Paul Le Chien

I highly recommend buying this camera if you want quality underwater pictures. Be sure to wipe/blow the water drops off of the lens after bringing it above water or you WILL have water spots on parts of your pictures. I have not changed my rating as of today. I just wanted to let everyone know that Olympus did repair my camera in a very timely matter. Within a day of simple testing, the colored panel in the front already developed a scratch. The functions are not intuitive at all, for example, trying a simple thing like turning the camera on and then trying to zoom in you get "not available in the current mode". This camera definitely has great optical quality. It's a very thin camera and the user interface is very easy to use and smart.

I have taken it kayaking near Washington DC, and it worked great, but the reason I bought it is for the marine biology field study program in Turks & Caicos, which is where I am right now. I used it snorkeling, always in less than 10 feet of water (its waterproof to 16 feet), and have been very conscientious about washing all the saltwater and sand off its exterior and lens, and have kept the battery and memory card closed at all times except when charging and uploading photos. I would recommend this camera for rain, the beach and poor weather but I hesitate to say it should be submerged. Have a backup if you are away on vacation (just in case).

While I will admit the shutter lag (time in between shots) is not the fastest it is also not the slowest and actually is about the same as any previous point and shoot I have owned in the past. Highly recommended! It's a good camera and probably would give 4 stars if it wasn't for the freezing problem. To get a quality shot it I feel like you have to select the correct camera setting first, which just adds time and annoyance. I've been using Canon Powershots the past 10 years and this camera doesn't even compare to the Canon's point and shoot capability.

Customer service has been less than helpful and I still haven't received a new camera over two months later. The 14MP produces sharp images, auto focus finds the right subject, waterproof (used it in fresh & salt water), movies work great (very minimal wind noise).

I was a little nervous at first about dunking it in water but it worked great for underwater pictures and video. I need an extra battery and I bought a 16 GB SD card which gave me over 4000 pictures or over 5 hours of video. Phone is now dead as disco and the return labels have already been printed. That's too bad too, because I was very happy with the quality of the pictures and really liked the thought of shooting pictures under water.

Go for it I liked this camera out of the box. The software is intuitive, the options varied and I took it to the tide pools right away and got some great super macro shots of marine life underwater. This is by far one of the toughest little cameras I have ever seen. I recommend it and to those of you who have had issues with yours, consider sending them back for a replacement. It cost more to fix these cameras than to buy a new one. So far our Tough cameras keep working even after rough use.