Help With Lens/Port Choice and What to Keep/Sell for Future Use

[Amy B-G]

I have been shooting the AOI for the OM-1 for quite a while (I was a real early adopter). For macro one of the 30,45,60 or 90 lenses (or all of them). The AOI port for the 90 is awesome as it lets you change magnifications on the fly). I think a lot of modern thinking is that it is better to use a wet lens setup for wide angle than a traditional WA lens behind a dome. In the full frame world that is really happening. I have used the 12-50 for Mantas in Komodo with reasonable results using the AOI port for the 60 macro. A lot depends on what you want to shoot, for me mostly macro with an occasional wide shot.
Bill
One thing to remember about the AOI system, it is very negative underwater and needs quite a bit of flotation but probably not more than the Nauticam version.

BillView attachment 832304
From a dive yesterday here in LA with the Oly 60, OM-1, AOI, 2x Backscatter MF-2 strobes

I would think that the Nauticam housing would be significantly more negative under water? I'm having a hard time getting weight and buoyancy specs anywhere online. Do you know anyone that has tried both that knows the actual difference?

 

[bvanant]

I thought so too, but my AOI is about the same (maybe a bit heavier) weight underwater than my Nauticam system for the EM1-Mark III. I was surprised but if you look at the housing there is really no air inside, the nautical has a bit more trapped air.
Bill

 

[BlennyEyes]

I'm not a huge fan of the 12-50, but I dove with the 12-40 for many years in a 170mm dome and liked it much more. Crop a bit and the near macro quality exceeds the 12-50 (IMO).

Coincidentally, I just dove my AOI OM-1 housing for the first time yesterday in a pool, and it replaces an AOI E-M1mkIII set up. I have no complaints about the AOI housings; they're compact, well built, and affordable. Using the 12-40 is doable on those housings but requires a clunky port adapter; well-engineered and workable but kind of defeats the purpose of the small housing size. Here's what I ended up doing instead:

I bought an INON PEN dome for the Oly 8mm fisheye, added the AOI 34mm extension ring, and use the Oly 12-45 lens. It's a significantly smaller form factor, and the optics just work, even though the port was never designed for it. The problem is that the port is discontinued; I scratched it pretty bad on a recent Puget Sound trip and ended up having to buy the OMD version of the same port just to get the glass to have Backscatter fix my screw-up; totally worth it because of how stellar this port works for the size- it's at least as good as the 12-40. In doing a bunch of research before going through all the trouble, it turns out the Inon PEN dome is a little bit wider than most domes meant for the fisheye lenses, so it's possible that's why it works so well. That said, if you're going to be putting your Panasonic 8mm in a mini-dome anyways, it might be worth trying the 12-45 as you would just need a 24mm extension ring (to make the port the same length as needed for the Oly 8mm) and the 34mm extension ring. The lens itself can be found fairly easily used for 350 or so; add that up and you're saving money compared to buying a second dome and the OMD adapter to port the 12-40 (disregard this advice if you're also planning on porting a wide-angle zoom like the 8-25; if you are, skip the 170mm and get the 8" dome). If nothing else, having the 2 sizes of AOI extension rings comes in handy because you can add one or the other to the cheap AOI flat port meant for the 14-42EZ lens ($200 at Backscatter) and now you've got a macro port for the Oly 30mm/60mm lenses.

Alternatively, the partial PEN dome port made by Zen and AOI intended for the 9-18 is what the port charts call out for the 12-45, and I've seen them used for $200 or so. I just like having one dome for both the fisheye and the zoom (it also works with the Panasonic 9mm, but it's not great).

This post is getting long, but I've tried a lot of different lenses and ports from the M43 ecosystem; happy to take a swing at any questions you may have, and I'll try to get a photo of my housing and dome to show how compact it is.

Really interesting discussion. I’m new to underwater photography w/ interchangeable lenses. How do you go about determining which extension rings, etc, are used with which lenses when mixing between systems? I see, for example the Nauticam port charts, but don’t know where to start for the combinations you are discussing. Thanks!

 

[rmorgan]

Really interesting discussion. I’m new to underwater photography w/ interchangeable lenses. How do you go about determining which extension rings, etc, are used with which lenses when mixing between systems? I see, for example the Nauticam port charts, but don’t know where to start for the combinations you are discussing. Thanks!

I think the consensus here would be that you start on Backscatter’s website. Many helpful videos, configuration advice, etc.

 

[Furnari]

I agree with the Backscatter recommendation. For some of the Frankensteinian stuff I've done over the years, I just looked for product dimensions and worked from there. A good resource for modern Olympus ports is the AOI chart. This one is for PEN ports, and they have one for OMD ports: https://www.aoi-uw.com/media/wysiwyg/AOI_PEN_LENS_PORTS_SYSTEM_0325.pdf
Generally (but not always), you can crosswalk ports for the same lens across different manufacturers to piece together what works and what doesn't. For example, some manufacturers don't show that they support the 12-45, but if the AOI port for that lens also works with the 9-18, a port for that lens from a different manufacturer should support the 12-45 as well. Generally It gets a little squirrely going between Panasonic and Olympus lenses since only a few port manufacturers support both in the same system- you may have to result to just guess. That's what I did and found that the Panasonic 8-18 worked great in the same 170mm dome I had for the Olympus 12-40 for OMD housings (but not AOI's PEN housings, unfortunately).

 

[BlennyEyes]

Thanks Furnari and rmorgan. I’ll check out the backscatter site, and thanks for the tip on using cross compatibility with a different lens as a starting place.