Which Camera?

Take a look at the Olympus TG3. Great reviews, waterproof and better photography than Go Pro for stills. I haven't had mine on the water, yet, but will soon.

I use Drift HD170s with long-play batteries. Not as expensive as GoPros and I hacked into the audio to run a mic to a mini jack on two of them. They are waterproof to about 6 feet and all operate off one remote so I can have three different views on my videos (I use Final Cut to edit). I have a GoPro HD with a battery backpack and hate the battery life but I have no experience with the newer versions. I think the GoPros have the best quality video of the POV cameras but if the battery dies it doesn't make any difference because you have no video. I also have two Kodak Playsports with detachable lenses. I use these primarily for underwater shots and intros to my vids. Drift has newer cameras but I haven't had the money to upgrade and they haven't bothered to send me one to try:).

My selection criteria included GPS as I wanted my pictures geotagged automatically. I bought the Nikon Coolpix AW120 and regret doing so. It has lots of flaws in its design including no way to select shutter priority so it is easy to get blurred images if shooting subjects that are moving.

My next waterproof camera is going to be the Ricoh WG4-GPS camera. It has lots of features that are missing in the Nikon Coolpix and it has the best shape and exterior for holding the camera with wet hands. It also has a microscope function that would enable taking even something like a fish scale as a closeup.

All these little cameras have small batteries and the GPS will add to the battery drain as will the use of flash so good idea to buy a third party kit that has an additional battery and an external charger.  These are easy to find on Amazon or eBay and cheap.

Question about the GoPro's since I'm in the GoPro market, too: can you turn off the WiFi when you don't need/want it?  WiFi eats up a cell phone battery and may be gobbling-up the camera battery life, too.

Yes,  you can.

I'll second or third or fourth the suggestion of an Olympus TG3.  I have the TG2 and absolutely love it.  Great color saturation and light collection. 

-Mark-

TG3 does awesome time lapse stuff too.  I have a great video of my wife eating a chicken soft taco, but she would kill me if I posted it. I was testing it out and she was not aware of the fact she was being time lapsed right away.

I'm chasing cameras, too, since The Boss doesn't trust me to carry the little non-waterproof Canon I gave her for Christmas.

I have the TG-3 sitting in a Wish List, but there seems to be a lot of mixed reviews about video quality - some say it's horrible, others say it's satisfactory.  The folks at DPReview think it's about adequate.

Some of the sample online videos look brilliant, some are rubbish.  It seems to me that the nicer videos are shot underwater and the garbage videos are out of the water.

Video wouldn't be the deciding factor for buying one point-and-shoot instead of another, but if I decided to shoot a short video, I'd like it to be able to watch it and recognize what I'm seeing.

What's your experience with video quality with the TG-3?

I've got the TG-3 on the short list too