AOI OM-1 and the Olympus 90 Macro

[bvanant]

Just heading off to Anilao in a few days but want to give a mini-review of the AOI housing for the OM-1 and the use of the 90 macro lens.
First the lens, it is awesome, (sometimes hard to find the beast) but sharp, focuses very fast and quite fun. A couple of shots from a hike today.

Nice Bokeh. Now the housing. AOI is a Hong Kong company making lots of cool stuff for UW use.
I ordered one of their OM-1 housings to try it out. It is plastic (not Al) and the controls are simple (compared to Nauticam) but everything I use is easy to get to. The housing appears to be well made and has some neat built in features. One is a built in vacuum system, and the other is a built in LED trigger for your strobes. The vacuum/LED trigger is a single set of electronics with a rechargeable battery that recharges via a USB-C cable. The trigger works (for me) with AOI, Backscatter, S&S, and Inon strobes of a variety of types. There is no separate tray for your camera, it slides in (if you remember to lift up the on-off button). Ports are quite nice and there is a nice port locking system on the housing. Once together you have a choice of looking at the screen directly, there is a 90 degree finder (a mirror essentially), a magnifying straight viewfinder or a little hood. I have historically used a 45 finder and find the 90 strange but did get used to it. Underwater it is pretty simple to use (I only pretty much change f-stop/shutter and move the strobes around a bit. Finding subjects was pretty simple, and on a pretty ugly (surge/cold/low vis) day did get some shots. The Clown is on a black felt stage, the Hermissenda is just crawling around.

Overall, I like the system, the camera/lens is awesome, the housing does what it supposed to do i.e., it keeps the camera dry.

Bill

 

[Caolino]

housing does what it supposed to do

What about the need of port removal for any camera access?

 

[d^2b]

What about the need of port removal for any camera access?

Isn't that only if using OMD ports?

 

[bvanant]

Isn't that only if using OMD ports?

I have the big base (needed for the 90) but I think only the big wide angle lenses need port removal before removing the lens. Given the quality of the new water contact Nauticam lenses, I think that the wide angle rectilinear lenses will be going away, since the water contact lenses have much better IQ.
Bill

 

[d^2b]

I have the big base (needed for the 90) but I think only the big wide angle lenses need port removal before removing the lens. Given the quality of the new water contact Nauticam lenses, I think that the wide angle rectilinear lenses will be going away, since the water contact lenses have much better IQ.
Bill

Do you have any experience with the 12-40 pro and this housing?

 

[bvanant]

No, I don't but supposedly that is the lens that you put in the housing then mount the port.
BVA

 

[AggressorBLUE]

Nice write up! Not a lot of material out there around this housing so glad for the insight.

That said, personally there are two things that would cause me hesitation with this housing; interested in your thoughts on them:

First, the depth rating is 144 feet, which seems odd given the other AOI housings are rated to 200. As a recreational diver I’ll rarely exceed 144, but I do get close when diving locations like the St. Lawrence Sea way. Also, it strikes me as odd that it has a different rating; curious as to why this housing is different than it’s sister products that use the same dome system And general construction methods.

Second; the LED trigger seems like a cool idea, but I’m nervous that, from appearences at least, it is hard wired to the housing, including the rechargeable battery. (Though please correct me if wrong!). The battery in particular is concerning. All rechargeable batteries have a useable lifespan, and it would be frustrating to have this part start to fail/under-perform ~5 years into ownership without a reasonable road to self-servicing a replacement. Also, in the event of a housing flood, it would be annoying to have that part fail when the rest of the housing would be perfectly serviceable.

 

[bvanant]

I don't think the 144 is for the dome, but rather the buttons but really don't know. For me not an issue, but you might ping AOI. As for the LED trigger and integrated vacuum, I think it is brilliant. You could calculate the number of recharge cycles but I would certainly have it replaced after say 4 years. It might cost $100 but for me at 4 years that would be like $0.10 per dive, not unreasonable. If I could get the part then changing it out looks pretty simple.

Bill

 

[d^2b]

FWIW, I checked and my (apparently) AOI manufactured Olympus PT-EP13 is also rated for 45m (~147 ft).

 

[bvanant]

some are 60 meters, some are 45 meters, seems like the OMD-5 is 60, but the EM1-III is 45.
I suspect that at 60 meters, some buttons won't work.
Bill