The Big Blue

The best thing I ever did to improve my already stratospheric enjoyment of snorkelling was to buy an underwater case for my camera.

For about $150 USD, you can transform your point-and-shoot into a mini-submarine, and your holiday snaps into a National Geographic special. It helps if you have picuresque friends, too. All the major digital camera manufacturers have at least a few models for which they make underwater housings, and in recent years, they’ve started adding pre-set underwater modes to the automatic setting, so that you don’t have to fiddle around too much with the white-balance, or confuse the shot with a bad flash. You can get housings for relatively simple cameras like the Nikon Coolpix, but also for point-and-shoot big-guns like the Canon G10. The pictures above were all taken with a simple old Canon S45. Any decent camera store is likely to have a few cases in stock, but a good UK based website can be found here, and a US one here. Get the right case, and you have access to all the buttons and switches on the camera, even underwater. A pocket-size camera bulks up to the size of a pineapple and you have to strap it around your neck while swimming, while a proper SLR becomes more like a steady-cam once inside its case.