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Cameras for Kayakers

I've been looking for a good camera for taking pictures from my kayak for many years. I was unsuccessful for two reasons:

1. Low Cost. Kayaking is a horrible environment for technology. Try keeping track of an expensive GPS, camera or phone when both hands are on the paddle, the waves are crashing over the deck and you're fighting to stay upright. You can stow the electronics in dry bags and keep them secure in a covered hatch, but that means they are not available on the spur of the moment. Even if you can find a way to keep a camera readily available in this environment, the constant movement means things will be dropped, mangled, stepped on or dented. No matter what camera you buy, there is a higher than normal risk of loss to the camera. There are a lot of solutions you can try from attaching floating devices, putting the camera in a protective case or installing a camera mount on the deck. But they do not significantly reduce the risk. The only solution I can come up with is to make sure the camera is inexpensive, so when probability catches up with you, it will not be too painful to replace the camera.
2. Good Quality. This one is difficult to meet, especially based on #1. You are not going to get a lot of quality (especially in terms of magnification, pixels, lens speed, or water resistance) in a camera that costs $200 or less. But you need some magnification and a solid number of pixels to get any decent quality pictures while kayaking.

These two issues tend to cancel each other out, leaving one with no simple solution - unless you get creative.

After an extensive amount of research on the Web, the only camera I could find that comes close to meeting the two requirements is the Pentax Optio W30. But at roughly $225, it is not cheap. I kept looking. I was able to track down one of the predecessors to the W30, the Optio W10. Some suppliers are still selling it, even though Pentax has discontinued it. I then stumbled across a vendor on eBay who was selling used W10's 'as-is'. It looked like these were defective or returned cameras that Pentax had decided to dump back on the market without any reconditioning. I bought four W10's in 'as-is' untested condition from the eBay vendor for a total of $20. To my surprise, two of them worked!

So I solved my problem. The W10 is serviceable, it's water resistant down to 5 ft., the pictures are passable (see the picture of the Little manatee River above) and the price can not be beat. Most of the pictures you see on this site were taken with the W10.

Just one tip - make sure you keep the glass lens cover dry. As you can see from the picture below, if you don't clean off the drops, you will get a worthless picture.