Anyone used an Olympus FE-280?

[Larry C]

No, 15 ft. is going to give you a fairly wide focus area, probably from about 7-25 with decent focus. Since you don't have to wait for the autofocus to find your subject, theoretically you are able to snap a quick picture. I would trust this a lot more at fairly shallow depth in tropical water with a lot of ambient light, and the flash turned off. I think the preflash/flash setting process takes almost as much time as the autofocus. Where autofocus is really an issue is in dark water at greater depth or with poor vis, where the camera has to hunt for something to focus on. Sometimes illuminating the subject with your dive light or mounting a little UK mini or something like that on top of your housing can help a lot.

 

[pennypue]

pennypue, please post pics (sorry, got lost in the p's).

[snippage]

Ok, pennypue, please post the pics. (There goes those p's again!)

Love that.

Here's a few that I found.
Topside macro:

Underwater:

Self portrait:

 

[pennypue]

And more!!!
Under the dock at the quarry:

 

[pennypue]

Different quarry, with nasty viz for comparison.
15 feet of green:

Fish in 15 feet of GREEN water, lots of particulate. External strobe would have REALLY helped!

Me, in the pea green soup.

And finally, two macros of snails, same pea green water, just a lot less of it in front of the lens.

Does that help?

 

[NJMike]

Yes, it does help. My home field (lake, I mean) is Dutch Springs in PA. Normal vis is about 20-30 feet. How much vis did you have in the first set of UW pics?

BTW, nice teeth!

 

[NJMike]

Larry, thanks, that was a good, short explanation. I haven't really read or heard anything yet to make me think this is not a good camera.

 

[pennypue]

Mike, the first quarry is Blue Springs in Waldron, Indiana. Not exactly known for its outstanding viz.....I'd guess that viz was probably close to what you'd have at Dutch, at least in the locations that those pics were shot. There's some parts of the quarry where the silt monsters would prevent any pics!

 

[myrtlebeachbums]

were the closeup pics of your face in macro mode? Those were awesome, but don't get any ideas, I'm happily married....

the movie was definitely grainy...and I would think that the pool would be very nice, clean, clear water...and I thought the movie was dark and grainy. That's not too big a deal for me, since I'm not really interested in the camera to take movies.

Did you use the DIS (digital image stabilization) in the pics that were blurry? The Olympus site would have you believe that digital stabilization is better than optical stabilization (and I have no reason to dispute this since I know squat about photography). They say that digital stablization will compensate for subject movement whereas optical stabilization will not.

Hey Mike - Honestly I do not remember if those were in macro mode or not. I don't think they were.

I think the movie quality was poor specifically because I was diving in a very dark pool. If light conditions had been better I suspect that the quality would've greatly improved.

I didn't specifically turn on DIS, but I think it's on by default. Some of the ones that were blurry were when I tried taking a close up shot in macro mode and then used the telephoto to zoom in. I found I had better luck leaving the zoom at the W limit and moving the camera closer to what I was trying to shoot.

 

[myrtlebeachbums]

The difference between UW wide 1 and UW wide 2 is that UW 2 is prefocused at about 15 feet to eliminate the autofocus. It's supposed to allow a faster shot for moving subjects in open water. This would be applicable if you were swimming with a Dive Leader and a Turtle or Shark came along that you wanted to get a quick picture of. If you anticipated that situation, you could leave the camera in UW Wide 2 until you got to the reef or wherever you're being taken.

Fantastic to know - thanks Larry!

...of course I might know this if I'd read the manual for the camera like I read the manual for the housing.

 

[NJMike]

I've pretty much made up my mind to get the camera. I'm going to look at it and the housing at the dive shop either today or Saturday.

Someonen mentioned (can't remember where) that even shining a small flashlight toward the subject would improve the picture quality. I never thought about this, but this camera does not have a strobe attachment, so it's a good idea. Maybe even one of those head straps with a mini light attached to it?