12-40 Dome port possibility for OMD housings

[sillyrabbit]

It's worse than a hassle - you can put it together, but you literally cannot take it apart; people have gotten stuck that way, since there is no easy way to push the lens release button on the camera while it's in the housing. You have to get a thin, long and stiff piece of metal, bend it in just the right way and use it to reach around the camera body and hunt around blindly for the lens release button.

OMG. Not fun at all!

 

[rmorgan]

It's worse than a hassle - you can put it together, but you literally cannot take it apart; people have gotten stuck that way, since there is no easy way to push the lens release button on the camera while it's in the housing. You have to get a thin, long and stiff piece of metal, bend it in just the right way and use it to reach around the camera body and hunt around blindly for the lens release button.

Yikes! The Nauticam housings have lens-release buttons.

 

[Barmaglot]

Yikes! The Nauticam housings have lens-release buttons.

So do the newer AOI ones, but the older AOI and Olympus housings lack them. Notably, AOI have two versions of the E-PL10 housing - the older one, that Backscatter have been marketing for a few years now, can mount the PEN to OMD port adapter but doesn't have a lens release button, so it's a trap for the unwary. The newer version fixes this shortcoming.

 

[Caolino]

View attachment 368351 View attachment 368352Here you go- the dive is at 12mm and f2.8, the clam siphon is at 40mm and f3.5. Both are OOC jpegs so you can get a since of what the corners look like. Viz when I took the clam shot was probably around 4', so you'll have to excuse the backscatter

Can you please post a picture of the housing with the flat port you are using in this configuration? I understand you need the extension but which flat port? Thanks

 

[Furnari]

I sold the flat port, and don't have any pics of it on the housing. But, I have some info in this thread:

OMD, 12-40, and the Oly PPO-E02 flat port

When I was researching the 12-40 lens, I couldn't find a lot of information about using it underwater in the Olympus OMD housings. It's an amazing piece of glass, so I gave it a shot anyways. The Olympus port charts show the 12-40 with the 4/3 PPO-E02 port and an adapter; I managed to score a...

scubaboard.com

...and there's one shot of the port. No extensions were needed with the 12-40, just the adapter to go from 4/3 ports to OMD ports. Unless you have one, you're much better off with a dome port IMHO.

 

[AggressorBLUE]

Just noting that this is also true of Nauticam housings, not just with the 8-25, but also with the 12-40; it’s also easier to put the lens on after the body’s mounted with the 90 macro. Those two (12-40 and 90) 85-90% of my usage these days, and the 12-40 has been my non-macro go-to for 10 or 11 years. It’s a pain, but worth it for the results with those lenses (I can’t use the 8-25 because I have the Zen dome with the built-in extension, but would like to). I can wiggle the camera with lenses out of the housing enough to do battery and SD card changes, which mitigates the issue considerably, and otherwise, it’s just part of the drill.

Does anyone know if the AOI housings using the OMD adapter also have enough wiggle room to back the camera out enough to access the battery/cards, or at least in the case of the OM-1, the USB-C port?

If one can at least get to the USB port, figure that’s enough to top off the battery and download the cards.

 

[Furnari]

Does anyone know if the AOI housings using the OMD adapter also have enough wiggle room to back the camera out enough to access the battery/cards, or at least in the case of the OM-1, the USB-C port?

You know what? I gave this a try with the 12-40, and you can remove the camera and lens from the housing- the zoom gear mounts from the top, so it just has to stay with the housing. Here's the thing- in my case, the AOI zoom gear is loose enough that zooming can sometimes force the gear out of the teeth of the housing. To fix this, I used a couple of rubber bands from asparagus bunches. If those are there, the camera can not be pulled from the housing. So, for me, it becomes more trouble than it's worth- it's easier to just remove the dome and lens as it only takes a few seconds. Your results may vary, though.

The zoom gear for the 8-25 mounts from the base, so it's a no go.

To digress a bit, I really really wish I could use the Panasonic 8-18 with AOI housings. I can't find a way to make it work with the Deepshots zoom gear- has anyone attempted this with the Nauticam gear? It's stupidly, idiotically expensive (even for underwater photography gear, and that's saying something) but if it is actually workable I would buy it.