Panasonic DMC-TS25D Waterproof Digital Camera with 2.7-Inch LCD (Orange)

I have only used this camera underwater once so far, but it was absolutely fantastic. I took it to the swimming pool with my daughter and niece as a test run, and got some great shots of my niece swimming underwater, and alternated with underwater shots and above the water shots. The camera is made to slough off the water as soon as you pull it out, so the pictures out of the water don't have spots or water drops on them. It seems like a minor thing, but it really made a huge difference. As for being waterproof, it seemed to hold up great. After we got home, I noticed it had some chlorine spots on a couple pictures (after I tried to use a dry cleaning cloth on it) so I soaked it in a sink full of clean water for about 5 minutes, and voila! Perfect photos again. I've seen some reviews that say this camera doesn't work well inside, haven't noticed a problem myself. Pretty much every single picture I've taken with the camera has turned out with great color balance and good lighting. I have had a couple overexpose a bit with the flash, but hey, this is a point and shoot camera, not a professional grade camera. The overexposure can be fixed on the camera itself with the offered image editing or with editing software on your computer.We'll be taking the camera on a trip to the lake in a week, so we'll see how it holds up with the sand and murky water, but so far I am more than pleased with this little camera, especially for the price! Can't wait to take it out and play with it some more.EDIT: Used this camera on a trip in pools, lakes, and rivers. Had a blast. Got some great shots in the water, above the water, canoeing, kayaking, and even in a water feature fountain thing for the kids to play in, all with no worries about water leakage. I do recommend purchasing a floating wrist strap because the camera itself doesn't float if you drop it in deep water. Even in the lake and river the pictures came out great, though you need to be close to your subject in dirtier/murkier water. After a month and a couple weeks, I'd say it's already earned its keep for the price I paid. I think we took somewhere around 1600 photos on a two week trip with this little camera, and 99% of them were fantastic. I also bought an extra extended life battery, and with constant shooting, I did need to change the batteries about once a day. But, I take a LOT of photos.EDIT2: After reading some of the other reviews here, I think something needs to be said - this is NOT an expensive, professional level camera. It isn't being sold as one, because it's not. No, you are not going to get perfect pictures every single time. You're not going to get perfectly clear-as-day underwater photos (although you will get some awesome ones). This is a point-and-shoot camera that you can take in the water with you. If you expect more than point-and-shoot quality, you should not buy this camera. But understand you will spend more money on something else. For the average user, it is an absolutely fantastic camera for the price. You can take it anywhere, it fits in your POCKET (how nice is that?) and it will stand up to being dropped, getting wet, getting cold, etc. Take it on your family vacation without worrying about it. Now try to do that with a $3000 professional camera. Also, for people saying the quality sucks, I have blown up some of the photos from this camera to 16x20 prints and hung them on the wall. I certainly can't tell they were taken with a $140 camera, and neither can anyone else.

I normally never write product ratings but I felt compelled to write this one to warn future buyers of this camera.I was looking for a compact camera that could take some of the pictures where my iphone 5 falls short: night pictures with flash.Since I was already in the market for a compact camera I thought I may as well go for one I can take with me anywhere: the beach, pool, snowboarding, etc without having to worry about water damage.I went for this camera because normally Panasonic cameras take very good pictures since they use Leica lenses which I consider some of the best lens manufactures out there. Since this one had a Leica lens I imagined picture quality would be good, but I was completely wrong.Pictures without flash were dull and pictures with flash were ultra bright and some of them came out blurry even though they were still pictures. In addition, the water damage warning continuously pops up (ALL the time!) even though the battery cap is securely closed and locked. Finally, the monitor is super grainy and VERY slow to respond, so when you move the camera from one side to another you get a blurry and choppy image until you stop moving the camera. Totally useless in my opinion...I hope Panasonic made a better job with the TS5. I would expect that to be the case since it costs nearly twice as much as this one.0 stars for this camera if this option was possible...

For our Cancun vacation I was debating whether to take my D7100 Nikon DSLR which takes great photos. This time however, I wanted to take underwater photos as well. Did some research and underwater housing for D7100 was expensive so I thought this was a good time to buy a secondary camera that is small, waterproof, captures decent video for under $200. So I did some extensive research and initially waterproof cameras from Nikon and Canon came to mind but since this was my secondary camera I wanted to keep it below $200. If this was my primary camera, I would of spent little more and would of likely purchased Canon, Nikon and even Olympus in the price range of $200-$400.First of all, this is my first point and shoot camera and I am quite surprised by the image quality, especially for a camera that I spent in the low $100. I want to emphasize at this price point because it's unfair to compare a low $100 camera to $1200 Nikon with a $500 lens. Unfortunately, when we first arrived at Cancun, it was cloudy and raining. So the pictures taken on the beach are somewhat grainy (I am carefully viewing the photos as I write on a computer screen), but the next days were sunny and the photos quality are somewhat comparable to my Nikon DSLR. So the overall image quality is there, especially something that is very small to carry around and that can easily slide into your pocket. Pictures taken inside the hotel during the daytime came out great. At night, pictures taken with flash came out pretty clear.Afterwards, I went kayaking and submerged this camera underneath the water. With the large LCD display, I was able to see the ocean bottom from the kayak. Took several pictures and they came out OK most likely because the water was somewhat murky. So I really couldn't test the image quality of underwater pictures because the water was not clear. Then I changed to video mode, and using the default mode the video came out somewhat grainy for both out of water and under water. I really didn't have time to read the manual and change any settings since the camera came a day before our vacation. But I really didn't expect high quality video like my HD Canon camcorder. According to the manual, it captures 720P video.Overall I took over 450 pictures and about 7 minutes of video using a 16GB SDHC memory card and used up only 3.33 GB of memory (approximately 11.5 GB of free space), and fully charged camera about two times during my three days stay at Cancun. Unless you are taking hundreds of pictures in a day, I do not believe a second battery is necessary. In the default video mode, 16GB of SDHC memory gave approximately 30 minutes of video recording time.Sure it would of been nice to have a camera that will take better pictures during low light or better quality video, but for the price I really can't complain. If you want a waterproof camera with high quality video, I would recommend looking at other waterproof cameras with video capability. But for me, I was quite surprised by this Panasonic underwater camera and it definitely makes an excellent secondary camera that I can easily carry around. So out of 450 images, I would say that over 95 percent of the images are keepers that I can print although not perfect. Oh by the way, the camera focus is pretty fast for a point and shoot. Obviously, the waterproof works great, otherwise I would of have no underwater pictures, but if there is one improvement (not a complaint) it would have to be the video quality. My wife and my kids love this camera and I will likely report back once it gets more usage.