I fell over in the creek on my farm, and briefly put my Olympus E1 under about a foot of water. It came up shooting, none the worse for the experience. That weathersealing does work. Granted, the E1 is a bit on the large side, not really a pocket cam, but it's 50 Macro lens delivers macro shots of unparalleled sharpness.
Nice to see that it s not only me that has a good camera. No offense to canon and nikon users I just said that as a pun. Canon and Nikon have very good cameras but they are much more costly. I have found that the bang for the buck the E1 was hard to beat a few years back. Even now I look at cameras and I just say naa I still believe the E1 is superior for what I use it for. By the way if you did not know it Olan mills uses this camera for iits on the road shoots. IE church directories. They found in their research that the four thirds system matched very closely the 35mm format only scaled down. That means they did not have to do a lot of cropping because it match very closely all the machines for processing they already had. Plus the camera is very rugged and cost efective. They decided to use it for those reasons. The E1 could be had with its magnesum frame and all the sealing you mentioned for around eleven hundred give or take a little back then. It is a very rugged camera and any thing that even came close to its quality back then was hundreds of dollars more.
But I have to admit I am very picky of where I take it. I would never use it for taking photos of fish near or on the water. I still think that little olympus that goes down to 33 feet is the best bet for that purpose.
I would like a newer camera. Who wouldnt. But when I see the prices I decide my old rugged E1 is still a great camera. My main reason is not for speed or better quality photos or anything like that but I really like the larger monitors. And I also have a lot invested in olympus equipment to go with it. Three lenses. flash, and camera plus the software I bought to shoot graduations. I could have one person at the computer and all I had to do was shoot. I had another person set up the poses. I could tether my E1 to my computer and instantly like olan mills the parents could look and decide which ones they wanted. That was like a paid hobby for me and I have since given that up. It became work and I enjoy photography to much to make it work. Trying to replace that with another camera system or even the uper end olympus ( E3 ) is very costly. I may just buy one of the low end olympus small DSLR's like the 420 or what ever the bottom of the line is. I saw one for just 350.00 that is an inexpensive way to get a larger monitor and more resolution not that one needs more that 5mp's At the lab I use I have asked how big do they make prints from five megapixal cameras and he took me back and showed me a 20 x thirty print that looked beautiful. The E1's sensor is a full frame transfer. Not a full framed sensor but full frame transfer. Meaning there is not a lot of hardware on the sensor itself. The larger the pixels are on the sensor the better the quality photos it will take. The E1 actually shoots to a quality of most other six or seven megapixal cameras.
Sorry I get long winded about cameras. photgraphy is my first love as far as a hobby. I have had camers in my hand since I was about thirteen years old or less.
Daniel
My short answer would have been to buy the olympus point and shoot that goes down to 33 feet.
Edited by nativecajun, 03 February 2009 - 10:59 AM.