I thought I would give a comparison of the Sealife DC550 with the Sealife DC600 that I received a few weeks ago. Sealife gave it to me because the DC550 was taking photos that were very over exposed.

My first thought when I turned on the camera was “great, it’s more like a computer”. Instead of the rather complicated menu system on the 550, with the Sealife DC600, there is a Mode button to select Photos, Video or Playback.

Each Mode has it’s own menu, accessed by a “Menu” button. Press the menu button, and there are 3 tabs ( like on a number of computer software applications ) Scrolling through the menus is very easy ( Much easier than on the 550 ) Even with the Underwater casing, accessing the menu is very easy.

The LCD monitor is flatter and I’m sure it’s a little larger, and it’s much easier to see the LCD display underwater.

I find the Flash setting a little confusing, and haven’t worked it out yet. The flash setting depends on what “Scene” is used.

Underwater ( with the casing on off course:-) the buttons seem easier to find, mostly because it’s more simple.

The first time I went scuba diving, I put the camera on Video mode before placing it in the underwater casing because I couldn’t find out how to change the mode back and forth between video and still photos. I read the manual a couple of times and couldn’t find out how to change it. So, my first dive was all video - it was a very bad day for diving so can’t show you the video. Visibility was about 1 foot ( maybe ).

Before going diving again, I looked on the sealife website, at their FAQs. Guess what the first FAQ says? They must have forgotten to put it in the manual:-)

1. How to select video or playback mode when the camera is in the housing.

When the camera is in Sea, Ext Flash or SplashWater modes, you can push the LCD display button to toggle between picture, video and playback modes. When the camera is in any other mode (and outside of the waterproof housing) you can use the slide switch on top of the inner camera to switch between video, playback and picture modes.

So, overall I think there’s a definite improvement in the DC600. A strange thing happened on my second dive though. My husband took the camera when we went off the boat. It was set for video and so he pressed the “Power” button, then Shutter to start the movie. He pointed the lens towards his subject for awhile, then pressed the shutter down to turn it off. And, it wouldn’t turn off. He showed me and I couldn’t turn it off either, so we didn’t know if it was still shooting movie. When we got back to the beach, the camera was still playing. By the time it dried and I was able to take it out of the casing, the battery had run out. The camera is okay, so that’s good.

One more thing I forgot, the Power button and the Shutter button have switched places which was a very good idea!

I’ll post some photos after I go diving next.

I have some video here that I took with the camera on it’s own. It takes great video.

Bear in mind though, this video has been compressed for YouTube, and the picture you see before clicking the play button has been compressed too. When the play button is hit, the picture is very clear. The first photo you see ( before the movie ) was a snapshot taken off the movie, using “Windows Movie Maker”. Very clear don’t you think - I didn’t do anything to it in Photoshop either.