Gates EX1 viewfinder

I am back from my first diving trip in Polinesia with the new Ex1-Gates-Fathom SW combo.

The housing construction is top quality: good work Gates ! The Fathom is a big (very big) piece of glass, the combo is a little scaring but handling underwater is fine. The quality it delivers is high: no vignetting and very wide (in my estimate more than 110 degree). I used it only in wide (no zoom) due to the problem of focusing using the viewfinder.

Coming to the viewfinder: this is the real weak point of this combo. Focusing through the viewfinder is impossible and even framing is not easy as the image is distorted. Moreover the magnificator is not adjustable and you cannot correct any presbiopya problem.

I wrote to Gates about this issue and Mr. Ellerbrock has answered quickly and nicely, proposing a solution to change the magnificator with a new one which is adjustable. He wrote that other clients have already adopted it and they are happy with the solution.

I will need to ship the housing to Gates and sadly shipping cost and repair costs will be at my charge, so I would like to be sure that this solution will fix the problem.

Anyone of the happy customers' John mentioned around who can give me its opinion on the new magnificator ?

Thanks

Alberto

I have the EX1 housing but do not have the adjustable eye-piece. Regardless, I find the eye-piece only useful for certain lens information not output to the monitor. For framing and focus, I find the eye-piece not very useable. I am looking forward to a better solution here.

-shawn

I will give the adjustable viewfinder a try. I believe focusing will give us hassle with such a camera,... the camera viefinder itself is low res and hardly usable for proper focusing. I hate external monitors but if Gates comes out with a new full hd solution and possibly Sony will update firmware (dreams ?...) enabling peaking, zebra and DOF bar on ext. monitor, I will consider to buy it.

At the moment I found that the best solution is staying within hyperfocal range (quite restricting...); I set shutter to 1/50 so that I always get a high IRIS, use ND when needed to stay at F8 at the highest, auto IRIS, manual focus. With Fathom SWP I get proper focus on full wide; I was not able to get a proper focus with zoom in. Some close subjects (ex. a dolphin at 50 cm. from the camera) even with full wide turned out very soft, probably they were out of the hyperfocal range.

Alberto