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In case you intend to buy new and wait for the OM1-III to appear: There are wild rumors that Nikon will offer an APS-C model based on Z8/Z9 technology this year - in case this turns out to be drue, this is certainly very worth a consideration for a small sensor UW-camera system... mirrorlessrumorsThe APS-C Camera Wars Are Here: Fujifilm X-T6, Canon R10...Nikon Canon and Fujifilm are about to unleash three new High End APS-C cameras! Fujifilm X-T6 is coming on September 3 Nikon “mini Z9” is coming in autumn with 45MP stacked sensor Canon R10II with newIn case you go second hand, anything starting from Olympus EM1II and upwards is a very good way to get started with an MFT system (upgrade Nauticam housing and camera at a later stage)... Wolfgang

I think that I am fairly sold on the OM-1 now, will take a look at Nauticam & Isotta housings if I get to the GoDiving show in Sydney in a month or so. Good to know that battery life of the OM-1 will meet my needs! I've got to do some research on Strobes. What are you using and how have you found them to be?

Interesting - will be interesting to see what the OM-1 Mark III is like.

Definitely will need an external monitor. I can see that digital will certainly have some advantages over a roll of 36! I don't think that GenZ would cope very well with film! I haven't looked too far into wet lenses yet, I think that will come later after I have learnt to use the system.

I think that the OM + Nauticam housing will have monitor capability but I will check!

Definitely not a manual focus masochist these days - my eyes are too old for that! I didn't realise that M4/3 was an actual standard - good to know. Great info about the lenses - cheers! Saves some trial and error!

Cheers Tim - all good information to know. Have you had a chance to take your OM-1 underwater yet?

Cheers - another vote for OM-1. Hopefully the Mark III will be released soon - bonus points if it fits the existing housing!

I like to keep things simple... - Nemo - Not Nemo

Hi Deemoo, I would first say that a TG-7 without a housing will be OK for a couple of years then the seals will fail and the camera will die. The seals under the top panel controls are a membrane seal that the buttons work through and eventually the membrane fails. I always recommend a housing even if it's the OM housing which works fine. Once you add a tray to allow you to add arms to hold your strobe the compactness advantage of the TG-7 without a housing is lost. In the manual the fine print says you should have the seals changed once a year. The housing has the facility to plug in fibre optic cables to trigger your strobes. then you just attach them to your strobes and you are ready to go. As for choice of strobe it's hard to go past the little INON S-220, it's small and compact and has a good beam as well as being quite powerful. If you still want to use the bare camera you can get little stick on ports for fibre optic cables you can place over the flash. If you use manual strobes you can set the flash to low power manual on the camera and any light leakage will be minor and unlikely to cause problems.

Welcome Steve, hope you enjoy being part of the community.

Tim has covered the basics of the case for m43. I would add that particularly in Australia also include Isotta in the mix, they are quite popular here and will be cheaper, how much depends on what model you are looking at. You can also opt for the OM-5 and the housing will be somewhat cheaper still, but the battery is smaller. My OM-1 is good for 3 x 1 hour dives on its battery and still has some charge left. Another option is second hand with an EM-1 MkII or MkIII which has most of the features of the OM-1 and you will save quite a bit on the housing. I wouldn't get too worried about whether a OM-1 III is in the works or not, it needs to be announced, then released then the housing manufacturers need to decide to support it and release the housing. I wouldn't expect night and day improvements, most cameras these days in spite of all the hype are incremental improvements. Regarding strobes, no matter who you pick service will likely be sent off overseas somehwere, better to go with a brand with good reliability reputation. on the OM-1 housing - it is 307mm across - noting the handles are adjustable in and out. The Isotta housing is slightly smaller.

Hi everyone, I thought it was about time I stopped lurking and introduced myself. I’m Steve, originally from the UK but now living in upstate New York. I’ve been diving for many years and, like many people here, the photography bug gradually became just as addictive as the diving itself. I spent nearly a decade living in Malaysia, which gave me the opportunity to explore many of Southeast Asia’s incredible dive destinations. Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to dive places including Sipadan, Mabul, Raja Ampat, Komodo, Tubbataha, Anilao, Bali and the Similan Islands. More recently I’ve been exploring closer to home with dives at Blue Heron Bridge in Florida and a recent trip to Kauai, Hawaii, where I went expecting to spend the week shooting wide angle but ended up completely distracted by frogfish, harlequin shrimp and all the other macro life. I currently shoot with a Sony A7R V in a Nauticam housing, mainly using the Sony 90mm Macro, the newer Sony 100mm GM Macro, or the 28–60mm with a WWL-1B, together with a pair of Sea & Sea YS-D3 strobes. I’ve recently started shooting with the Sony 100mm GM Macro and have really been enjoying experimenting with it. There is clearly a huge amount I still have to learn, and one of the reasons I finally decided to join is because there seems to be an incredible depth of knowledge here. I’ve been reading WaterPixels for quite a while and have already learned a huge amount from many of you, so I thought it was finally time to join in rather than just searching old threads whenever I had a gear question. I’m looking forward to learning more, sharing a few images and trip reports, and hopefully contributing where I can. Thanks for having me! Steve

The issue I have with many Sony cameras is the slow sync speeds and always on TTL flash. The Sony A7cii has a 1/160 sync speed in FF and 1/200 in APS-C mode. Most Canon and OM seem to be 1/250 for flash sync. Owning both a Sony A6400 and a Canon R50, the sync speed difference is not huge but definitely an advantage to the faster little pocket rocket, that being the R50. And Canon color in jpeg and white balance is just better.

Given your criteria, I would suggest you look into the WACP and WWL lenses for the various systems and Sony is the no brainer here. If I wanted a small system, Sony A7cii with WWL or WACP (although there is not a huge size hit for going any of the A7 series). Your suggestion that the fixed port of the R50 as a limiting factor suggests you haven't really looked into the advantages of wet mate lenses. Don't mean offense if you have. The various options get away from large domes and work at more open f/stops as well as in water flexibility. As soon as you add a monitor you have a big system. Like real big - so the housing size is only a small piece of the size puzzle if you are actually considering an external monitor. Plus if diving where you need light (aka everywhere) then again - the system has grown with arms, floats, etc. If anything the larger housing makes it easier to handle (when collecting imagery) and control but to each their own. I do miss the small size of the good ol film camera! But then again, I took >500 shots on three dives yesterday. That would have been a lot of slide film!

What TimG said. I’m a Sony shooter now, but rue the day I gave up my Olympus in a fit of sensor envy. Sony is great for topside photography, too, but all in all, if I had to rebuild my system, I’d go Olym, er, OM Systems. Just have a look at the 8mm Panny or Olympus fisheyes and the 60mm macro, and you will marvel at their size. Good stuff, too! OM System ticks all your boxes I’m sure, except maybe the monitor? The Panasonics will do that. Focusing and such aren’t as good in m43 versus the current Sonys, Canons and Nikons.

Any lens marketed as m4/3 will fit without an adapter on any camera with an m4/3 mount. That’s the point of the standard. However, it’s important to be clear about functionality. Olympus and Panasonic lenses will all work perfectly on autofocus (and stabilization, but that’s not so important UW). Others such as Laowa may only be manual focus or may not be autofocus and/or stabilization compliant. Of course if you’re one of those masochists that insist on focusing manually, then those are features not bugs! I use the Olympus 60mm macro (brilliant), Panasonic 8mm fisheye (very good), and rarely the Olympus 12mm rectilinear (just decent). There are also options for the Olympus PRO series 90mm macro and 8mm fisheye but they require N120 adapters. Stay away from the 14-42 and 7-14 zooms, the former is an awkward range and the port for the latter produces very poor corners. For a zoom there are the Olympus 9-18, 8-25, and 12-40 but these also all require N120 port adapters and extension. It’s also possible to adapt a Canon 8-15, so if that appeals, ask Chris Ross. Oh, as for housing size, to fit in most rollers, you’ll likely need to remove the handles. That’s what I do and it’s no big deal.

I don't know about "all" the lenses but the Panasonic 8mm is the same mount as the Olympus 60mm and fits on the OM-1 without an adaptor. Without the housing brackets the Nauticam is 230mm wide. The 307mm must refer to the housing plus handles. I can see that for travelling that disconnecting the handles will be very helpful. And it's quick and easy to do.

I suck at photos and in no way am I a pro. But, if I were to start over today, and have only one camera system instead of three, I would either get a Canon R7 in the Nauticam housing or the OM1 Mark II (the Mark III is to be released soon) and again with a Nauticam housing. IMO, OM Systems, thanks to the split from Olympus and Covid and other issues, lags a little behind Sony and Canon in auto focus and a few other parameters which will probably be addressed with the Mark III.

OK cheers. I would definitely want something with a range of ports - I do unusual things at times...

The current housings for the Canon R50 (and one of the newer Nikons) have a fixed port. They are designed to be simple camera systems for the kit lens utilizing the Nauticam/AOI water contact optics for zoom through wide angle and macro. Thus not needing to commit to a port system while you decide what you want and what you decide may be that you do not need a port system. Or not the one you think you want now. Water contact optics are viable alternatives.

Many thanks for that comprehensive reply @TimG . You were in the unfortunate position of having to replace everything / start from scratch very recently and so you were kind of where I am at but for very different reasons. More than 20-25MP is mostly only needed by people who can't compose properly and so need to crop like heck - well that's my opinion anyway😀 The OM-1 MII seems to be the pick of the M4/3 cameras that work well for underwater stills. There are lots of rumours of a Mark III coming out in the next couple of months - but like a lot of these rumours it is 9/10ths speculation and 1/10th wishful thinking combined with people making social media content about it because they can - we won't know until the day that it is announced. I've got some shares that are (finally) getting the price rerating that they deserve so I'm happy to wait a few weeks and see if the MIII materialises, and if so whether the improvements are ones that are useful for underwater photography - and whether it will fit into the existing housing or... The Australian GoDiving show is in about five weeks, so I might go to that and suss a few things out. Do the lenses from the various companies making M4/3 cameras all share the mount? (or did you have to get an adaptor for the Panasonic 8mm Fisheye?). I've just been doing some reading, and of the available housings for the OM-1 MII the Nauticam seems to be the way to go - AOI housings for the OM-1 sound like they are very very hit or miss as to whether you get a good one or one that is a complete nightmare. With your Nauticam housing - the specs say 307mm wide - does that include the handles or just the housing? I'm hoping that I will be able to fit the entire housing and camera package into a Lowepro roller carryon, and then the rebreather can go in its huge Pelican case from their lightweight series (can't remember their marketing name for them). Australia back to Europe for any repairs to Retra strobes is quite a hassle and expense so I will be looking for something with decent punch that is sold/warranted locally. Inon are releasing a new Z360 strobe sometime soonish... the Backscatter Hydrid HF-1 sounds interesting too - can buy them locally.

Hi CCRphoto I've just gone down a similar path myself and the criteria you outline are pretty common ones. A good number of members - especially we, errr, more aging ones, are looking to "downsize" and have less gear to carry. I gave up on FF camera bodies (Nikon D800) in 2017 as having to lug a 230mm domeport - or some sort of big glass wetlens - was becoming a pain. I settled on the D500 APS-C system which, generally, allowed for slightly smaller bits of gear. I lost all that recently so had to rebuild from scratch. I'm not at all persuaded by the marketing charms of needing FF and high megapixel camera bodies for underwater. I sell lots of images and no-one has ever grumbled that they are not produced by a FF camera. I reckon 20MB is plenty unless you want massive prints or are shooting purely commercial imagery. Topside is different (no ports!!). Listening to folks here, I came to the conclusion that the OM System plus Nauticam was the way to go. The OM System is compact and light-weight but still has 20+MB sensor. Nauticam has become, perhaps, the system most used by people who want aluminium housings, providing good support and innovative products which are continually developed. I've now acquired a housing, 45-degree viewfinder, arms and clamps, N85 WA and macro ports, an OM-1ii camera body, and Panasonic 8mm FE and Olympus 60mm macro lenses. The housing is smaller, slightly, than the (Subal) D500 housing, the camera and lenses significantly smaller than FF or APS-C (almost like back to the OM-1 and OM-2 days of the 1970s). But put the whole package together, add two Retra strobes, and weight and volume wise, they are not that much different to my APS-C system. But then maybe I just need to give up trying to pack everything into a heavy Pelican 1510 case! Fibre optic initiation: yep, a definite must. I don't use TTL either but do want HSS. That rules out the Nauticam trigger. But both Turtle and UWT have compact triggers which do the trick nicely. Both are quality products with very good support. I can recommend either. Familiarity of controls: well if you've never stepped into digital, there is a big difference in the ability to customise controls. Effectively the camera body is a mini computer which you can customise to your heart's content. I doubt I scrape 10% of what they can truly do. I set mine to Manual exposure, AF in one form or another, shoot RAW, Auto WB and very rarely, burst shots (without strobes for, eg dolphins). The OM will let you set up a number of, effectively, customised setting folders so you a switch easily between one setup and another. Think one set of settings for macro, one for WA controlled by the flick of a switch. But there is sure a learning curve - even switching from Nikon to OM! But the basic "photo references" remain, eg, ISO, Shutter speed, Aperture etc. And, the most important thing, composition - which is what it is truly all about - is not digital! That hasn't changed at all. Hope this helps a bit! Good luck with it. They are not easy decisions for sure.

You have all successfully convinced me to go for something more modern than the Canin 7D, but I don't know yet what that something should be... so here are some criteria, and ask any questions because I'm coming from 35mm film days and camera specs were a lot simpler/different then! Something smaller than a large DSLR rig would sure be nice as I'm already carrying so much stuff when CCR diving that a large camera system just gets in the way. Having looked at the Nauticam port charts, a Micro four thirds system that uses the N85 ports seems like the way to go as there are a reasonable number of ports and lens combinations for Nauticam and other housings such as AOI in that size range. Someone mentioned in the other thread about the Canon R50, there doesn't seem to be a wide range of ports available for that one though. So I think that limits manufacturers to Sony, Panasonic or Olympus/OM - I've never used any of them so know absolutely nothing about them at all - in fact I have never used a digital camera apart from a phone one. So here goes... in no particular order - camera/housing must be able to use an external HDMI monitor - must be compatible with fibre optic strobe triggering - but I don't need TTL - I'm happy to buy secondhand - must have good low light autofocus - must have a good range of OEM and aftermarket lenses suitable for underwater photography - must have controls/ranges that would be familiar to an 35mm SLR user - e.g F2.8 to F22 or greater, shutter speed controls etc - must have really good battery life - must be able to produce a good quality image - not sure how many megapixels that requires? I've no idea what else are required as far as speccing a camera these days?

Guys, my question about CWB of FX5 wasn't as much about the mechanical process and how to hold the card (although that play role too) as about how and from what camera calculates it. Right now from brief mentions I found (and silly me there was FX5 in showroom near me couple days ago) it looks as if it calculates WB from the entire scene. Pretty much like Canon as recently as R5 did it from capturing the photo. Unlike your A7SIIIs and my A1 and somebody else's FX3s and R5iis where you have square box that you simply point at the middle of your white cards. So imagine 25m depth, colors disappeared, you have your white slate in the frame together with some white corrals in the back and now camera needs to calculate the RGB gains and how is it going to decide... Yes, shooting raw has greater flexibility but as you know from shooting raw images, which have far more flexibility than raw video, if you start on bad footing you are not going to catch it in post. Like shooting ambient in 25m on AWB good luck then in Lightroom... And so in cinema OS on fx6 you are supposed to zoom in and fill the frame with that slate. Which is like impossible with wide angle lens unless you carry a sail underwater :-) But FX5 presumably does not require that and analyze whole scene so that comes back to Canon's way of doing things in the past and its accuracy and challenges. And I am not even bringing out the fact that at depths we are at extended unpublished WB territories where cameras somehow calculate RGB gains but then only say "above 9900K" and "red max" 🤣