The result is pretty severe pincushion distortion and CA. What was also interesting were their test shots using other WA converter lenses, like the Epoque and the OLY WA converters - which had pretty severe distortion as well.
Credit for the photo goes to Camerasunderwater.co.uk - image is hotlinked from their website.
Cheers
James
YUK !
Non seller
Can't believe UN/Oly actually released a product like that. Shows their relative in experience in UWP gear.
Can't wait to see the test results of the Athena dome.
Gang,
Then it's our job to edumacate them. Remember from our DEMA show report - there was only one Scuba diver at the Oly booth at the biggest SCUBA SHOW in the country.
It probably would have cost oly/UN almost nothing more to make a dome port - they just didn't know how or that they needed to.
Cheers
James
Good luck with that Oly dSLR housing.
Do we know for sure that the folks at Cameras Underwater weren't just trying to sell software? Could that shot not have been done at the wrong end of the zoom? It certainly looks distressing, and a dome would no doubt do better, but I am still interested to see what someone familiar with the Olympus system, and not driven by sales goals will do with that set up.
Do we know for sure that the folks at Cameras Underwater weren't just trying to sell software?
Panotools is free?
Could that shot not have been done at the wrong end of the zoom? It certainly looks distressing, and a dome would no doubt do better, but I am still interested to see what someone familiar with the Olympus system, and not driven by sales goals will do with that set up.
I don't think it was at the wrong end of the zoom, they are familiar with the limitations of the system. With a 70 deg fov, there isn't much room to zoom . I'm very impressed that Camera's Underwater has done this testing. Olympus housings are a large part of their business, and they are very open with the frustrations their customers can expect (unlike some of our competitors that conveniently ignore the laws of physics).
Images like that don't sell camera housings. Cameras Underwater addressed the limitations, and showed customers how to get the best results they can get. Very respectable...
I stand corrected. Like the pictures.
I guess my dogged defense of this system stems from a 30 year association with Olympus cameras and having never known the company to release anything with less than acceptable optics. I have usually felt their equipment exceptional, and under-appreciated. It appears that faith is unfounded, but I will continue to reserve final judgement until I shoot it myself.
Panatools is free but hard to use and doesn't automate well with actions. I've never got it to remember to coefficients consistently. There are other non-free tools that are better.
70 degrees isn't particularly wide and the uncorrected image is not very good. Both these problems are caused by the lack of a dome. I have to agree with Herb on this one.
There are also some Panotools GUIs that you can get for free that make it easier to use.
Wow. I'm impressed that they published the optimal panotools settings!
I guess my dogged defense of this system stems from a 30 year association with Olympus cameras and having never known the company to release anything with less than acceptable optics.
They didn't release much of anything after 1982, at least in the 35mm SLR category.
The iS line of "ZLR" cameras dominated the line in that period. A nice middle ground for those that wanted manual control, but did not want to lug a bag full of lenses around. I had an iS-20 that I admired. It was sort of like the E-20, only film.
An unfortunate financial incident after I got out of college forced me to sell my OM-1 or I would still have it today.
Want mine?
OM-1? What lenses?
OM-1? What lenses?
The dark side is strong...
OM
The dark side is strong...
I understand how Jeff feels . Mine was an OM-2n w Zuiko 50, 28-48, 135 (sweet lens) and a Vivitar 70-210 ( f2.8 ). Unfortunate gave it away because I wasn't doing any justice.... Am now training to be a digital Jedi.
A housing for the Olympus Trip 35 was our first still camera offering in the sixties. Spring wound motor drive full frame compact 35mm camera that took super photographs. Olympus also had a very unique line of half-frame 35mm SLR cameras at that time............
. I'm very impressed that Camera's Underwater has done this testing. Olympus housings are a large part of their business, and they are very open with the frustrations their customers can expect (unlike some of our competitors that conveniently ignore the laws of physics).
