Taking the Canon M5 underwater or not..

Hi all,

already shooting for 10 years with the old Canon 500D in a Sea&Sea housing and its time for an upgrade. I do also shoot the Canon M5 above water and I was trying to find some info on the use of the M5 underwater. Nauticam also has a very nice houding for the camera but im still puzzled wether it is still worthwhile investing in a housing for the Canon M5. For the same price as an M5 housing with port I can also get an Olympus OMD EM10 MIII set with a Nauticam house.

I did own some Olympus cameras in the past and never was to enthusiastic about the user-friendliness of the camera's. But that could offcourse have changed nowadays. Looking at specs the 2 cameras look comparable with maybe a slight advantage for the M5. And although the M-lenses are not that extensive (and a bit of a bummer with the Canon M-series) this could be dealt with using either the Wet lenses from Nauticam or with the EFM mount I could also still use some of the old lenses. 

Looking online for pictures and reviews with the M5 underwater is like looking into the big blue. There seem to be hardly people posting pics made with the system except from the pics shown on the Nauticam site. Are there some people here that would like to share some enduser comments of this setup? Will be using the setup with my 2 Sea&Sea YS-D1 strobes fired by fiber optics. 

Thanks in advance!

There's probably a reason you can't find much from the M5 underwater, seems like a toe in the water for Canon in mirrorless and the system is nowhere near complete.  Compared to EOS and M43 systems the lens lineup is very limited or you are adapting EOS lenses.  M43 in particular has a very complete choice of lenses available.  A downside of any of these systems compared to your EOS DSLR is going to be battery life, both Olympus and the M5 use small batteries.  Ratings are as follows:  M2 295shots/ EM-10-III 320 shots/EM-1 _II  440 shots/550D 440 shots/ 80D 960 shots.

I don't know how much you have invested in the ports and lenses for your current system, but I would guess your best option right now might be  an S&S 80D housing using your current ports and lenses?  The M system has a smaller camera/housing but the ports and lenses will be the same size as you currently use, so overall not a big change in the rig size.

If you went Olympus I would suggest going for EM-5 MkIII or EM1-MkII rather then the EM-10 - AF in macro can hunt a bit on the base models and the newer top line models have a lot better AF.  The difference between the EM-5II and EM-1 II is quite significant.  I have shot bot  and the EM-1 II was a good upgrade for the AF.   The housings for these are quite similar in price - The Nauticam housing for the EM-5-III doesn't include the tray while the EM-1 II does.  For me it is worth it to stretch for the better camera in the range if the housings are the same or close in price.

Are there any particular features you value for your new system - travel friendly? video?  wide angle or macro?

Thanks for the reply. The biggest disadvantage of any of the systems is indeed the battery. When shooting the SLR you could easily go multiple days without needing to recharge the camera. 

The investing I did now into the Sea&Sea house are pretty limited. So I'm not stuck on staying at Sea&Sea The ports are not that often coming on the second hand market and they are pretty expensive. The Nauticam houses have some really nice features with the build in leak/vacuum sensors and the versatility in all available ports and rings.I'll look a bit more into the EM range to see what would suit me best. 

And further for specific features im looking for. It should be to bulky to be carrying around. Allot of the times when taking along the camera on dives there's hardly anything to shoot and the camera just hangs on system.