Review on 📷 Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS2 Yellow Waterproof Digital Camera: 14.1 MP, 4.6x Optical Zoom, Image Stabilization by Patrick Reynolds

I bought a Canon Powershot SD800 3 years ago as a handy alternative to my DSLR. It was also nice that Canon built an underwater housing for this camera and I have used it on several diving trips with no problems and with clear images. However, this camera died in the washing machine. do not ask. So I was looking for another camera with the same versatility as Canon and even more "cool". After some research I came across the Panasonic TS2. I don't normally associate "digital camera" with Panasonic, but as the proud owner of several Panasonic products in the past, I took a closer look. This camera is said to be waterproof WITHOUT a separate housing (up to 10 meters or 33 feet, pressure 1 atmosphere), take pictures with a resolution of up to 14 megapixels and even record videos in HD quality (720p). Sounds good, but I wanted to test it. I was still wary of taking it underwater without a hull, but my wife and I went diving the weekend we got it, trying not to exceed 33 feet, and taking both photos and videos. I can only say wow! All the photos turned out well and the video worked great. There are over 20 different "shooting modes" depending on lighting and subject speed, and I chose "Underwater" (what a surprise) for NV photos as well as Portrait when I was photographing my wife. Modes varied, with Portrait mode showing more detail and slightly warmer colors. There are also 5 different focus modes so you can follow a single subject in a shot as it moves and the camera will keep it in focus against the background. I followed the fish this way and it worked pretty well. Back at home, we wanted to see how easy it was to convert videos to DVD, and it turned out to be a little more difficult. The camera comes with software called "Photofun" but it's not very intuitive, so I used imageburn with another program called multiavchd to convert .mts files (the video format used by Panasonic) to a DVD-burnable format convert. Within 5 clicks from SD card to DVD we were watching HD quality videos on our DVD player. We are very happy with this camera and will be purchasing a dive case so we can go deeper than 33ft on our next dives. The still and video capture and overall ruggedness of this camera make it very appealing to people who like to place their cameras in environments typically considered unsafe for traditional cameras.