Dry Pak camera case from REI ($12)

Recently went on vacation to the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Lots of snorkeling to do as the whole island is practically surrounded by coral reefs.

As this was supposed to be a vacation and not a work trip, I chose to carry a simple point-and-shoot camera.  But how to capture the sights that would compose a large portion of our memories from the trip?

Online, I found some hard shell underwater housings good to 300 feet, but they almost cost more than the camera itself.  As a snorkeler I didn’t anticipate going deeper than 20 feet; I needed a more low-tech solution.

A trip to REI yielded a glorified ziploc bag that just might do the trick.  Nothing fancy, but it promised to keep the contents dry.  I was initially skeptical of the image quality shooting through the plastic material, but a test shot on dry land seemed acceptable enough.  A little loss of sharpness but not terribly noticeable without side-by-side comparisons.

It took some getting used to actuating buttons through an inflated air sac and I had to make sure to keep the plastic stretched tight across the lens, but in general, I was impressed by how the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle was once again upheld.

I made the following images with my Panasonic LX-3 point-n-shoot camera in the Dry Pak camera pack, not bad for a $12 investment.