AOI Wide Angle decision

Hi all --

I'm really close to purchasing a Backscatter / AOI housing system for the E-PL10 camera as an upgrade from a Sea Life compact.  After all of the reading on the lens kit options, I keep going back and forth between the "professional" 8mm 180 degree fish-eye option vs. the "most versatile" 130 degree wide-angle port for the 14-42mm kit lens.  It seems the main benefits to the latter is that, as a wet lens, you can pull it off during a dive and just use the 14-42 lens for tighter shots. Also, that the 8mm is so wide that you have to be very close and it could be hard to get portrait shots of larger animals.  Benefit to 8mm is that you can get very close to reduce water column between the camera and the subject and optimize the flash.

So...some of the questions for anyone who dives with one or the other of these setups....

1. How close would a diver need to be to a shark or an eagle ray for an effective portrait with the 180 degree lens vs. the 130 degree lens? I know this is a pretty subjective question, but just trying to understand the order of magnitude of the difference.
2. Is it practical to remove the 130 degree lens on a dive to shoot without it?  What do you do with it when it's not attached to the camera?
3. Is 130 or 180 degrees a more common wide-angle setup?
4. When you dive with one of the two, do you ever wish you had the other?
5. Any other considerations I'm not thinking of before taking the hammer to my piggy bank?

Thanks!

A similar question was asked a while back and I posted some comparison shots between a fisheye and 7mm (114 deg diagonal) rectilinear.  Not exactly your two choices but close.  You know how large a door is so it gives you an idea of how close you need to be.  The shot was taken about 800-900mm from front edge of door frame,  so really quite close.  Read the text in the link to help understand distances etc.

View archived post in: Lens advice for Canon R5 for dolphins please :)

Moving on from that the question gets back to what you shoot the most.  You van control how close you get to the reef or a seafan or other fixed feature  quite easily and do general reef scenes or CFWA and here the fisheye is probably a good choice.

For pelagics you don't have control over subject distance so much and if you swim at the subject it might leave, so ability to zoom in is invaluable and you would probably choose the WWL, unless the subjects were huge like humpback whales for example.

In theory you can take off the WWL and use the bare 14-42, in practice it is rather difficult.  With the WWL 1B when you take it off your rig is suddenly 120 gr lighter and could go positive. The WWL is a big hunk of metal over 150mm across - the problem is where to put it when you take it off It doesn't have a tether point either so you don't want to drop it !!  It's a bit large for most pockets, some people talk about having a docking station on a strobe arm but this is a big piece and will likely get in the way if stored there.   This question has been asked a number of times before and it generally gets around to that in practice most people tend to leave it on for the entire dive.

The fisheye will allow you to focus all the way to the dome,  At that point a subject about 100mm or so across is a nice size in the frame, but that subject is probably not a fish as most will leave if you get that close. 

Thanks for the link to that post @ChrisRoss!  That was a good read.  Your comment about trying shoot both with / without the WWL on the same dive confirms the concern I have about the real-world practicality of that feature.  

It seems to be coming down to what are the 3 pre-dive choices I want.  Two are the same:  14-42mm Olympus with the standard AOI port and the 60mm Olympus macro lens/port.   The third would be either the the 14-42 Olympus with the 130 degree WWL or the 180 degree 8mm Lumix with the fixed dome.  Seems the positives for the WWL would be the additional flexibility of the zoom like you said, whereas the positive for the 8MM would be getting closer to reef scenes for superior lighting.  I'm leaning toward the 8mm option as most of the diving I've done tends to have more spectacular reef scenes than large animal encounters.  But definitely an agonizing decision.

Another alternative can be a wide angle with flat port like inon uwl 95. It’s easier to take out and not as big and expensive as wwl.
I have done few trial and definitive the fov is substantial increase in comparison to the standard port.


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@caolino does that port work in the AOI housing for the e-pl10? 

This is a link to the UWL-95 lens:  http://www.inon.jp/products/lens/uwl-95_c24_m67/top.html

It's a little bit apples to oranges comparing to the WWL.  INON only confirm UWL-95 for use on 1" sensor cameras like the RX-100 and the field of view is 95° (20mm full frame equivalent) with the camera lens at 24mm - so it would be less with your 14-42mm lens.  You can add a dome for a wider view.  If you were to go with INON the UWL-100 would be better suited as it is designed for 28mm lenses and gives a 100° field (18mm full frame equivalent)  You can see some shots taken with the UWL-100 plus dome here and there are also WWL shots:

https://www.housingcamera.com/blog/product-reviews/the-ultimate-wet-lens-sample-post

You need to scroll down to find the images,  they all have EXIF data to check focal length etc.  The second WWL of the large cod is most relevant as it is at the widest setting on an APS-C camera.  You can see the corners are better than the UWL-100 with a dome.

@caolino does that port work in the AOI housing for the e-pl10? 

I reviewed this system in issue #122 for uwpmag.com which can be found in the free back issues at the top of the home page. It is a terrific little system, I had the 14-42 with the AOI UWL-09 for the review along with a macro lens. I have used 8mm fisheye lenses with 4/3 and M4/3 systems for years and the zoom with a wet lens like UWL-09 of WWL-1B is the most versatile choice especially for pelagic's. 

With the 8mm you need to be very close for best results. 

Thanks @Phil Rudin!  What a great magazine. And thank you for all the time you put in to the reviews and articles! That has to take a lot of time.  I'll be pouring over the articles on a flight this afternoon, unfortunately to Des Moines and not Indonesia!

Thanks also @caolino for the info.  I'm learning a lot on these systems and didn't realize the brands were interchangeable.  Will have to research the M67 type II system you mentioned too.

@hoekma, I use the EPL10 both the Pana8mm FE and the Oly 60mm macro.  I recently got the Oly30mm macro to try out but haven't been able to get out to use it yet. I prefer to put one lens on in a port so that I can focus o one kind of photography per day of diving be it WA/CFWA or Macro.

Here (link #1) is an album captured with the 8mm fisheye, there are some original and cropped photos in the album. Here (Link #2) is a second album with some photos captured with the 8mm fisheye.  If I remember correctly I tries to get my dome port within 3-4 inches of the subject, except for the octopus, it was sleeping so I stayed back a bit.

If you have questions feel free to ask.

Thanks @Dann-Oh!   How far do you suppose you were from the diver on the safety stop in link #1?

17 hours ago, hoekma said:

Thanks @Dann-Oh!   How far do you suppose you were from the diver on the safety stop in link #1?

If my memory recall is correct I believe I was a few feet away.  That photo was intentionally taken without flash, I was going for the silhouette look.

10 hours ago, Dann-Oh said:

If my memory recall is correct I believe I was a few feet away.  That photo was intentionally taken without flash, I was going for the silhouette look.

Thanks!  It's a good pic and helps me gain perspective on how wide the 8MM fisheye w/ the DLP-06 dome is.

The 8mm is quite versatile for reef scenes, anything that you can approach. This link is from my website, most of this page is shot with the Panasonic 8mm fisheye in a 100mm (4") dome:

https://www.aus-natural.com/Underwater/Weda Resort Halmahera/index.html

Mostly taken from 1-1.5m away.  It was really my first serious trip using a fisheye and if I were doing it again I'd concentrate on getting closer for most of the shots.  The diver with the sea fan is my daughter she is about 1-1.5m away.

What a great thing to share these experiences with your daughter.  Looks like she's picked up the shudder bug too!   Thank you for sharing your portfolio.  Very nice pics!

I'm getting ready to put in my order to Backscatter and am wondering about the protective neoprene cover for the DLP-06 lens.  On their website it says it is a "replacement" cover.  Does anyone know if the lens comes with a cover already?  It doesn't list that in the description, but it seems weird that the ala carte one would say replacement if it didn't already come with one.

12 hours ago, hoekma said:

I'm getting ready to put in my order to Backscatter and am wondering about the protective neoprene cover for the DLP-06 lens.  On their website it says it is a "replacement" cover.  Does anyone know if the lens comes with a cover already?  It doesn't list that in the description, but it seems weird that the ala carte one would say replacement if it didn't already come with one.

Yes, when I bought the DLP-06 mine came with a neoprene cover for the dome.

Awesome, thanks!