OMD Em5 with OLympus housing and 60mm lens - Whats not right in settings?

[Ardy]

Hi All, I am in Bali first day here and trying out my 60mm macro lens.

I have set the camera to big fish/little fish (set on little fish) so that the flash fires without being up.

Also set the lens from 1:1 to infinity.

Lens will not focus on infinity or anything more that a metre or 2.

The 60 mm lens hunts for focus more than it does on land not using BF/LF.

Anybody got any ideas? It's driving me crazy. Could this be to do with BF/LF and is there an alternative setting to make the flash fire without being up?

 

[Divealpha]

Oly has contrast based focus, you will get some hunting if there's little contrast in the pic. Have the Pm-1 underwater, and have no problems, but I also have a focus light to help with the focusing. Guess you have an external strobe? On the PM-1, the flash must be up, and is in fill - in mode to trigger the external. (The housings port will obstruct the internal flash, so it's not much use without a strobe, and restricts photos to ambient light). I use an omd above water...

---------- Post added February 1st, 2015 at 02:23 PM ----------

Example with ambient light, depth 4.

Example with Inon s 200 strobe, 25 meters.

---------- Post added February 1st, 2015 at 02:30 PM ----------

Sorry for typos, Inon s-2000 .....also, you can use your dive light as focus light as a temporary solution...be creative and use strips to attach it! The photos were shot in Dauin, Philippines last week.....I did the DIY solution with my dive light, as my focus light was damaged.....

 

[Wisnu]

Ardy
I love 60mm for macro or supermacro; sharp and fast AF.
My suggestion, set to Manual, with flash at 1/64. Strobe, manually adjust to suit the lighting condition.
For the 60mm macro lens; I will set to 0.19 - 0.4m (typically, much faster for smaller subject) or 0.19 to inf. depend on what I expect to see.
Good focus light will help a lot.
Occasionally use manual focus for very small critter.
I will not waste my time to shoot anything require working distance 1m or more.

 

[Ardy]

Thanks Wisnu and DA. Pity about not beng able to use 60mm as a fish lens as I did with the 50mm on my E520.

I have made a couple of changes but will watch it more closely today..

Are you sure there is no other settings to force flash on with it down?

 

[BobW]

Ardy,

I found with my E-M5 that when using BF/LF to shift the lens, the settings F-stop and speed would change to some preset values. Usually nowhere near the settings I would want to shoot with, and it was not programmable. My workaround was to use the BF/LF function to set the desired focal length, the use the mode wheel to change from Manual to Auto, then back to Manual. Most of the time, the settings reverted to the Manual settings I had set prior to doing the lens shift. To sum it up, the flow became BF/LF the lens, twist the mode wheel, check F-stop/shutter speed. Use a focus light to reduce hunting. If you have the Oly housing, why wouldn't you have the flash up? I seem to remember that it fit when up, and the only benefit to having it flash when down would be if I forgot to put it up. BF/LF was mainly for shifting between 12 & 50mm, with the flash working as a side benefit.

Bob W

 

[ChrisM]

The EM-5 does not fit in the Oly housing with the flash up like the nauticam

I'm new to this camera and housing and hoping there's an easy way to override the UW mode settings

 

[SEMO Scuba]

If you set your strobe to manual mode you do not have to use the big fish / little fish to make the strobe fire. It will fire in the down position in fill flash for shooting STTL, or you can set it to 1/64 and control your strobe power manually.

Manual Flash Mode:
Press OK to see the SCP, select flash with the arrow keys, press OK and use the arrow keys or dial to select "Manual Value", press OK. You will then be able to select auto, red eye, fill, no flash, red eye slow, slow, slow 2, or 1/64

 

[Ardy]

If you set your strobe to manual mode you do not have to use the big fish / little fish to make the strobe fire. It will fire in the down position in fill flash for shooting STTL, or you can set it to 1/64 and control your strobe power manually.

Manual Flash Mode:
Press OK to see the SCP, select flash with the arrow keys, press OK and use the arrow keys or dial to select "Manual Value", press OK. You will then be able to select auto, red eye, fill, no flash, red eye slow, slow, slow 2, or 1/64

Hi Semo - my OMD will NOT fire the flash in manual mode without one of the function buttons set to BF/LF. I always use manual flash settings on 1/64. What are you doing that I am not?

---------- Post added February 5th, 2015 at 05:50 PM ----------

Ardy,

I found with my E-M5 that when using BF/LF to shift the lens, the settings F-stop and speed would change to some preset values. Usually nowhere near the settings I would want to shoot with, and it was not programmable. My workaround was to use the BF/LF function to set the desired focal length, the use the mode wheel to change from Manual to Auto, then back to Manual. Most of the time, the settings reverted to the Manual settings I had set prior to doing the lens shift. To sum it up, the flow became BF/LF the lens, twist the mode wheel, check F-stop/shutter speed. Use a focus light to reduce hunting. If you have the Oly housing, why wouldn't you have the flash up? I seem to remember that it fit when up, and the only benefit to having it flash when down would be if I forgot to put it up. BF/LF was mainly for shifting between 12 & 50mm, with the flash working as a side benefit.

Bob W

YEs bob and when you have finished that the subject has buggered off! I need to buy the plastic zoom control to make this camera work properly UW - Oh! hell another $100. BTW if you move it off BF/LF just once then camera will flash on manual flash permanently BUT BF/LF must be set to a function key. I don't know how else to access it.

 

[SEMO Scuba]

I have my F2 button programmed to BF/LF. If I push the F2 and BF/LF shows on my screen it screws with my settings so I change from M mode to A then back to M, then I have full control. I have read others say they program F2 for other functions and I wonder how they get the flash to fire in the down position Others say that if you choose underwater white balance setting the flash fires in the down position too. The E-M5 is pretty new for me. I have been shooting an EPL1 for the last couple of years.

 

[JackConnick]

We've re-published and updated a long list of setup instructions for the E-M5 in our Resource Center:

Setting Up the Olympus E-M5 for Underwater Photography

Setting Up the Olympus E-M5 for Underwater Video