LX5 and 10BAR housing review

[Puffer Fish]

I was going to get the 10Bar housing for the GH1, but they are adding image stabilization to their 7 -14 lens, so rather than wait, decided to try the LX5 and the 10Bar housing for it. Thankfully, Jack at OpticalOceanSales.com had one in stock (along with all the other bits I needed)

Huge jump for me, as I have used Canon, pentax, fuji and Nikon, but never a pany in an underwater housing.

The camera would seem to be just about perfect for an underwater camera... it has:

1. An almost perfect zoom range... from 24 to 90 mm (equal).

2. The lens zooms by being out... going in, in the middle range and then going back out.. ideal for having the wide angle close to the front of the port.

3. It does really close macro...and unlike the canon camera's, can focus out, even when set at macro (just slower).

4. It has a nice Aperture.. from F2 to F3.3... and has a bit better range than most P&S.. ok, not great, just better.

5. It flash sync's at up to 1/4000 of a second...try that with any DSLR.

6. It does reasonable HD video

7. It can take a lot of images on one battery.

So, I bought the camera, a couple of discontinued Oly strobes (as the price was a steal), and new arms and try with a 10 Bar Case...

I know better than to buy a new set of gear and then take it on vacation, but I seem to forget I should not do that.

Got all the gear the week before heading out.. then found out I was missing the optical connection to the camera... thankfully Jack had one and got it to me in time.

Before getting to some details and images, I've heard a fair amount of bad things about 10Bar, so I did not have my bar set very high, and was very surprised at how well made the camera is.

But, this camera is really not that well designed for using underwater, as it has slide controls (on/off and aspect) and a very stiff thumb wheel. and the flash, once openned is on.

So, lets get down to details.

 

[Puffer Fish]

The housing is a very well made, very solid overall design. It comes with a case, and a complete set of o-rings and a tiny allen key for working on the controls (if they need adjustment).

The manual strobe wiring is also in side the case, and if you are not going to use it, is very much in the way. Thankfully, half of it comes apart, and you only have to deal with a short piece.

Once in the case, and you raise the strobe, to get it back down will take something like a small knife blade.. or there is the possibility of damaging it when you remove it.

The two switch controls (on/off and aspect) have to be in the right position to work and that took me some getting used to.

The thumb wheel was installed so that you had to push it in to engage, and too far and you just changed the fuction..I think, now that I am back and can look at it, that one can adjust the wheel out so you don't have to do that.

 

[Puffer Fish]

The fiber optic cap attaches with some velcro like stuff, and you have to be very careful to get the holes and the cable aligned.

I cut back some of the casing (about 1/8 inch) (be careful doing that, as the stuff breaks very easily), and put the two cables in, so they stuck out about the same thickness as the velcro stuff and then aligned them with the holes...the results were a 100% trigger rate (something I have never had before), even in bright sun conditions and shallow water.

 

[Puffer Fish]

The mounting plate on the case is metal, as is the tray.. so even tightened down it want to move around. One needs to put some rubber or block in from for the camera to rest against to prevent this.

 

[Puffer Fish]

I got the new arms from Jack, and they are made from solid blocks of aluminum.... pretty nice and they work amazingly well.

The down side to those strobes is that they have a long recycle time, and they do not have a round flash pattern, so they need to be upright to cover much of an area..

Long first arms took care of the positioning the flash issue, and when shooting TTL, the flash recycled almost as fast as I could see (so much for that concern).

Note: I wanted to get some higher capacity low discharge batteries, but Amazon was out of stock, so I got Ansmann 2850's... turns out this are really nice batteries... 100 shots used about 20% of the battery capacity...and were part of the reason for the fast recyle.

Note2: The Oly UFL-1 stobes are made by sea and sea, so I can mix and match with the YS110's I have, but right now, for close images, I like these better.

 

[Puffer Fish]

Setting the camera up is a bit more than I expected, particularly when one does not bring the manual with them.

Getting the camera to focus on small objects was my biggest concern, and because you need that thumb wheel to set each time you turn the camera on, was a bit of a learner curve. I tried what I thought was the correct setting, only to shoot a whole day's worth to find out it was not.

Like the controls, some of them took some practice to set correctly.

 

[Puffer Fish]

So what do the images look like?

Well, for starters, two of the most difficult fish to photograph in a good postion are the two that are below... they move a lot, and they don't like camera's pointed at them.

Note: The vis was not very good due to storms and high winds, so there was a lot of junk floating in the water...I can minimize it, but if it is in the way of the fish, it will show up.

 

[Puffer Fish]

All the images were shot in raw, and adjusted using the free software (the latest version) and converted into a Jpeg.

 

[Puffer Fish]

While I did have focus issues initially, the exposure system worked every time. I used 1/500th of a second, in shutter priority, and just let the strobes do their thing.

Doing that and you can get the "frozen fish" look from time to time:

 

[Puffer Fish]

Another fish closeup: