Nikonos IV-A
SCUBA diving is already hard enough. Not only do you have to bring your own air and wear special outfits, you need to bring the right gear to make your underwater trip more enjoyable. And if you're already going underwater anyhow, might as well bring a camera that's designed to make picture making as easy as possible. Good thing you brought along the Nikonos IV-A. While previous iterations of the Nikonos line of cameras were very good, the Nikonon IV-A sets itself apart from the others by being almost entirely automatic.
Introduced in 1980, the Nikon IV-A was the first of Nikon's underwater cameras to have an electronic shutter, which meant that it had an aperture priority exposure mode. This allowed the photographer to set the aperture, pre-focus, and just go about making photographs. The camera's meter read directly off of the film plane, so images were exposed properly every time. For using the Nikonos flash system, there was a manual setting on the shutter speed dial that set the shutter speed at 1/90th of a second. This setting can also be used if/when the batteries die.
Like almost all of the Nikonos series, the IV-A is a viewfinder camera. This is especially helpful for photographing with any color contrast filters as your view will remain unchanged. Plus, the IV-A has through-the-lens metering, so there's no need to try and estimate the shutter speeds. You can just set the aperture and let the camera do the rest.
These days, the Nikonos IV-A, like many of us from 1980, should be taken underwater very carefully, if ever. Aging O-rings mean that the cameras are not as watertight as they were when they were new. Without replacing the O-rings, we recommend this camera if you're looking for a camera that can withstand a bit of rain or sand now and again. With its superb TTL metering, this is the camera you still take to the beach, throw on the appropriate filter, and shoot above the waterline knowing that the Nikonos will survive the weather.
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