New Sea&Sea AquaPix DX-3100 Underwater Camera - POOR QUALITY PICTURES

I just bought the new Sea&Sea AquaPix DX-3100 3-megapixel underwater camera.
I have a MX-10 that I have used for years and greatly enjoyed, but was
excited to move to digital. I took a number of simple pictures with the
camera and they all turned out horrible. Very fuzzy and pixelated. The
3-mega pixel captures on highest quality (lowest compression) setting look
worse than pictures taken with highest compression (lowest quality) on a 6
year old 1-megapixel fuji we have laying around the house.

Everything else worked fine (including the connection to the YS-25Auto
flash), but that doesn't matter if the pictures look lousy. My guess is
there are 3 possible problems (or combinations of the 3) (i) cheap CCD for
picture capture, (ii) electrical interference with CCD, (iii) bad
compression algorithm.

Has anyone else looked at this camera? I this representative of this model
or do I have a defective one that could be replaced?

Does anyone have a recommendation for an alternative digital camera solution
(including lighting) that would be in the $1000-$1500 range?

Thanks,
Dan

[Emailing me directly requires a switch from '.spam' to '.com' in my
address]

 

Hi Dan,
in $1000-$1500 range budget you have many possibility.
try here http://www.uwdigitalcamera.com/English/euwdigitalindex.htm
You can also find a lot of useful information from experienced guys
here http://www.wetpixel.com/forums/ or http://www.digideep.com.

Good luck

/peter

 

Certainly a 3-megapixel should deliver better results than a
1-megapixel. I would take it back and see if there was somehting wrong.
Otherwise, get a refund.

 

Was this "wet" or "dry" that delivered such lousy results?

Jonesy

 

I wouldn't expect S&S to use crappy parts, so I'd first look elsewhere.
Bad unit. Bad user (!). Bad conditions? In very low light levels, the
noise level gets cranked up and digital doesn't do it as well.

Were you in clear waters? Murky ones?

Only a few runs in, I've been plenty happy with the S400 setup from
Canon. Still haven't picked up the strobe, but have been able to do
well enough in the warmer waters. I might even give it a try in LA
this week. If you can't get the S&S to work, Canon and Olympus have
lots of decent compact setups.