SeaLife ReefMaster
It's hard to hold the SeaLife ReefMaster and not start mentally humming a certain Disney song...
Introduced sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s, the SeaLife ReefMaster is a pretty simple means of scratching your underwater point & shoot itch. It is basically a compact (and inexpensive) 35mm camera inside a two-piece underwater housing that accounts for about 4/5ths of this whole kit's value... and maybe more than that. The camera itself, identified by the designation ReefMaster RC SL201 has a prime lens with fixed focus, a maximum aperture of f3.5 and a fixed shutter speed of 1/140th. There is no autofocus nor auto-exposure. Thankfully there is a motorized film advance, and nifty enough a built-in electronic flash that is color corrected for the blue cast one finds photographing underwater. SeaLife calls this "Coral Flash". We give them points for that. Sadly the built-in flash has pretty limited range. Accounts we read online suggested it was best used at distances of no more than 6 feet and its effectiveness was highly influenced by water conditions. Apparently the camera itself struggled to focus that close without the addition of macro filters. So how useful is the Coral Flash? Doesn't sound like it is all that helpful at all... underwater at least. We are sure you could have some fun with its color tint shooting around on dry land though.
Unlike the camera, the underwater housing is pretty well built with the added bonus of being easy to install. The camera slips into one half while the other half is slid into place and a pair of metal clamps secure the assemblage. The housing has a rugged feel that suggests even if you never took this camera underwater the housing would keep it safe from any harm whether aquatic or kinetic. The housing offers very limited access to the camera's controls (not that the camera has many controls to begin with) and there is only a single, large lever for triggering the shutter. This means that in order to turn the camera on and off it has to be removed from the housing, preferably while above water. Nor can one turn the flash to its "always on" or "always off" modes while secured in the housing, leaving it in the auto position.
If underwater photography is your thing, then yes, there are much better choices out there. But the ReefMaster RC still earns a bit of a place in our hearts. It is a cheap and primitive camera that aspires to more than it probably has the right to and does it with a simplicity and ease of use that have earned it praise over the decades.
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