So… back from my first M43/Nauticam dive trip. Horribly heavy though it was, I was amazed all my gear, except strobe arms and the Retra LSD, would fit into a Pelican 1510 refitted with Pelican’s TrekPak dividers. They are much neater than the padded dividers I’ve been using for decades and free-up valuable space. We were boat diving in Sulawesi from a resort on Saronde Island. I took the OM-1ii with the Olympus 60mm and Panasonic 8mm, Nauticam’s flatport 65 and a Zen 100mm domeport. Over 7 days of diving, macro shots on five days and FE for two. I shot just over 1300 RAW file images over 20 dives. I found the system easy to use. My partner said she was dreading me emerging at the end of a dive cursing and swearing in frustration over a new system. IT NEVER HAPPENED. I used fairly simple camera settings, the Retra LSD for macro and happily shot away. The 60mm hunted a bit in some fairly turbid water and I tried various tweaks which helped. The Panasonic 8mm was a joy to use and focussing, not surprisingly, was easy. The Zen 100 port is very neat - but you do need to be careful not to smash into the reef using the 8mm! Everything is WAY closer than it looks. I had the UWT trigger in the housing which was excellent and worked without a hitch. I switched often to HSS on the Retras with high shutter speeds when shooting wide-angle into the sun. The system coped perfectly. The USB port was brilliant and over the course of 7 days I never opened the housing back! Plugging the housing into a USB charger for a couple of hours in the evenings resulted in a full battery for next day’s dives. I’d like to say I did the same with downloading images (ie through the USB port). However my lack of familiarity with the Files app on my iPad led me to stuff up the first download attempt - and I didn’t want to risk it. Back home now I have it figured out and will certainly use that in the future. No need to open the housing to download or battery charge. What a bonus! Other bits and bobs: the Nauticam vacuum system is easy to operate and offers a nice feeling of comfort. It is integrated into the housing very neatly. I was surprised by the system being significantly negatively buoyant. I was using two sets of arms comprising 5” plus 8” arms fitted with Stix Jumbo floats. If I let go, the whole lot plummeted down. I’m looking into adding a cross bar with additional Stix - which is what I had on my D500/Subal system and liked it. I plan a rinse tank test this week with travel scales to find out how much additional buoyancy is needed. I struggled a bit to find the sweet spot on the shutter release - something which was quite easy on the Subal housing with a D500. I did miss shots by a millisecond. Next time I’ll use the AF button to focus and the shutter lever just to fire the shutter. And I struggled to find the aperture and shutter dials on the housing without looking. They are smaller than Subals and my fingers didn’t fall easily onto them. But this is just familiarity and practice. And the images? The key factor! Yep, I’m happy especially considering this was first time out with a new setup. Most images are sharp. If they are not it’s mainly my fault. I’m left with 130 keepers which, for me, is about the right ratio: 1 keeper for 10 deletes. Looking at them at 100% in Lightroom, they don’t look any different to the Nikon D500 RAW files. So if you’re thinking of an M43 system using an OM-1, it works nicely. Phew…..
