Looking for advice regarding Canon G15/Olympus Pen

Hi all, this is my first forum post here at Wetpixel. I have posted the same question in another forum as well, if you happen to run into the same post at two places.

Now to the subject at hand. I recently had a leek in my housing for my Canon G10, and I feel like its time to upgrade the camera equipment a bit.

However I don’t know exactly what I would like to get at this point. After reading several reviews I am leaning towards either the Olympus E-PL3 or the Canon G15. The price does differ a fair amount.

So the big question is. What would you do?

The way I shoot is mostly Macro at night. I have an Intova iss 4000 strobe on a tray for my old WP-DC28 casing. I use a canon 7d on land and I don’t feel like I can afford a housing and strobes for this camera at this point.

Olympus

£645 housing, Olympus PT-EP05L

£306 Camera, Olympus pen E-PL3

£199 macro lens, PTMC-01

£60 Lens adapter, PMLA-EP01

Total price - £1210

+ shipping

canon G15

£195 Canon WP-DC48

£499 Canon G15

$199 Macro lens Dyron +7 67mm macro lens (DY.UCL67II)

$ 100 Lens adapter The Dyron 67mm Adapter for Canon G10/G11/G12 Housing (DY.ADC28/34) lens adapter wont fit this camera however Dyron is working on a new model for that housing and will be out soon. My guess is that it will be priced around $100

Total Price – about £860 (depending on currency conversion)

+ shipping

Kindly looking forward to an answer from you.

Henrik

Why these two camera? If your main purpose is photography (not video), you have more options, like the Sony NEX-5n, or the Sony RX100, both offer bigger sensor so the quality will be much better. The RX100 may be more expensive, but the Sony NEX-5n has come down in price, and is about the same price as the Canon G15.

Housing for the RX100 and Sony NEX is already 67mm thread so no need to spend another $100 to by the Dyron.

If your main purpose is video, then it becomes tricky.

I am not stuck in the groves for these two cameras however i ruled out the NEX 5N due to not having a built in IS. Also the housing for the camera seems to be very expensive. well over $1500 for the Nauticam or the Aquatica.

The other cheeper housings doesn't seem to have interchangeable domes with would require me to buy several housings depending on what lens i want to use.

However i havent had a good look at the RX100, will check that out as well.

Thank you for the reply

Check out Panasonic Lumix LX7 as well, its fast lens is useful.

The oly epl3 is a huge step up from the others mentioned. It would be a fantastic starter system. The autofocus speed on the G15 is an order of magnitude slower than a current m43 camera.

The sony nex system is more expensive to house, and has terribly limited lens selection for underwater.

The lx7, by the time you get an ikelite housing for it, is as much or more than the epl3 with the panasonic housing.

Go with your first choice, or wait for the elp5 and housing, which will run a couple of hundred more, with housing, and get you a state of the art sensor, (same one as the omd), and even faster auto focus lag.

That would be my recommendation.