Thanks everyone who helped me figure out my new kickin' camera setup, especially people on this thread for the wide-angle decision and this thread for the strobes, and this thread for steering me away from a boondoggle with pool noodles.
After a about 2 months of brain squeeze trying to decide what to get, scrounging on eBay, posting here, and watching youtube videos (thanks Backscatter for all the great vids!), I wound up with this:
- Olympus E-PL10 with Backscatter Octo-Housing
- For CFWA, 8mm Lumix fish eye + AOI DLP-06 port + Inon Z-330 Type 2's
- For Macro, 60mm Olympus + AOI FLP-02P + Backscatter MiniFlash & snoot
- BGNing Arms & generic arm hardware from eBay
- Not pictured are the 4 large STIX floats. Might look into the pvc floats @wydeangle mentioned here if the Stix aren't adequate.
- Also, have a UCL-06F diopter coming from eBay soon and will get the flip-up adapter from Backscatter to ago along with it.
I got the ports, housing, floats and INON lights new from Backscatter. The rest were eBay purchases, which saved me around $1000 vs. buying new.
Now to get the rig wet! Living in land-locked Colorado, I'll start by practicing in our dive shop's pool to get the camera neutral in macro and CFWA setups as well as play with at least macro with the toy critters in the picture (got a whole box of 'em from Amazon!).
Then, I think I'll sign up for one of the photography training trips. Any recommendations on a good UW photography boot-camp trip this winter/spring?
