>Any comments in general on purchasing
>an underwater housing unit for a digital camera

I have a housing for my Canon S50 (Canon Brand). I purchased it sight-unseen on ebay and was very impressed when it arrived. It's very cleverly designed so you can still use all the buttons and features on the camera. It also came with things like silicon lube for use on the seals to keep it water-tight. I mostly bought it for the beach, kayak and environments like that.

I'm a very green scuba diver, so when I first got it I didn't take it diving as I didn't want something else to worry about 'down there' (man did I regret it in Belize when the dolphins showed up, but that's another story). However, another woman in our dive group had the exact same camera with the exact same housing and she did take it down to about 30 meters with no ill effects.

However, one thing she did have that was interesting was a slaved flash. attached to the housing - Basically an underwater flash that triggered when the flash on her digicam went off. This struck me as very useful - I'm not sure how well the 'regular' flash would work at depths. Although not the same model, you can see a picture of what I'm talking about here:

http://www.camerasunderwater.co.uk/e...s/es150ds.html

If I was serious about underwater digital photography I'd probably pick up one of these.

Cheers,
Geoff Glave
Vancouver, Canada