sea 8000G, 8.24 megapixel. | Detail of arrow crab. Photo taken with Canon 5D, 12.8 megapixel. | Detail of onion. Photo taken with Pentax Optio 555, 5.0 megapixel. |
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