How to use wide angle wet lens for Olympus E-PM1 camera with Oly housing

[Ben Prusinski]

I just bought a new Olympus E-PM1 camera with Oly housing and wide angle wet lens. How would I take wide angle photos with the wet lens and Olympus E-PM1 camera? Is there a special mode that I need to put the camera into to do this after I attach the wet lens to the housing port?

 

[mjh]

What wet lens do you have? Typically you need an adapter like this to go over the port and the wet lens screws into: Olympus Macro Lens Adapter - Micro Four-Thirds Accessories - Olympus m4/3rds PEN Cameras, Housings & Accessories - Optical Ocean Sales Underwater Photo - 800-359-1295!

As to settings. Do you have a strobe? What kind? Do you know how to shoot in Manual? A little more info will help.

 

[Ben Prusinski]

I have an Inon UWL-H100 28M67 Wide Conversion Lens (Type2) with dual Sea and Sea YS-01 strobes with the Olympus PT-EP06L underwater housing for the Olympus E-PM1 camera. I am new to underwater photography and was testing in automatic mode with the strobes set to TTL mode to use the camera's flash.

 

[mjh]

With your housing the wide angle lens should just screw into the threaded front. Note that while this system is reported to work the preferred method is using a lens like the Olympus 9-18mm with a Zen Pen Dome port.

Zoom the lens out to its widest point, take a few shots and see if there is any vignetting. If there is you may need to zoom in some. Since corner softness is going to be an issue you may want to shoot in A priority or Manual. Aim for a f. stop of around f/7.1.

 

[Ben Prusinski]

Thanks mjh- the wet lens wide angle does screw into the threaded front of the Olympus housing for the camera. I should pick up a Zen Pen Dome port at Backscatter if I see any vignetting in the photos. I will test it out in Catalina next weekend before the Cayman trip. Figure with the Zen dome port and macro wide lens I am covered for a while until I get the basics of photos down. Ideally I would like to move up eventually to a nice DSLR setup but that costs thousands more and the Olympus setup was expensive enough. Jak Crow takes nice photos maybe he has some tips as well on getting started with Wide angle and macro on the Olympus as he has similar camera setup except mine is an E-PM1 version. Looks like I should take back the wet Inon lens and get a store credit at Backscatter toward a Zen Dome Port and Olympus wide angle lens. Kinda surprised actually that when I asked Trish at Backscatter about this she did not recommend a Zen Pen Dome port with this lens.

 

[chile7236]

what mjh meant was that using the zen dome with the 9-18mm is the intended method of doing WA with this set up...in your instance, he meant using your port (the stock one, i presume) and testing the UWL with that one to see if you get workable results.

 

[Ben Prusinski]

what mjh meant was that using the zen dome with the 9-18mm is the intended method of doing WA with this set up...in your instance, he meant using your port (the stock one, i presume) and testing the UWL with that one to see if you get workable results.

Makes sense- well since I have not used the wet lens diving yet, I will return it back to Backscatter and get the Zen dome port plus Olympus wide angle lens before my trips. Funny the guys did not tell me this at the store. Maybe because it costs more to buy both the Zen dome port plus the lens than just the wet lens. I need a macro lens for the camera as well so not a big deal. I almost have the hang of the Olympus E-PM1 settings to change to different ISO, F-stop and shutter values. It is confusing and the buttons on the E-PM1 are not that user friendly on the housing so it takes some practice. Anyways, the Olympus is a much nicer camera setup then the cheap Sealife D1200 I learned to use in my PADI underwater photography class and cheaper than a Nikon/Canon DSLR setup. Figure learn to use the Olympus setup next few years and then upgrade to a nicer DSLR.

Do you guys always shoot in manual mode or have you tried the automatic settings for shooting pics? I am reading the Underwater Photographer book right now and he always says to shoot in manual mode.

 

[chile7236]

i only shoot in manual. camera and strobes....yeah, the E-PM1 buttons take a bit of getting used to since most of it is in the menu(s). since i use my E-PL1 more, i prefer it's button/menu settings.

 

[LeeParrish]

The E-PM1 is pretty easy to control in any mode if you set up the camera to use the super control menu. Then one press of the OK button and you can navigate quickly to just about any setting you might want without having to dig into the menus themselves.

 

[Jak Crow]

I've been shooting with the 14-42mm lens and standard flat port since I got my setup. I tried a wide angle wet lens but wasn't very happy with it, and I've also tried a macro wet lens, but the camera is just will not focus on the macro subjects with the lens completely zoomed out to 42mm, so I've been shooting without the macro lens.

I recently got the Zen dome port for the 14-42/9-18 lenses, and I've been using that with the 14-42mm. I just scored a 9-18mm lens at a good price from ebay. Hopefully I'll get it before the weekend since I'm doing a boat dive in Carmel this weekend.