Olympus E-PM1 PEN

[PAFirefighter]

Hey all,

So most of my underwater photography has been with my GoPro Hero2 in their undewater housing. I was "okay" with it, but not overly happy. I'm a photographer on land and shoot with a Nikon D2x with a few pieces of glass. Underwater, with the GoPro, I felt like I was missing a lot of the quality. The videos were great, but the photos were severely lacking.

Some examples...

Video...
Bait ball in Bonaire:
ENORMOUS Bait Ball & Tarpon at Boca Slagbaai, Bonaire - 720 HD! - YouTube

Octopus at Buddy Dive in Bonaire:
Daytime Octopus at Buddy Dive Bonaire - GoPro Hero2 w/ Dive Housing & Red Filter - YouTube

Photos:

As you can see, the photos are okay, but not really what I like in terms of quality. What am I looking at with the Olympus Pen? Anyone have some photos/videos they can post so I can compare? If you have one, what do you like/dislike about it? Several retailers have deals going where you get the Pen and either the lighted underwater housing or non-lighted underwater housing for $500. This is VERY tempting.

Thank you so much!

 

[Abdullah]

I have some photos in my gallery that I took with the E-PM1 (with kit lens), the standard housing, and a single YS-D1 strobe. I've seen the lighted housing, and wasn't impressed.

I really like it. The menu is easy to navigate underwater. It focuses very quickly. And the image quality is pretty good. There have been some really good deals lately on last year's models. I think it's well worth the buy.

 

[Audsred]

Hi,

I have a EPM1 and really like it - if I had to do it over I would definitely go for the housing without the 'twinkle' lights. I used 1 or 2 strobes, focus light and for macro I added the Subsee +5 - if you go to page 5 in this forum - toward the bottom you will see a post with title about EPM1 pictures Philippines with this set-up. In the post you will see some pics.

Audrey

 

[mscott556]

I really like my E-PM1. The biggest drawback so far is the 1/160 max shutter speed w/flash.

 

[Interceptor121]

Rat-man has summarised it well. Olympus makes fine cameras with only two weaknesses slow sync speed (the new em-5 syncs at 1/250 others at 1/160) and poor video mode with only 1080i
For stills the pictures are great but it is hard to get some effects like black backgrounds or shoot sunball in cfwa with flash

 

[sagan]

could you elaborate more why the 1/160 max shutter speed become a drawback?

I really like my E-PM1. The biggest drawback so far is the 1/160 max shutter speed w/flash.

 

[tamas970]

could you elaborate more why the 1/160 max shutter speed become a drawback?

For one: in case you are not deep enough, you might collect too much ambient light, that screws up your white balance. To overcome that, you might need a monster strobe...

For two: slow is slow. m4/3 cameras tend to produce quite bad shutter shock - however, I don't know if it is a real issue in an UW housing, using flash. If ambient light plays a role in the picture, it may be an issue.

 

[mscott556]

Makes it a little harder to get a black background when doing macro too.