Sealife 6 Megapixel Underwater Digital Camera (DC600)

by SeaLife

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 3.5 x 3.4 inches ; 1.2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000KZWXQ4
• Item model number: SL 160/DC600
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,036 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001

Product Description

SEALIFE DC 600 DIGITAL UNDERWASTER/LAND CAMERA

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent starter camera, October 29, 2007

By 

Michelle (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sealife 6 Megapixel Underwater Digital Camera (DC600) (Electronics)

I bought this camera as part of the "elite" package, which came with the wide angle lens (very useful), and the stobe light (which is a must have IMO). Without strobe lights, the camera is almost useless. Even at 20' of clear water, the built in flash is too weak (again, IMO).

The picture quality is decent, but not great. It seems pretty poor at setting exposure settings reliably, i.e. one picture can be good at a certain setting, and the next one is not usable. I find it very difficult to get the macro mode to focus properly, it's almost a crap shoot if it will focus at all at 12" or closer. You're better off staying back, and zoom in it seems :-/. This is quite disappointing to me, and probably the weakest feature of the camera.

The housing is really easy to use, and requires minimal maintenance (since the O-rings and lubrication free). You still need to keep it clean of course. The strobe light works well too, although it takes a fair amount of "trial and error" to get the proper strobe light settings for different scenes. Make sure you don't set the "backlight" feature on the LCD too high, or you will think your pictures are overexposured when they really aren't.

Battery life is pretty short, and is another problem IMO. If I can get 50-60 pictures on one battery, I'm lucky. I really wish it had a "hot" shoe, so you didn't have to use the built-in flash to trigger the strobe light. The camera does take standard sized batteries, which has higher capacity, which I'm using. The documentation also says that the camera only takes up to 1GB flash cards, but that's not true, I use 2GB Sandisk flash cards with mine, and it can use the entire disk (about 550 pictures at the best resolution setting).

I'm hoping that Sealife will come out with an updated camera, preferably 8MB, with better camera features (like, a Canon quality camera), and make it fit in this case. The odds of that happening is probably slim to none

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Looked solid, but had bad image quality, January 15, 2008

By 

Chris Demetriou (Redwood City, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sealife 6 Megapixel Underwater Digital Camera (DC600) (Electronics)

I purchased this camera from a local dive shop prior to going on a trip recently. (I didn't buy it from Amazon because I needed it *immediately*.)

The casing seemed solid, and looked like it would seal well, but I never ended up trying it under water, didn't take it on my trip, and returned it as soon as I got back.

The problem was noise in the image. Under reasonable shooting conditions -- indoor with a reasonable amount of lighting, plus flash, at the "ISO 100" setting, the noise was intolerable. It was worse than I've seen at ISO 800 or higher using name-brand (canon, etc.) dry-land low-end consumer digital cameras. To demonstrate this, I've uploaded a sample image (cat at water dish).

In my experience with underwater shooting with disposable cameras and an occasional underwater "consumer-grade" rental, there are enough things underwater which show up as visual noise on pictures -- little bubbles, silt, water salinity variations, etc. I suppose there's an argument that says that the camera being noisy will, therefore, not have much of an impact. My feeling is that adding a lot of noise will just make the image that much worse. My feeling is that the ISO 100 results were unacceptable, and shooting underwater would often use higher ISO settings (which, for digital cameras basically mean more noise), so this camera was a no-go for me.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For a casual diver, it's just what I needed, August 31, 2007

By 

C. M. Delion - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sealife 6 Megapixel Underwater Digital Camera (DC600) (Electronics)

This camera is easy to use, takes good pictures even if you feel like you're shaking or are not entirely buoyant. It does its job well for the casual diver who likes to take pictures. It takes a little practice and reading to make sure you use the right settings to get the best quality you can get, but scuba diving pictures are rarely perfect without the super expensive cameras.

I will say that I sometimes adjusted the pictures in photoshop because I didn't like the original, and got really amazing results (gamma/degrain/contrast). I used this in Cozumel up to 90 feet and had no leakage. The digital camera takes great pictures on land as well and has many features to suit anyone's needs. I would recommend buying this with the Sealife SL970 Wide Angle Lens.