All talk on SP-350? I love my 320!

[RockyHeap]

Whats the real difference between the 320 and 350 besides the hot-shoe on the 350?

I LOVE MY 320! My first Oly after 4-5 nikon coolpix U/W rigs.

gotta love the full manual control of shutter speed and F-stop, but I wasn't real impressed with automatic underwater modes, or setting manual white balance tended to get the blues too pink trying to force reds where there just wasn't any in the distant shots.

Will get some awesome shots posted to photobucket or other hosting site, gotta love 16 dives in Belize to get the bugs worked out on a new camera rig. (I average 60-70 shots a dive of which I trim down to 10-15 keepers later)

Camera triggered my slaved strobe Sealife 960 just fine. Awesome macro shots nuking the anemone with full power light forced 1/2000 of a second at F8 sometimes and the side lighting effects are worth it!

Video mode worked out awesome too, but be sure you have a 1 gig chip. a 1 minute video at 30 frames per second with audio at 480x640 resolution gets up to 140 meg!

Just some happy ramblings from a new Oly 320 owner.

Now to find a wide angle lens to fit the Oly PT-030 housing, any suggestions?

 

[Rogue_Diver]

I think Inon makes a lens for the front of the Oly housing. I have been eyeballing a Oly setup on ebay and part of the deal was an Inon lens. I'm not clear on what it fits (this one was a SP350 set up) but its a good place to start anyway. Good luck.

 

[Larry C]

Only diff is the hot shoe and 1mp. When they made the 320 they upgraded all the other features from the 310 to match the 350. I just bought a Sea & Sea 16mm lens for Nikonos on e-bay (about $100). Requires a 46-58 step ring. ($6 on e-bay) They don't recommend it for this camera because you get vignetting if you don't zoom slightly. New, they run $365. Haven't tried it yet, but got glowing reports from another owner. If you're willing to spend the bucks, go with the Inon. They have a bayonet mount for the PT-030 housing that fits the 105 and the 165, so you can do wide and macro with wet changes. Everyone who uses them says they're great lenses. You can look them up on Inon America.com or Reef Photo has them as well.

 

[gert7to3]

I just purchased an Olympus SP350. I chose it over the SP320 because I wanted the hot shoe for topside stuff. Bounce flash really helps small digicams become great small digicams.

On the matter of wide angle lenses and adapters. Do Sea & Sea (Motor Marine) accessory lenses have the same size bayonet mount as Nikonos lenses? Also, don't INON, Sea & Sea and Nikonos accessory lenses share the same mount?

I ask because INON has adapter mounts for the Olympus PT030 housing (for SP-310, 320, 350 cameras). So wouldn't this adapter work whether you had a S&S (Motor Marine), INON or Nikonos accessory lens?

 

[bfisher]

Rocky,

What setting to you have the strobe set on? I mean for the preflash. I'm using the 960, but I had it on zero and I think it was going off with my preflash. I think it should be set on "one". What say you?

 

[RockyHeap]

My strobe is an older 960 (2-3 years old) and doesn't have a pre-flash adjustment, nor does my 960 have a variable power setting so it always fires at full power. Try all your strobe fire settings, you'll find out which one works best, and even in the Oly Camera settings, you can set your strobe to "slave" or front/rear curtain firing times.

Don't hold me to exact dates, but the 310 and 350 came out late in 2005, and the 320 came out around Feb of 2006. The 310 and 350 have had firmware software updates available for premature low battery warning and other features, that the 320 already has incorporated as well as a faster focus and pic to pic cycly time I believe from what I've read about, but don't have firm numbers.

All in All the SP-320 blows away my longggggggg series of 2, 3, 4, and 5 meg pixel Nikon Cameras, at least 4-5 different model numbers.

What took me so long to leave the dark side and become enlightened to the Oly world? Happy I'm here now.

 

[yukoneer]

I am a novice user, and thinking of getting the SP320 with olympus housing for my upcoming 10day trip to Bonaire.

What did you not like about the automatic underwater modes? This was what interested me the most and I was curious when I read you didn't like it. I dont know the differences in f-stops, shutter speed, etc... never took photography seriously before...

Is it good for a beginner photographer? Is it easy to upgrade and add on to it later on (such as adding strobe, lens, etc...)