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.

Blue ringed octapus and a lionfish

During a night dive at bare island last night we saw a blue ringed octapus sitting on top of some sponges. Unfortunately when i stuck my camera to its face it decided to hide and i couldnt get any decent photos of it.



abit further down there was a juvenile lionfish. It was a bit cold i thought, and I guess so did the lionfish that was hugging a sponge very tightly...



I was using my new Inon UCL-165 macro lens and i believe i had some minor problems focusing. mostly i need to get used to the lens i guess but i sort of thought the camera was slightly slower in focusing when my focus light was not aimed properly for example. but still i am quite happy with the new macro capabilities...

Inon UCL-165 macro wet lens (2x)

Today I used my new Inon UCL-165 macro lens (2x magnification) with my canon G7 in a canon Wp-DC11 housing using the epoque M67 thread adapter and two Inon strobes.

The visibility and the surge at Oak park was terrible so I didnt take more than a couple of photos. My impression was that the lens is quite good, does not interfere with the camera autofocus and also allows the camera to come closer to the subject when zoomed in.

The epoque adapter works fine on my fantasea double tray, but only for macro. If the G7 is at its widest then you can see the lens adapter blocking the corners of the frame. You have to zoom in about half way to avoid that. But for macro things are fine. I zoomed in fully and still could focus easily at 5cm or so from the lens. Focusing seems slightly slower than usual but that could have been because of the crappy visibility.

couple of pics (also can be found here):



I didnt realize that its eye looked this interesting:

More photos with a red filter and bad viz

Some photos from Bare Island on sunday, around the bombora on the island's south. just after low tide, low visibility, canon G7 with a red filter (did not use the strobes at all).

For processing I have only used picasa, with the tint filter and 50-60% color preservation, sometimes the warmify filter. The pics are slightly blurry because of the low light and low visibility.; so the sharpening filter makes things worse. I also found that the increases the saturation also makes tha colors much worse in this case. In photos with blue water (well it was green really but picasa made it blue) and some reef, i prefer not to use any warmify-ing. if the photo is mostly reef then a warmify works well.

before and after:

new fujifilm F100fd

Summary: No aperture/shutter priority. And due to the 5x zoom, the large, square-ish lens barrel on the housing looks like trouble. Maybe the F50fd is a better choice.

a new fuji F camera, 12MP with the fuji super CCD sensor that, according to the reviews i've read, has by far the best high ISO performance. The new camera offers an ISO 12800 !!! mode in 3MP resolution. dcviews.com says something about a 380USD pricetag.

interesting features, copied from a dpreview.com preview article and fuji's announcement:

• SD/SD-HC cards supported
• 28mm equivalent wide lens
  
• good high ISO performance, low noise
• wide dynamic range comparable to the fujifilm S5 pro
• image stabilization (CCD shift)
• Dual Shot Mode: In this selectable mode, the FinePix F100fd quickly shoots two images in rapid succession – one with the flash and one without – and saves both.

some stuff that look like disadvantages especially for underwater photography

• 12 Mpixels
• 5x zoom. if the lens needs to extend too far, it may make it difficult to use wide angle wet lenses ( a problem that the canon G7 has for example)
• no aperture/shutter priority ?? is this true? that would be a deal breaker.

Fuji has announced also a matching housing (see this page for example).

The lens barrel looks big and square-ish. reminds me of the odd shaped lens barrel of the canon WP-DC11 housing for the G7 (and i guess the canon G9 housing as well). This is expected because of the 5x zoom which means that the lens length changes quite a bit from wide to all-zoomed-in. I am guessing that the housing will have the same issues with wide angle conversion lenses as the G7. Anyone has any info about that?

Also, I am guessing that the shadow from the lens barrel will render the internal strobe of the camera totally useless as in the case of the G7: If an item is close enough, you get a shadow. If it is far enough to avoid the shadow, well it is too far away for the weak internal strobe to give enough light.

Comparison with the previous model, F50fd

If indeed the F100fd camera has no Aperture/shutter priority, then it is a 'pass' for underwater photography. And it seems that this is the case, as mentioned on dpreview.com and according to fujifilm's website. a short comparison for underwater-useful features:

feature	F100fd	F50fd
SD cards	SD-HC	SD-HC
Image stabilization	CCD shift	CCD shift
lcd size	2.7in	2.7in
macro closest focus	5cm	7cm
Aperture/Shutter priority	NO ??	yes
aperture (wide)	f3.3-f9	f2.8-8
zoom	5x	3x
wide (35mm equiv)	28mm	35mm
u/w housing	weird lens barrel	yes
dynamic range function	yes	no

new canon dSLR

canon announced a new entry level dSLR, 450D which has live view with contrast based autofocus which means that no mirror flap is necessary for focusing during live view mode. dpreview.com mentions a price around 900USD with a lens and lots of info about the camera.

The olympus E410 which also has live view for some time now, needs to flip the mirror in order to focus which causes some delay and a screen black-out. I have used the olympus E410 (only on land) a little bit and i find the live view mode is a bit slow.

Fantasea and ikelite should produce housings soon. so a fantasea housing with the new canon camera would be around 2000 USD or so, an ikelite would be maybe 2500USD with the camera (just guessing those numbers, i may be way off). The olympus E410 with an olympus housing is now about 1500USD.

Kurnell, the leap to the steps

some photos from kurnell, the leap to the steps. Lots of nudibranchs ...

aperture 2.8 (blurred background) or aperture 8 ('black' background)

using a red filter

Some more photos using a red filter with the canon G7.
Again these photos were taken in very low visibility conditions, but this time at depths around 10m (Bare Island west - southwest side). Simple processing was done using picasa, using the "tint" filter with lots of color preservation, sharpening, and sometimes a bit of saturation. Before and after examples:

SS Bombo - blue photos

It was blue water diving at the SS Bombo (off Wollogong) after all - or to be more precise, after using picasa.
Some examples of "before" and "after picasa processing".

In each of the following sets of photos, the first photo is the original (canon G7 in a canon housing, with a red filter and auto white balance), the rest are after using picasa mainly the "tint" filter with about 50% color preservation.