Your Favorite Pocket Shooter for Climbing

[512dude]

My digital pocket camera crapped out this weekend on Jefferson and I am looking for some feedback on what your using for a climbing camera.

 

I am considering some of the Olympus SW (shock & weather) models as well as the Pentax W series.

 

Thanks for your advice.

 

PS. I should say that I also found this post useful http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Main/57986/Number/777653#Post777653

 

 

Edited July 13, 2009 by 512dude

[billcoe]

Hey 5.12 dude, you might start here they've been discussing this very topic for a while: http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=889501&tn=0&mr=0

 

Good luck

 

[Le Piston]

After my favorite Sony digital camera died, I replaced it with a Canon A1000 IS. It takes AA batteries, has an optical viewfinder, zooms well, and takes pretty good pictures (you can look at my photos in the Gallery). If it had a little wider angle lens it would just about be perfect. There are a bunch of good cameras out there...depending on what features you want. Good luck!

Edited July 13, 2009 by Le Piston

[Maxtrax]

For digital cameras I've always had the best experience with Canon and Nikon. My climbing camera is a PowerShot A610... nothing fancy but it gets the job done and was cheap. The newer G9 and G10 are pretty sweet rigs too. I've also heard really good things about the Nikon Coolpix series.

 

One thing I really like about the A610 is that it has an optical viewfinder, no matter what the manufacturer says I have yet to find an LCD screen that is viewable in the sun at 10k feet or on a glacier or whatever.

 

I was considering getting one of the Olympus SW series cameras to replace my fairly beat up Powershot but my girlfriend got one last summer and the picture quality is piss-poor compared to my 3 year old Powershot.

 

I love Olympus cameras for film (XA/XA4 and OM-1 and OM-2) but Canon and Nikon really seem to have the digital game dialed.

[Off_White]

One drawback to the optical viewfinders on small digital cameras is that they're terribly inaccurate, what you see is not what you're shooting.

[OldManRock]

An inaccurate optical viewfinder is a lot better than a camera with a screen view you cannot see, due to bright sun - Use the optical viewfinder with a larger view and crop your picture later.

[Drederek]

5 dollar throwaways. Very light, no batteries, no worries, clip em to my harness. I've only busted one open and scratched a half dozen lenses in twenty years of abuse. As long as you have good light and not too much contrast they do fine.

[reddirt]

After the zoom on my Minolta Dimage went kaput from hail/rain moisture, I replaced it w/ a Pentax Optio W10. W=waterproof. And then got a W20 so my partner could take pix while climbing w/o worrying about rain damage. Even though it claims to be waterproof, I don't treat it that way. But I feel like I don't have to baby it as much either.