Reviews:

In the Underwater Magazine page 14 Charles Hood reviews the Olympus E-300 digital SLR and Housing. He writes:

“The E-300 is Olympus’s second stab at a digital SLR (single lens reflex) and the good news is that they made an underwater housing to go with it. To date Olympus have dominated the ‘point and shoot’ underwater market but have had no offering in the semi-professional range. Specification wise how does it compare to its competitors?

At eight million pixels it stacks up well against its rivals from Nikon and Canon in this price category.”

Charles says there’s the usual array of far too many automatic features, although he chooses to shoot in manual mode underwater and this camera allowed him to do that with ease. Charles also writes:

The greatest advantage this camera has over the compact cameras is that the shutter delay is almost negligible. Thus when you press the shutter it takes the picture about 1/10s later compared to anything up to two seconds with a ‘point and shoot’.

The bad news is that, after taking four shots, the buffer fills up and takes quite a while to clear. You may expect this when in RAW mode but I found it also happened when shooting in best jpeg.”

This is what Charles says about the Housing…

“In a nutshell very much like any other housing. It’s compact design fits in a gloved hand well and all functions can be easily used thanks to the large buttons, knobs and levers.

What particularly impressed me was the double O ring seal on the back plate that gives that extra bit of security against water ingress.

One criticism is that the optical viewfinder is quite small and I guess you only get around 70% viewing at best so framing is a bit hit and miss. The LCD viewing screen is 1.8″, slightly smaller than the Nikon D70s.”

Charles is the Senior Correspondent at Dive Magazine in the UK and author of 100 Best Dives in Cornwall.

Read more of this review of the Olympus E-300 digital SLR and Housing by Subscribing to the Underwater Dive Magazine.