Looking for advice on a Rugged Digital Camera

[jmills]

I am a Fire Fighter in Maine, and I also maintain the Fire Departments website (www.monmouthfire.com). I used to grab my Sony Cybershot P92 on my way to a call but it broke during a brush fire this weekend. The Lens no longer moves out & in, just hear gears grinding and sony wants $139. to fix it

So now that you have the background, here is what I am looking for. I want a solid/durable/rugged and maybe even waterproof/water-resistant digital camera. The photo quality doesn't have to be "great" but I would like something that takes a decent picture at 800x600. My idea is to keep this camera in my gear pocket so that I have it at every fire scene which means it will need to be pretty resistent to dust/dirt. I also want to keep the price down if possible, in case I end up breaking it soon.

So far I have beel looking at the Ricoh Caplio 300G/400G and the Mustek Adventure DV3. While I like the features of the Mustek, I am quickly finding that the quality may be a big disapointment.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[ponder]

Jmills,
I work for a Construction (General Contracting) company. We used to purchase the Sony Mavica's for their ruggedness, but they were a little too big for a lot of our people, so we switched to the Olympus Stylus 300. They are much smaller, but they have a nice built in lens cover and they are water resistant too. So far the guys at the jobsites really love these cameras and they are 3.2mega pixels. While this is not a very high end camera, I think this would be great for your fire shots if you can handle the smallness of the camera. Also, they need no software, so you can plug them into any computer with at least Windows 2000 installed and download your shots.

Check out this link to see a picture of the camera and price:
http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/Resul...rm=all&x=0&y=0

Hope this helps you.

Ponder

[JoeRugby]

Jmills
I am a recently certified diver in New Jersey and have done a fair amount of Photography on land while growing up. I think that an underwater camera might work for you. In particular the camera I am using, SeaLifes New DC500, could do the trick. It is a great little 5mp camera with zoom and even a movie mode, but the great thing is the housing. It is a rubber coated compact housing that protects the camera. I have dropped, accidently of course my camera and it hasn't damaged the small camera inside.

I would give this one some consideration.

Cheers