Olympus OM-D E-M5 Underwater Review

GEAR TESTS: Olympus OM-D E-M5

Sean Boone
Web Sales and Logistics Manager

After shooing the E-M5 in the Olympus PT-EP08 housing, I found it much easier to adjust settings with the Nauticam housing. I had to change shutter speed frequently as I would go from open water to shooting under a dock, so having a dial with easy access was essential. Also, with easy view as to which button on the housing matched with the camera made it easy in image review and changing other settings. I did experience low batteries on one of the Sea & Sea YS-D1 strobes half way through the dive, so I switched to video. I was surprised to see that the camera performed a good manual white balance at 65 feet. Surprisingly, the colors still looked good at 80 feet.

The strobes performed as expected from one of the most powerful strobes on the market. The TTL in the camera and strobes worked wonderfully and produced images with proper exposure on most occasions. One problem that I encountered with the TTL function was that I would reposition a strobe and adjust the TTL compensation on the strobe without knowing that it would cause the next photo to be over exposed. Lesson learned that shooting manual might be more advantageous in some situations over shooting TTL. Another downside to the optical TTL is the delay. Waiting for the camera's flash to recycle could be up to 3 seconds. It does not sound like much, but when the first shot was too soon as the fish was too far away, the waiting for the camera's flash to recycle can lead to missing the fish all together.

I was quite surprised to see that the Olympus 60mm Macro lens focused quite quickly and accurately. It performed much faster than the Panasonic 45mm lens. The focus distance is what you would expect out of a SLR 60mm lens, thus made it somewhat difficult getting 1:1 macro, as most small critters were too skittish for me to get close enough. Other than the very close focus, I was quite happy with the performance underwater. Normally, when doing macro when using the camera's LCD screen, it can be quite hard to check the critical focus. I was surprised at how much easier it was to check the critical focus of the subject when compared with the 14-42mm lens and a wet mate diopter.

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