Oly 4/3 lenses for 1 week Lembeh 1 week Bangka

Shooting Oly OMD EM-5 in the Oly EP-08 housing.  Have the EP-01 flat port and the Zen dome port for the Oly 9-18.  

Lenses:
14-42 kit
60 macro, plus a wet +7 diopter 
9-18

I have not been particularly thrilled with the 9-18 behind the Zen, even with a +2 diopter for the blurry edges.  

I already have to buy a new set of strobes, so money is not burning a hole in my pocket, but want to make sure I have the right lenses/ports, within reason.

I imagine the 14-42 and 60 macro would get me through Lembeh adequately.  
Questions
-What about the Oly 30?  I am reading that it will be more effective for larger fish portraits or if the muck diving is really super mucky.  But I believe I would need a new port to accommodate the focus distance of the 30.

-Wide angle - Given the 2X crop WA is a bugaboo and the 9-18 ain't great.  Is it worth getting an 8mm FE, which would also require a new port?  Any other good WA options?

-Would the 9-18 performance improve at all behind a different dome port, i.e the Oly 100 EP-02 port?

Thanks in advance

Wet lens for the 14-42mm would be a better addition than fisheye for this specific trip



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Thanks, and at the risk of sounding like a luddite...  Can you link to or identify a manufacturer? I"ve searched for wet wide angle but have not run across anything

I have the same set up. My 9-18 with the Zen wide angle is my favorite. I have the 25 mm 2.0 for portraits/small things. I don't like to shoot macro. Too much variability in set up with unhappy outcomes. Further going down with a macro set up; you are stuck. Anything big will frustrate you. With that said, do you have the Zen Dome Port for Olympus 9-18mm Wide-Angle Lens with the port adapter? The lens is designed to pinpoint the noddle point for crisp focus. I get great focus with the port/lens combination. Good thread here. 

View archived post in: Olympus 9-18 with Nauticam 4.33"?

Yes, I have the Zen 9-18 with adapter.  
I'll be in Lembeh for a week so I don't expect any large critters to visit, and if they do it'll be a mind's eye thing

My daughter shoots an Oly in the Oly housing, and my nephew shoots the same camera as you (in the same housing).

Dived with both of them in Lembeh about a year ago. They both never took off their 60mm lens - it was the right lens for everything but giant frogfish and when they wanted to capture whole fish shots (which was very rare, given the muck). 

Daughter also shoots the 9-18 behind the zen port - she has not been disappointed in that combination. We dove Bangka together 2 years ago - we saw the same dugong twice, but never got close enough to take a picture. You could dive macro ever dive there and not get disappointed, but if you want to shoot some of the sea fans or schools of fish you'll want some w/a capability. A wet lens would give you the most flexibility.

I think you are pretty well set with your rig, you have all the basics covered.  A wet lens on the 14-24 could substitute for your wide zoom/dome setup, and make your rig more compact for travel.

On 8/23/2019 at 11:18 AM, Rev said:

Yes, I have the Zen 9-18 with adapter.  
I'll be in Lembeh for a week so I don't expect any large critters to visit, and if they do it'll be a mind's eye thing

I've searched for a wet WA for this housing, and have not found anything 

Make no mistake about it... you can shoot the 60mm day in, day out in Lembeh and be happy.  HOWEVER, I am a HUGE fan of the 30mm and think you should strongly consider it.  I shoot an EM1 in Nauticam, so I'm not sure about your port setup for your Oly housing (but would assume that you'll need a new one for the 30mm).  I bought the 30mm and associated port prior to my first and only trip to Lembeh for the Alex Mustard workshop in Oct 2018.  I had used the lens/housing for one photo trip prior to Lembeh.  There was a great write-up on the lens in the bi-monthly Underwater Photography magazine that pushed me to purchase the lens.  

In reviewing my image metadata for the trip, I took 2525 photos in Lembeh.  2313 were with the 30mm, 212 were with the 60mm.  I never would have expected this before the trip.  I had assumed I would have used the 60mm all the time, with the 30mm here and there for variety.  The fact of the matter is, many of my photos could have been taken with either lens, but the 30mm worked for much of what I was shooting.  You'll be seeing plenty of bigger subjects that would do better with a 30mm (larger frogfish, mandarin fish couples mating, scorpionfish, etc etc etc).  Additionally, you can still use a wet diopter with your 30mm (despite what the UwP write up says about the difficulty of doing so).  You'll have a paper thin depth of focus, but with proper techniques like thumb-focus rocking and using a small aperture, you'll be just fine and will come up some very different shots.  And that to me is the key with having that second lens... I found that the 30mm just gave my photos a different feel than the 60mm.  You'll see many of the same creatures over and over again during that week.  Between my 30mm with/without wet diopter and 60mm with/without, I felt like I had four different opportunities with subjects to capture different styles of images.  The 30mm can focus SUPER close... essentially on the glass of your port, so you will be able to get much closer than the 60mm to non-skittish subjects like nudis.  You'll have to get creative with strobe positioning with these tight shots.

Here are a few sample images I shot in Lembeh with the 30mm.

When do you leave for your trip?  Lembeh was amazing.  I wish it wasn't on the other side of the world... it was about 36 hours door to door for me.  I hope to get back some day.  

On 8/30/2019 at 6:47 AM, Rev said:

I've searched for a wet WA for this housing, and have not found anything 

Wet wide angle lenses are not housing specific, they go on any port with an m67 filter thread.   For the 14-42 one example would be this lens:

http://www.inon.jp/products/lens/uwlh10028m67/top.html

Type 2 for your setup I believe, it gives a 100° angle of view, it doesn't give good quality zoom through though, optimised for the wide end at 14mm on the 14-42.  You could carry that plus a close up diopter with the 14-42 to give you wide subject coverage.

7 hours ago, dmshore said:

Make no mistake about it... you can shoot the 60mm day in, day out in Lembeh and be happy.  HOWEVER, I am a HUGE fan of the 30mm and think you should strongly consider it.  I shoot an EM1 in Nauticam, so I'm not sure about your port setup for your Oly housing (but would assume that you'll need a new one for the 30mm).  I bought the 30mm and associated port prior to my first and only trip to Lembeh for the Alex Mustard workshop in Oct 2018.  I had used the lens/housing for one photo trip prior to Lembeh.  There was a great write-up on the lens in the bi-monthly Underwater Photography magazine that pushed me to purchase the lens.  

In reviewing my image metadata for the trip, I took 2525 photos in Lembeh.  2313 were with the 30mm, 212 were with the 60mm.  I never would have expected this before the trip.  I had assumed I would have used the 60mm all the time, with the 30mm here and there for variety.  The fact of the matter is, many of my photos could have been taken with either lens, but the 30mm worked for much of what I was shooting.  You'll be seeing plenty of bigger subjects that would do better with a 30mm (larger frogfish, mandarin fish couples mating, scorpionfish, etc etc etc).  Additionally, you can still use a wet diopter with your 30mm (despite what the UwP write up says about the difficulty of doing so).  You'll have a paper thin depth of focus, but with proper techniques like thumb-focus rocking and using a small aperture, you'll be just fine and will come up some very different shots.  And that to me is the key with having that second lens... I found that the 30mm just gave my photos a different feel than the 60mm.  You'll see many of the same creatures over and over again during that week.  Between my 30mm with/without wet diopter and 60mm with/without, I felt like I had four different opportunities with subjects to capture different styles of images.  The 30mm can focus SUPER close... essentially on the glass of your port, so you will be able to get much closer than the 60mm to non-skittish subjects like nudis.  You'll have to get creative with strobe positioning with these tight shots.

Here are a few sample images I shot in Lembeh with the 30mm.

When do you leave for your trip?  Lembeh was amazing.  I wish it wasn't on the other side of the world... it was about 36 hours door to door for me.  I hope to get back some day.  

 

Really like those last two pis, David. Nice work!