Small, cheap m4/3 / Non compact for underwater use

Amp34

Amp34

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I'm doing a lot of stuff near, on, in and under water in the near future so want a waterproof setup that's rather better than the waterproof compacts you can buy at the moment. The New Nikon AW1 is interesting but has its issues (and lack of reviews) at the moment. That leads me on to looking at small cameras I can buy and put in housings. The brief is:

Small
Good IQ and noise handling at highish ISO
For landscape and closeup use (e.g. eq. 35mm focal length of ~28-70mm, either fixed or interchangeable)
Good battery life - Needs to be up there with DSLR battery life if possible
Cheap - Used is fine if I can buy a housing for it still
RAW output
Possibly a proper viewfinder but not essential (assuming this will go hand in hand with battery life too)
Proper manual controls

I'm thinking anything from a newish Canon G*** to GF1 to Nikon 1 system and between.

Any cameras that would fit my needs best?

Thanks
 
I'd look at the Olympus E-PL1 or newer versions. It's definitely an older model but Olympus made some very nice housings to fit their cameras. These are relatively cheap (I mean, compared to other u/w housings....) and pretty good.
 
E-PL1 may be a good shout, although I had a quick glance around at the housings and they are around £600, which may be the price of all of them. I'll have a look in more detail shortly.

Not very, just snorkelling and free diving to a few metres, it'll also be used when kayaking and when walking/crawling down and through streams and rivers etc. I don't need an 80m housing or anything like that which is why the AW1 caught my attention, it would also be a lot easier to handle out of water which will be important when looking at housings.
 
Have you taken pictures while snorkelling before ?
 
A little. Why?

The main uses of the camera will be shooting when in a Kayak so I need something I can use and not worry about accidentally dropping it in the water or worry about it if I flip my kayak.
 
After just getting back from 2 weeks holiday and a good few hours snorkelling and 1000 plus pictures later I found it extremy difficult to get Decent pictures and regardless of camera it was the getting a sharp picture that was the challange. They were sliglty out of focus or the fish was quick and you had a bit of motion blur. This was all in only a few feet of water.

Best thing I found was to get the sun over your shoulder and try and get down level with the fish shooting from above didn't do them justice.
 
For the sort of rough and ready usage your talking about I think you'd be better off with a ruggedised compact than a camera in a housing and if you want the best quality have a look at the olympus tg-2 which is essentially a high end compact that just happens to be tough.
 
My friends who are still diving(lucky swines) are mostly using Gopro's for run of the mill stuff, anything better then a good housing with strobe ability is a must, direct flash is mostly rubbish. Any good dive shop will have a photographer you can talk to, call them, most divers I know are very helpful.
 
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