Olympus waterproof compact cameras

Diving without a camera feels like sort of cheating. so easy to swim, no heavy camera rig with all the strobes lenses arms etc making you use up lots more air. it's just too easy.

So sometimes one might want to dive "without a camera". Which of course means diving with a smaller camera rig-- diving with no camera at all (really no camera) is impossible, lets face it. It makes no sense whatsoever.

I've been looking at the olympus waterproof cameras. Compact thin cameras, probably good to use on land, when traveling, a small camera that is easy to keep in a pocket. Also, when using them in a housing during diving, a leak is probably not a big problem since the camera itself is waterproof.

The images on this post are stolen from the olympus australia webpages (and link to them). There are several models, in, lets say, two categories: the ones waterproof to 3m and the ones waterproof to 10m. the newest model is the 1030SW (Shockproof-Waterproof).

see the olympus australia website for more info and more pictures or dpreview's page.

Olympus 1030SW, 10mpixels, wide 28-102mm equiv lens, 1/2.33" Type CCD, waterproof to 10m, shockproof for drops from up to 2m, crushproof for up to 100kg, freezeproof down to -10C. According to the olympus australia webpages, the camera has a 1fps for flash sequence shooting, or 6.9fps flash sequence shooting at 3MP.

Bad things about it: no aperture/shutter priority, no manual controls, no image stabilization. Only up to 10sec high quality (VGA) video recording. And also those stupid useless xD cards. But fortunately there seems to be a micro-SD to xD adapter.

Other models include 850SW and previous models 770 790, 795 etc.

Olympus makes proper underwater (40m) housings for the SW series. the 1030SW goes with the PT-043 housing, waterproof to 40m, with a threaded lens fitting (52mm) that can take wide angle, fisheye and closeup wet lenses, as well as red/color correction filters. A step-up ring (52 to 67mm) is available (by olympus and others).
The 1030SW is listed for 400USD, and the housing around 220USD (for the housing see for example from videodirect.com). Previous models are now much cheaper but the housings are about the same price as far as i can see. 790SW or 770SW are about 250USD.

Reading the reviews for SW series olympus cameras from dpreview and other websites it seems that the actual image performance of the camera is not that great, however the features and the underwater-friendly attitude of olympus make these cameras very attractive.

The newest model 1030SW is the best choice because of its wide 28mm equiv lens. The biggest problem is the lack of aperture/shutter priority and manual modes.

price check for dSLRs

current prices for the three entry level dSLRs with housing and standard flat ports (standard lens). All prices from BHphotovideo.com except for olympus housing and port which come from videodirect.com

• canon 400D (rebel XTi) in fantasea 1725 USD (660+1066)
• nikon D40x in fantasea 1710 USD (660 + 1050)
• olympus E410 in olympus 1630 USD (630 + 1000)

all three cameras seem to be good in terms of performance. the olympus has a couple of features that set it apart:

• camera flash works in the olympus housing, so external strobes can work with optic fibre cables
• live view

nikon P5100 and the fantasea housing

fantasea announced that their underwater housing FP5000 for nikon P5000 works fine with the new nikon P5100. waterproof to 60m double o-rings everywhere, 46mm port ring thread for attaching wet lenses, 209USD from adorama. nikon P5100 is 500USD from adorama, so the total is 709USD, a very good price.

australian prices again

i was in a big retail store today in sydney, and saw the price for an olympus E410, so i thought i complain about prices in sydney again.

here is a comparison of the price tag price for olympus E410 with 14-42mm lens.
big retail store in sydney: 1300 AUD
adorama.com from US: 629 USD = about 745AUD, which makes it about 800 AUD including shipping (yes there is difference with my earlier post, but the aussie dollar is going up compared to the USD)

1300AUD versus 800AUD. and it really does not take any effort to find these prices online. shopbot.com.au reports 1015AUD as the lowest price in aussie land. that is still seriously more expensive than getting it from the US.

australian prices for olympus e410

Australian prices are very high on pretty much every item you can think of. It is almost always cheaper to buy products overseas, even after paying shipping and duties. And it might be faster too.

I was just looking at olympus E-410 including a housing for it (olympus PT-E03). Here is a price comparison (the following are the best prices i could find within a few minutes on the web):

from overseas:
adorama olympus E410 with lens 840 AUD delivered.
uwdigitalcamera.com housing (no port) 1050 AUD probably 1100AUD delivered

from australia:
housing from seaoptic.com 1300AUD (plus shipping)
camera+lens from ebay 950AUD delivered

overall a difference of about 370AUD. and this is a very small price difference, usually things are much worse.

new nikon P5100

new nikon P5100 was announced very recently. see the dpreview.com article for more details.
replaces the P5000 and the body looks very similar. the dimensions are identical so it might be the case that the fantasea FP5000 housing will work with the P5100 as well.
dpreview mentions the following differences with the previous model P5000 (only the interesting ones are listed below):

Key differences from P5000

• 12.1 MP
• EXPEED: Nikon's innovative digital image processing concept
• Continuous flash upto 3 frames @ 1.0 fps (new feature)
• Cosmetic upgrade (mainly button and ring)
• Improved Graphical User Interface

the continuous flash feature sounds very very interesting for underwater photography.

new fujifilm F50fd

new fujifilm F50fd becomes an option as now fujifilm supports SD cards (as well as the useless xD ones).

F50fd has the fuji finepix super CCD-HR sensor technology that has by far the best high ISO performance in compact cameras. However f50fd has now 12mp resolution, twice that of the previous model, finepix F31fd so it is not clear if it still has the same performace.


some interesting features:

• fujifilm super CCD-HR sensor, high ISO low light performance (although reviews are not available yet to see if the CCD technology still works for 12 megapixels
• full manual control, aperture and shutter priority
• supports reasonable (SD) cards as well as useless ones
• 2.7" lcd screen
• good battery life (250 shots)
• image stabilization (ccd shift)
• about 300 USD

more information from dpreview, dcviews. (the image shown above comes from dpreview.com)

Buy (photo) stuff from Japan now!

The australian dollar seems very strong compared to the japanese yen (see x-rates.com), it might be a good time to consider buying a second strobe or a second camera when that sea&sea DX-1G is available.



uwdigitalcamera.com has a new look and some interesting new items. well one interesting new item at least, the sea&sea YS-110 strobe for about 450AUD. some features:

• guide number 22
• Three xenon tubes with a beam angle of 105° (with diffuser)
• 13-step manual control
• high-luminosity white LED target light located in the center of its front face, turns off automatically when the YS-110 fires.
• Connection by "YS" cord (hotshoe) or fiber optic cable.
• Operates "digital slave" TTL from the optic cable.

Other items you can buy:

• INON D2000S as a second sub-strobe which is 378AUD (Guide number 20, 100 degree, TTL from optic fibre, 13-step manual),
• INON Z240, 557AUD (optic fibre TTL, hotshoe cord, focus light, guide#24, 13 step manual, external auto)
• Inon UFL-165AD Fisheye conversion lens 350AUD, 165 ° maximum field of view. Close focus ability and extreme depth of field enable stunning wide angle and dramatic close-focus wide-angle (CFWA) pictures.
• the new sea&sea DX-1G is advertised as coming soon.

current camera prices

current prices from adorama and fantasea:

670: nikon p5000 in fantasea 340 + 245 = 585 USD = 670 AUD
790: canon G7 in canon housing 500 + 170 = 670 USD = 790 AUD
930: nikon p5000 in ikelite 340 + 450 = 790 USD = 930 AUD
1165: sea & sea DX-1G 999 USD = 1165 AUD
1212: canon G7 in ikelite 500 + 529 = 1029 USD = 1212 AUD

also:
canon 400D in fantasea 730 + 1066 USD = 2100 AUD
canon 400D in ikelite 730 + 1250 = 1980 USD = 2310 AUD

new sea & sea DX-1G camera announced

bhphotovideo lists this camera for 999USD (not yet available).

interesting points:

• weird hotshoe accepts an LED flash that can be used for triggering up to two strobes through optic fiber cables without firing the internal camera flash.
• wide angle starting at 24
• add-on wide angle wet-lens gives 16mm
• shutter lag time of only 0.1 sec (full shutter press)
• rated to 50m
• camera (most likely Ricoh GX100) might have the same ccd sensor as the G7 (from a post in a discussion forum)
• RAW (about 4sec write time ?)
• its battery lasts 350 clicks, but can also use AAAs (50 clicks)
  

some links:
from digideep, engadget, news.myspace, wetpixel, wetpixel forums discussion, adorama.

photo from bhphotovideo.