Sanyo Xacti VPC-E2

The Sanyo Xacti VPC-E2 is a waterproof Digital camcorder and 8MP digital camera, retailing at $400 and released in 2004. This piece is capable of recording full motion video five feet underwater for up to 30 minutes.

It also comes with a codec that compresses videos 25% more than typical MPEG-4 cameras. This means that this piece can record up to 8 full hours of motion video in an 8 GB SDHC memory card.  It has a 2.5" LCD.  This camera can take digital stills with quality of up to 8MP, which is quite remarkable considering the price range. The video quality is  640 x 480-pixels, which is less than even the cheapest of miniDV cameras. Another drawback is its poor zoom: only 5x optical zoom.