Klaus

I „only“ have the bare UWL-100 without a dome, so that is relatively compact and weight only about 700 g I think. Still, it‘s enough for not taking it off during the dive at all - so I „store“ it on the port - period. I also have a close-up lens for macro and that goes on a sort of flip-adapter, but mine will definitely not work for then wide-angle lens. As I said, it‘s a dedicated wide-angle setup once you put it on. Quite a good one, but a bit unwieldy. Just try it out and see how you like it. There is enough time for looking at used ones after your trip and indulge in GAS before the next one. I think that is what almost everyone does on this forum…

This was maybe a bit terse - your wfl-01 wetlens will certainly serve you well under water and should give you about 120 degrees field of view, which is good. You can also zoom in, which can be quite helpful. But I find shooting with the dome +fisheye is a much smaller and more maneuverable, in short enjoyable, setup under water than adding the uwl-100 to my flat port. Taking the wetlens off during the dive, storing it and putting it back on later is quite difficult. So, apart from the zoom function you will be diving with a dedicated wide-angle setup - and the fisheye lets you get even closer to things, unless they swim away (I‘ve mastered sponges and starfish so far). The nice thing about the fisheye lens is that you can also use it topside between the dives - the wfl-01 is definitely not something you will want to take on a hike. Thus, I recommend setting up a regular search here, on eBay, your favorite classifieds … and when a nice pen-housing size dome shows up (Inon also made one some time ago) try to get it for a good price. Then, the manual fisheyes can usually be found very cheap while a nice & affordable Lumix 8mm may require a bit more patience.

Hi Sacha, I recently sourced a used fisheye-dome for my epl-5 setup in an Olympus housing. AFAIK these were made by AOI and the ports are identical. If you can find a used AOI or Zen or Athena dome for a good price, I recommend getting that plus a used Lumix 8mm fisheye for wide-angle shots. You can also start off with the manual Samyang/Rokinon/Walimex 7.5 mm fisheye; it’s a compromise but I got mine for 60 € second hand. I have now taken my dome (Athena) on a trip and this is very compact and light-weight. I have an Inon UWL-100 wetlens as well (without the class dome) but this will likely stay at home next time as it’s feels heavier than the dome+lens I have.

A very entertaining thread indeed. Maybe there should be a fishing vest in the waterpixels store? The logo should be on the INside then …

My gut feeling is that one big driver behind the computational development was / is to make pics possible WITHOUT all the big and dedicated lenses and so on. To some extent the goal is replacing optics with software as much as possible. Taking this technology into mirrorless cameras is maybe counter-intuitive for these companies? And why bother, given the market size…

So Chip… now you have to finish the wine bottle every time?

Wow, Ben, this is all so thought- and beautiful… did you use chatGPT for this? Just kidding, but that’s what my kids would have done. I use my phone for messaging, occasionally to pay for parking. But I HATE taking pictures with it. Just doesn’t get me in the mood. However, some kid waving around his IPhone will likely make at least as good a shot than me with a real cam. Maybe smartphones will become the entry-drug into uw imaging, then eventually be replaced by a real camera in the hands? Alas, cameras are almost never made specifically for uw use, they are usually adapted. So, once they’re gone above, they’ll be gone beneath the waves soon after. But for the moment, we can still discuss and vividly disagree about (dis)advantages of some really heavy screw-on optical addition to our gear collection. And worry about the money it costs and WAF required. It doesn’t get any better, no? 😉

The iPhone sales numbers are almost scary, but Apple does not only develop the camera of that device - it is also a quite powerful computer with everything that goes along with this, in particular software development I suppose. Still, this is a huge advance in numbers over interchangeable lens cameras. I would not have expected this to be so large. I wonder if all the software-magic for the image processing can one day be applied to (raw) images taken with other cameras afterwards? In essence will Apple transfer this all to a photoshop equivalent? Perhaps they already did and I just don’t know about it…

Really nice video, thanks!

Did you need to polish the dome after this?

1) So how does it work under water with an MF lens? I think reasonably well. The biggest limitation is probably that the aperture cannot be changed during the dive. I have not taken it out for a lot of dives yet and will start with a picture from a „natural pool“. No tiles for meauring distortion, but a straight out-of-camera jpg, uncropped, with the front oft hat step quite close to the dome. Here I also used a single YS-27DX strobe (with diffusor) for extra light. null The following shot was taken freedivig with the rig (no strobe). The rock wall was reasonably parallel to the sensor plane: null I have no comparison to the Lumix or Olympus 8mm fisheyes, but to me this seems to limited more by visibility than the lens not „getting along“ with the dome. null Getting closer, the rock wall is imaged with at least decent quality. Newer bodies may give better rendering, crystal-clear water probably would have helped as well. But the viz not certainly not bad here. null This is an example of a (moderately) close focus wide angle shot. It is possible to get sharp images from about 15-20 cm to infinity. null And here is a split shot – certainly the waterline is not flat, but in this particular shot one could consider it a feature rather than a bug. It is possible to get the waterline crisp in focus, but then the topside background (Flores Island, Azores) becomes slightly blurred (aperture set at the click between f8 and f11). So, what about AF vs. MF? It’s still early, but I think I can get by with only two focus setting – my „home“ one (20 cm – infinity) and a „close focus“ one with ¾ of a turn on the zoom dial (I placed another mark there). This will then have everything in focus from about 5 cm away from the dome to about 1,5 m. Switching is possible but not fast – cleary, AF is better. I might in the future get a lumix 8mm lens, but maybe more for setting the aperture than the focus. That said, here’s a picture where MF is clearly too slow: null (1x YS-27DX strobe) Focus is perfect on the eyes … of the diver below the triggerfish (Mrs. K.). I am not sure the AF on my E-PL5 would have mastered this one either, though. The triggerfish was attacking the dome glass. IQ is good enough to identify the dive computer model on my wife’s wrist. Remember those? Here is the „making of“ that particular shot, just before the „Ouch!“: null The rig is quite compact, in particular in combination with the YS-27DX strobe. This, btw, is comparable in intensity and recycle time to the YS110a, but a bit more compact. The coverage of both (with difusers) is also comparable but that is based gut-feeling rather than testing. Finally, a shot from our local quarry (Echinger Weiher). The Samyang/Rokinon lens has received very favorable comments about its resistance to flares in top-side tests. I am not sure if this shot would be prone to flares with the Lumix fisheye, but it definitely was not a problem with my copy of the Rokinon lens. null (1x YS-27DX [left] and 1x YS-110a [right] for the foreground) Conclusion: Taking pictures with a fisheye is a lot of fun and not comparable in any was to what I have been using before (14-42 kit zoom with Inon UWL-H100 w/o dome, i.e. ~100° field of view). This was definitely worth the rather moderate investment. So far, the MF has not been a big issue – fish-eye lenses are very forgiving on that. That said, fast moving fish swimming up to the dome are not ideal. I may invest another ~300 € on a used Lumix 8mm fish-eye in the future, but dialing in a different aperture and getting the live view with the OPEN aperture are probably more important reasons for the upgrade than the AF.

1) Setting up the lens I could acquire the Athena fisheye dome port, desigend for the Lumix 8mm fisheye, in the classifieds locally. This port has a enough distance to the port hole on my housing (PT-EP05L) that it does not require any modification to the silly target light button. The other available fisheye ports for the Pen-housings (Zen and AOI) come a bit closer. There’s nothing specific about attaching the Samyang/Rokinon lens to the body, I am describing what I did to use MF in the housing (PT-EP05L) via the zoom dial. I acquired a Olympus zoom gear (seoncd hand) for the 14-42 mm kit-lens. A friend helped to machine this out and widen it such that it can be slipped onto the lens from the mount side. A small step machined in the rubber prevents the aperture-ring from turning at the same time as focus, but when I pinch the rubber at the gear level, I can change the aperture. This piece is not easy to modify without a machine shop (and even with), 3D-printing this part is likely another option. The lens is also usable with fix-focus setting and no focus control at all (see below). null (left side: widened piece, right side normal Olympus zoom gear) For setting the aperture, I painted a small white dot on side of the aperture ring, this can be seen from the mount together with the original red marking and the F-stop can thus be verified. My copy of the lens has its „sweet spot“ at f8 – f11, which is quite useful under water I think. The F-stop needs to be set before the lens is attached to the body and cannot be changed during the dive. null (towards the top – here, the white dot ist just a bit off to the right side from the red dot, this corresponds to the intermediate click between f8 and f11.) For the focus, I start with a „fix-focus“ setting that will result in a depth of field from about 20 cm (from the dome) to infinity with the aperture setting shown. That corresponds to this distance setting on my copy of the lens: null I placed some marks on the lens barrel to get this dialed in quickly. With the camera set up like this, I place it in the housing. I painted a white mark on the zoom ring, which I turn straight up before placing the camera inside. That way I can quickly return to my „home“ setting during the dive. nullnull In addition, the marks placed on the lens barrel can also be seen through the port just in case. I covered the white labels on the front of the lens with electrical tape to prevent reflections. null So how does this all work now? First a dry image: null (uncropped frame) There is a small amount of vignetting in my „home“ position. This lens is not perfectly centered; I am using an E-PL5 in the housing designed for the E-PL3 (very minor modifications necessary), but the centering is not better when I use an E-PL3 body (PM me if you want to see that). Once cropped, the image ends up at about 14 Mpix rather than 16 Mpix, the field of view is corresondingly reduced. By far the worst consequence, however, is that I cannot discuss corner sharpness in this forum ☹ !!! One way of dealing with the vignetting is to pretend shooting in full frame i.e. setting the camera to 3:2 ratio. The vignetting is almost completely gone then (will only affect the jpg, raw stays full sensor). When the lens is focused even closer, the front element moves out and this also reduces vignetting in close focus wide angle images. All things considered, vignetting is not a big problem and the other Pen fisheye domes (Zen, AOI) should have less vignetting. nullnull (vignetting cropped in 4:3 ratio) OK, so how much did it cost me? All prices second hand, including shipping. Athena dome: 130 € (really good deal I think, looks like new) Rokinon lens: 70 € Zoom gear: 23 € + 2 beers for widening it up In sum 225 € (not counting the housing and camera, these can be sourced for about the same price together) As you can tell, I don't know how to insert the images at their right place, but I hope it's useful as is.

I want to share information and images on using a MF fisheye lens for the M43 system through this post. This concerns the Samyang / Rokinon / Bower 7.5 mm f 3.5 lens – it is sold under these three brand names (at least) but as far as I know all of them are identical; mine happens to be a Rokinon. It is very slightly shorter than the Lumix 8mm fisheye and can focus close (9 cm from the sensor plane). While that should make it suitable behind a small dome, I could not find any details on its use under water on the internet. When I had a chance to source a fish-eye dome (Athena ~ 10 cm) for a good price, I decided to simply give it a try. I am using it in combination with the Olympus E-PL5 – certainly not a new camera, but the raw images might live up to the ones from the more recent E-PL10; both have a 16 Mpix sensor, though probably not the identical one. I did the „half-filled box“ already in a previous post on this forum when I found the Geomar-publication on this – you can look it up if you are interested; @DreiFish has meanwhile developed the approach to perfection, mine was very simple. The conclusion was that the dome should be a bit further out, but that is not desirable because of vignetting. I am now posting real-life pictures so that anyone interested can judge for him/herself. I have never used the Lumix or Olympus M43 fish-eye lenses, so I cannot say anything about relative strengths. There will be two posts follwoing this one: One for the technical setup and one for the first UW images I took with the lens. Maybe this can be helpful for someone.

Thanks a lot for such a systematic test! I can only imagine how much time you spent with that box… I especially like the rectilinear vs. de-fished comparison, I always thought this de-fishing would lead to heavily degraded IQ. I guess the quality of the lens plays a big part in this. Was there anything special in how you de-fished the images or will this be similar no matter which software is used?

I don’t think anyone claimed « magic » here. but if you prefer, certainly this is useless - but I got the point.