Nikon’s D200 certainly moved the goalposts for underwater photographers when they released it in December 2005 and like many others I jumped and upgraded from the D100.
For underwater photography, this is an expensive upgrade because the special waterproof housings required to use SLR & DSLR cameras underwater are designed for the specific model – so a new housing is also required and for a quality aluminum one, the rule of thumb is 2x the price of the camera….
That said, the investment was a great one for me because I saw a real step change in the quality of my images once I got used to using the advanced functionality of the D200 underwater. The two things that impressed me the most about the D200 was the sensor & it’s dynamic range and the four-channel histogram.
It’s now 3.5 years since the D200 was released and, as we all know, a year in the life of a digital camera is the same as a dog year – roughly 7x…. So it seems quaint talking about these features now, but at the time they made a huge difference to my underwater photography!
Check out my review of the D200 for underwater photography on the following link:
http://www.indopacificimages.com/pages/pages_no_ anfy/equipment/eqmt_pages/cameras/03_d200.html
Alternatively download the article I wrote for Underwater Photography magazine on the link:
http://www.indopacificimages.com/pages/articles/Equipment/UWP/UWP_D200/D200.pdf
But the proof is in the pudding, as they say…. so check out the Image Galleries on my website, and as you will note most of the images were taken with the Nikon D200!
http://www.indopacificimages.com/index.html
Don Silcock