kaarlin

Last year I participated in a Dutch underwater film contest. This is a live contest, meaning that you have two days to shoot your footage. As I f****d up my first day, all the footage used in this film was shot on the second day. Lobsters are easy to find in the Netherlands, so I decided to devote the film to them. An artist fantasying about the underwater world tells the rest of the story. Everything was shot with an Olympus OM-D 5 Mark 2, with 8, 12 and 60 mm Olympus lenses. I loved making this film, hope you like to watch it! Linda

I was in ther in november. Lots of frogfish and octopus. Not so many nudi's. as for the rather poor codec of the Pen 5; that's not a big deal when shooting macro. After a few dives I got the white balance in line with the color temperature of the L&M Sola's. Correcting color was not necessary. I used manual expose alle the time, setting the shutterspeed at 1/60 en trying to get the exposure with aperture, a bit iso (340 max) and output of the lights. In Final Cut I tweaked the contrast and shadows/highlights a bit. Wide angle is a bigger challenge, but I think it can be done with the Olympus. I didn't use a tripod, but put the camera tray carefully on the sandy bottom. The most challenging rich was the goby in the last part of the film. The guide went totally nuts when he saw this one (magnificent shrimp goby). very rare and very shy. I had to put the camera in the sand, try to get the right focus point and then swim away at least 5 meters. Only after 10 minutes the goby and the shrimp would come out. When they disappeared again I could watch the footage, and try again. But on 23 meters air and time were running to very quickly. It took me 2 dives to get a few in focus shots

After hours and hours and even more hours editing, I´ve finally finished my movie, starring the weird critters of Lembeh. It may not be as professional as the movies some of you guys post, but I´m happy with the result (and even more happy that next year I´ll be back in Lembeh). Aside from a few wide angle shots, all shots are made with an Olympus Pen 5, with either the 45 or 60 mm macro lens. Music is from Moby and downloaded form www.mobygratis.com; free to use for non-commercial movies. I hope you enjoy!

Last november I shot some video in Lembeh with an Olympus E-PL5 en 2 Sola 2000 lights. After some experiments with Adobe Premiere, this short movie of all kinds of scorpionfishes is the first result. I'm working on a longer film with all kind of Lembeh-creatures. Your feedback will be very useful for me in the process of editing that one. I know there aren't that many people using an Olympus for shooting video, but already having that camera I wanted to try it and I'm happy with the quality of the footage. Olympus E-PL5 Olympus 14-42 mm Olympus 60 mm macro Panasonic 45 mm macro 2x Light and Motion Sola 2000

I've played yesterday with the Olympus Pen. Its not a SLR, its not a compactcamera, its a PEN! what a amazing camera. It is a retrocamera what looks like the old Pen. It is very small and the quality is amazing. Unfortunatly there will be no underwaterhousing from Olympus. There is no underwatersetting in the programm, so that made me believe there won't be one. Maybe Ikelite will work on it, but the thing is that there shouldn't only be a housing for this camera, but also new ports... I think it is a challenge for the housingmanufactures! I think there is a big group of underwaterphotographers who would love to work with a camera with the quality of an SLR but with the size of an compactcamera.

unfortunatly I do not have a testchard as you have Ryan... I tried the Sea&sea fisheye dome with two extensionrings (40 + 22). At 30cm away from the subject the pictures are ok for me at aperture 5.6 or 8. The strange thing was when I shot 60cm away from the subject the cornerunsharpness increased. It was terrible. I thougt the further away the better it would be. Ryan, did you try this combination on your testchard? What was your opinion about this? Has anyone an explanation why the cornersharpness increases when I go further away from my subject? Karin

I love to work with high ISO in the murky Dutch waters. This picture is made with ISO 1250 with a visibility of 4 feet.

and Ryan, were you able to test everything? I'm very curious@

Hi Ron Thanks for answering. What a pit you don't have the superdome yet! I was hoping you could show dome "fieldresults". Karin

Loftus, i was able to work with Aquatica. For me the results were ok. At 14mm and f8 there is no unshapness. For me that is fine. You can read my review at divephotoguide. I will use this camera with my model work and I won't work under f8 and most of the time I would not use the corners of a frame frequently. So if I work under f8 it won't be a problem. I think Ron Offermans worked with this rig while diving in the Dutch waters. Maybe he can show some of his results here.... Ryan: great that you will take the efford to test all in the swimmingpool. Ofcourse it is no problem to wait!

Hi phil I just spoke to Ryan about it. He tried it with the Zen dome and Athena extensionring. The Zemdome Is the same dome as the Athena. Ryan said the corners were ok at 19mm. Ofcourse I also want sharp corners at 14mm. The Sea&sea dome is wider so what I think is that the Sea&sea dome with the Atena extensionring is the best solution but I'm not sure if I'm right. I hope that somebody tried this already. Aquatica succeeded in getting good results with this lens. I really hope that this will be the same with Sea&sea. I think it is strange that Sea&sea doesn't have an extensionring and zoomring for this lens yet. Karin

Anyone using the 14-24mm lens in the sea&sea domeport. Which extensionring are you using? I tried it withe the largest of the two extensionrings (561) but that was terrible. The lens is to far in the dome and most part of the picture is unsharp. How about the sea&sea dome with the Athena extensionring? Is this a good option? Or is anybody using the Athena domeport and Athena extensionring. Athena I'm looking for the right setup for this lens and there is no signal from Sea&sea at all about it

Stephen and Alex, thanks a lot for your test shots. I didn't use a tripod and exactly the same corner on each shot, sorry for that. For me I wanted to know what this lense would do in the most extreme conditions: so, very close to the subject, widest aperture and the lens used at 14mm. I think this are the most extreme conditions I would ever use a lens, so the results can only be better than what I saw. I think Alex showed us that the 17-35mm with a +4 diopter (and the right dome) is the best option for shooting on reefs!

I don't have a Nikon camera or lenses yet. I was able to try the D700 in a aquatica housing. I want to buy it after I saw the difference between both lenses. And ofcourse I know that a fisheyelens is another option but not for where I want to use it for. Again like I said: for me (and for what I will be using this set-up) the 14-24 is the best option and Iam not saying that this lens performs perfect in all situations. I think that taking pictures on a reef will be hard because in that case there mostly will be a part of the reef in the corners very close to the dome. This part won't be sharp. I won't use this set for my trips. I'm satisfied with my Olympus and yes I mostly use fisheye on a reef. I found the D700 to big for travelling and I don't need/want the extra's of the D700. My Olympus brings me enough quality for where I use these shots for. For my modellingshots I want more quality and work in higher ISO.

No, I don't have this lens (yet). After this try-out I desided that I will buy one because, like I said, for my poolshots where the most "happens" away from the corners.

Hi loftus I agree that this aren't the best pictures but I wanted the subject to be flat so the whole subject is the same distance away from the camera. For me it is visible that I can work with this lens for my poolshots. I doubt if this lens is usable on a reef. Alex told me that another option is to use the sigma fisheye with 1.5 teleconverter. Unfortunatly I don't have these lenses so I couldn't compare this one

Yesterday I have been comparing the 14-24 mm lens with the 17-35 mm (both without diopters). I was surprised by the difference. I think the 14-24 has less unsharpness in the corners than the 17-35mm. I know that a 17-35mm performs better with a +4 diopter, but than I loose sharpness in the middle. And I will use this lens with people in swimmingpools and I think for me (read: for ME) that is more important than unsharpness in the corners. All pictures were made very close to the board (1 foot), so I think (don't know for sure) that the prestations would be better from a little bit more distance (I forgot to try that, can anyone agree this? or is this a misunderstanding?). here are my results and decide yourself what you think about it! (sorry, instead of F (of aperture) I used the A (of aperture....)

Hi guys, I'm very busy at the moment. Tonight or tomorrow I will upload my testresults!

Hi Drew, thanks a lot for the thread. That makes it vissible for me! With the 9.25"dome there is a unsharpness, but much less than the 8"dome. But still.... there is unsharpness. Thursday I will make some testshots with the 14-24mm amd the 17-35mm to sea the difference in this between the two lenses. Karin

Yes, but nobody who really tried this lens underwater. It is all based on what people think this lens would do. I would like to see the results of the 14-24 so I can decide if this lens is good enough or not

this thursday I will be in the swimmingpool with Ron Offermans and we will test the 14-24....

Is there anyone who worked with the 14-24mm lens underwater. I would like to see some results and am curious about the unsharpness everybody is talking about. I doubt between the 14-24mm and the 17-35mm lens. [Edit - subtitle added by Moderator]

just to let you know.... Olympus is not making a housing for the E420! I think it is not wise of them to do so, because they were doing a great job for the underwaterphotography... I hope they will make a housing for the 520 to come....

In Europe this will be: Ocean Optic (UK) and Engin Aygun (Turkey). UK-Germany also makes a housing. They also have portadapters for Olympus, Inon and Athena. The prototype housing will be on Das Boot in two weeks

I have been diving with the camera and housing at Christmas in Dahab. I hope that in one month my review will be online at LetsGoDigital. as Yoko Qna said, there is an adapter to use the Olympus ports. This was the rig I used!