The PT-018 has been announced, but not yet released, by Olympus US. Adorama and B&H Photo have it listed on their web sites, but don't yet show availability. From what I understand from Ryan at
www.uwcp.com, it's anyone's guess when they actually make units available. Could be today, could be next month.
Right now, they're readily available from vendors in Japan. While they would only have the Olympus Japan warranty, with a housing that's slightly less worrisome than say with a strobe. I'm currently working with Ryan to put together a setup for the C-750.
I played with a 750 for a month topside and was very pleased with it. Ultra Zooms do have some idiosyncracies, including a slower full focus time, but if you utilize the half-press method, the shutter lag is actually extremely short. Shorter even than the 5050 using pre-focus.
You will definitely want a focus assist light (either on tray or strobe) for underwater, as low-light focus can be a bit of a challenge with this camera, but that's not a bad idea anyway.
I'll be shooting with my setup in November and definitely will have pictures then. In the meantime, if anyone wants the benefit of my research, feel free to holler. I'll share whatever I know.
Topside pictures can be found here:
First Pictures and here:
Water Lily and Friends. These are all unedited except for size, and as you can see, at 10X, use of a monopod/tripod is generally indicated. However, up to 7-8X handheld is no problem as can be seen in the final Water Lily picture with the bee. That was taken from about 7 feet away. All the pictures were at least 4-5 feet away.
Amber
