Digital Camera thats rugged and shots good anyone ?

[trencher]

Curious guys what camera's you use in the field and what not that you have found reliable and rugged. Its time for me to purchase a new camera and was looking at the Olympus tough 8000 but been hearing mixed reviews

Thanks

 

[Bass ackwards]

Trencher,

How about you give me a week to reply to this?
I'm leaving on a caribou hunt in northern Manitoba on Friday. Normally, I use a Nikon D-SLR but this a gun hunt and not a camera hunt, which means babying the camera is not a priority and carrying something as bulky as an SLR is out of the question.

For that reason, I went out yesterday and bought a Canon Powershot G-10. It's small enough I can carry it under my parka (and therefore keep it from freezing) but it has a zoom lens and is rated at 14.7 megapixels.

So far it seems like a pretty neat little machine, but, as I said, give me a week (I'll be back on the 27th) and I can give you a review of it after using it in pretty tough conditions. 

 

[eurowing]

I have the Olympus 8000.  I use it here in Afghanistan in the heat and dust where it rides in a mid upper leg pocket and gets bumped, laid on while doing aircraft inspections and occasionally suffers other indignities.

It also accompanies me camping, fishing (I submerged it and took video of a salmon underwater in the Quinsum River) and also whale watching where it took excellent pictures from a zodiac.  The kids take it into the pool. 

I think it is a good camera for it's purpose.  My SLR takes much better pictures, but has lenses the size of an exhaust pipe and up. I do not recommend the silver finish as I found it scratched easily, but that doesn't affect performance, just looks. 
The tap feature I disabled right away, but it does work. 
Image stabilization is good.
Battery life is better than I expected.
I wish the zoom was better, 3X optical is not much

I am not disappointed in the camera.

 

[gillbates]

I used to bring an old 5 megapixel Olympus on my trips and such. I dropped the camera one too many times, and killed the memory card. That wiped out a month's worth of pictures taken in South America, plus my Long Beach Grand Prix pics.

I decided enough was enough and bought an Olympus SW camera (I think it was an 850sw, I don't have it in front of me right now). Brought it to the pool, on holiday, etc. Great knockabout camera.

 

[1feral1]

Jut prior to my deployment to Iraq in 2006, I bought an Olympus 720SW from Harvey Norman's in Morayfield. Its the early type Olympus 'armoured' small cam, introduced in early 2006 here in Australia. The cam can be submerged to 3 metres and be dropped from about 1.4 metres. Newer versions can go deeper and be dropped for a greater height.

It took great video of some rather hairy times (got some great vid of tracer whizing over us -  :nod: , plus very good detailed pics of other stuff too. I used to tape it to an antenna mount of a LAV on patrols, and then reach over, turn it on when I wanted.

I am very pleased with its robustness and quality of pics and vids. It even has a mic that pics up all underwater sounds. Compact, and I carried it on me every day of my tour.


OWDU

 

[SupersonicMax]

I have the Olympus iTough 8000 and I love it.  Drop it from 2m, can go as deep as 10m underwater.  If you travel a lot and is hard on the camera, it is perfect for you.  Oh, and it takes great shots!

 

[chrisf]

I've had a Canon SD-300 for five years. I've used various other incarnations in the SD series.

I'm rather clumsy, so there are several large dents in it's aluminium housing, from being repeatedly dropped, but it still works as good as the day I bought it, highly recommend anything in the Canon SD series. Very durable. I keep it packed inside a zip lock bag from an LMC when it's raining, as they're not water-proof, but other then that, very durable.

 

[DirtyDog]

After researching ruggedized cameras I went with the Panasonic DMC-TS1.  It's not rated for a fall from the same height as an Olympus 8000, but has the same submergence rating I think.  However, it has HD Video and supposedly takes much better pictures then the Olympus.  I found the best price at camerabox.ca.

I'm happy with it so far although the picture quality can be disappointing at times but I'm used to my DSLR.

 

[LineJumper]

I've got the Tough 6000 and am quite happy with it. It's not the best for taking pics of flowers and the like, but that type of photography doesn't interest me. It's not as good as my sony, but is certainly tougher.
Waterproof up to 3m (10ft)
Freezeproof up to -10 Degrees C
Shockproof up to 1.5m (5ft)