As shown in the photos below, it is small and thin as compared to the Canon S400 and it has a big LCD display. It has nicely designed controls which will be very familiar to compact camera users. The camera uses SD memory cards and a small rechargable battery. It has no specific manual controls for setting aperture and shutterspeed, instead using a number of preconfigured modes to set the aperture, shutterspeed, white balance, etc. The DC500 is an ultra-compact 5 megapixel camera designed for point and shoot photography. The camera also comes pre-installed with a number of underwater modes, for both flash and non-flash photography, which can eliminate much of the settings 'guesswork' for a beginner. This setup is designed for extreme ease of setup and use - with everything included - so that a novice can put together the equipment and put it to good use right away. The elite kit also comes with a nice soft case with die-cut foam inside. It also came with a SL970 wide angle lens, and lens dock for mounting the lens on the camera tray.

The kit arrived with the camera and housing, tray and strobe arm and the SL960D strobe and fiber optic sync cable. I was sent a Sealife Reefmaster DC500 Elite setup for testing. By James Wiseman Saturday, January 14th, 2006

Sea life reefmaster mini camera