Photo Cameras
Buy and sell photo cameras in Panama.
Almost everyone shopping for a camera already carries a phone that takes good pictures, so the cameras worth owning are the ones that do what a phone cannot. A long-zoom bridge camera reaches the surfers at Santa Catalina from the sand. A GoPro or a rugged OM System Tough goes snorkelling in Bocas del Toro and diving at Coiba. A pocket compact or a mirrorless body with a bright lens keeps a child sharp as they run across a dim school hall. That holds for new and pre-owned cameras alike, and with anything that has been in the sea, the seals matter as much as the sensor.
What a compact or a mirrorless camera adds to your phone:
a far larger sensor, a real zoom or a lens you can swap. A premium compact such as a Sony RX100, a Ricoh GR or a Fujifilm X100 keeps detail indoors and at dusk, where a phone smears it. A bridge camera like the Nikon Coolpix P950 looks like a small DSLR and trades sensor size for an enormous zoom: the right tool for surf and wildlife, and a letdown indoors. Mirrorless bodies from Sony, Canon, Nikon and Fujifilm, and the DSLRs they replaced, take interchangeable lenses and give the best images of all. For the look of film, the cameras that take a roll are in film cameras.
Action cameras for the reef and the surf:
a GoPro, a DJI Osmo Action or an Insta360 is built for video first: wide, stabilised and bolted to a board, a helmet or a pole. A rugged compact such as the OM System Tough, once sold as an Olympus, takes better photos, has a real optical zoom and a close-focus mode divers use for tiny creatures on the reef, and goes snorkelling and on shallow dives without a housing. Deeper than that, compacts and mirrorless bodies go inside an underwater housing, and each housing is made for one camera model only, so the pair is worth most sold together. An action camera is not made to watch a driveway day and night; cameras built for that are under security and surveillance.
A GoPro two generations old against a Fujifilm X100 that held its value:
action cameras lose value faster than any other kind, because a new model arrives every year and last year’s films the beach just as well. The latest GoPro or DJI is around $400 new, and one two generations back changes hands for $120 to $200, the sensible buy for a first season in the water. The cult pocket compacts go the other way: a Fujifilm X100 or a Ricoh GR has spent long spells sold out new, so a clean used one can fetch close to its shelf price, sometimes more.
Where the sea leaves its mark on a used camera:
around the ports and buttons first. White crust there, and buttons that stick or crunch, mean the camera went into salt water and nobody rinsed it. On a rugged compact, open the doors and check the seal is clean and unbroken; fog trapped behind the lens means water got past it at least once. On a housing, the main O-ring should be soft and evenly round, never flattened, cracked or gritty, because that ring is what floods it. A swollen battery sticks in its slot or stops the door closing flush, and it gets replaced, not charged. The bulging lenses of an Insta360 scratch easily and every mark shows in the footage, while recent GoPros have a lens cover that unscrews and is cheap to swap. Shoot a few frames on your own card at both ends of the zoom and view them full size: one soft corner means a knocked lens. A look-alike action camera sold as a GoPro will not pair with the GoPro app.
Dive history for the buyer of a waterproof camera:
say plainly where yours has been: the pool, snorkelling or salt-water dives. Divers will want to know when the housing O-rings were last changed and whether everything was soaked in fresh water after each trip. List every battery, the charger, the mounts and the housing by its model name, and photograph the doors, the seals and the front of the lens with the screen switched on. Add a few unedited shots, then unpair it from the brand’s app and reset it. Anyone collecting a waterproof camera in Coronado or Bocas will want to sink it in a bucket of water with the doors locked before paying, so have the bucket filled.