Pen E-pl2 trip to Wakatobi

[Diver58]

I just got back from a trip to Wakatobi with my new Pen E-pl2. I have the Zen Dome along with the 9-18 mm wide zoom, used the kit lens 14-42 in the Zen Dome also. I brought along a Panasonic 45 mm macro and Zen macro port and a Inon 165 close up lens for macro.
Over all I am mostly pleased with the set up. I have moved up or maybe it's side ways for some things from a Canon G10. I am used to shooting manually white balanced images with my G10 and was quite alarmed when I couldn't white balance this camera below 15 feet. It took most of the first week to discover that it would manually white balance must deeper then that if you don't have any negative EV dialed in. After this discovery I will say you need to keep your ISO fairly low or images are noisy, but I only noticed excess noise shooting ambient light and manually white balanced in the dark areas of the images.
Macro with the panasonic 45mm and the Zen macro port was stunning compared to my G10. I also used an Inon 165 close up lens with great results. The Zen macro port had 67mm threads for for the Inon lens.
must admit i didn't use the kit 14-42mm lens a lot but it seamed to work well with the Zen Dome, I never used the standard port so I can't comment on it's performance.
I had the best luck with the 9-18 mm lens in A mode starting a F/6.7. Wider apertures were pretty soft. I had -.5 EV dialed in with a kiss of flash for some color in the foreground, looked the best for landscape shots to me.
i will post some samples in following threads soon as I figure out how. :-}

 

[Diver58]

These all shot in A mode at f/6.7 except for the anemone and that was at f/16

 

[Diver58]

These all shot with the Panasonic 45 mm macro and Zen macro port. F/16 to F/22 and manual mode.

 

[Diver58]

These shot with 45mm macro, Zen macro port and Inon 165 close up lens.

 

[Wisnu]

Great pics .. love the blue background. what strobe(s) you use ?
You mentioned difficulity to manually WB. I have the similar problem with 7-14mm panny; can use raw but I'm too lazy to process after.

 

[Diver58]

Forgot to say the first set of photos was with the Zen Dome and 9-18 mm lens.

This set 14-42 mm kit lens. both in manual mode.

 

[Diver58]

These two shot with ambient light manually white balanced for depth. Both a fairly shallow, 20 feet deep or less. This camera will not white balance deeper then 15 feet if you have any negative EV dialed in. That info is not in the manual either I just stumbled across that by accident. I have to say that I think my G10 was was better for ambient light but may have to shoot some more to say that for sure. P mode was worthless for ambient light because it aways chose the widest f stop and the images were too soft or the DOF was too narrow. A mode is the way to go here I think, for me anyway.

 

[Diver58]

I have dual Sea & Sea 110a strobes.

 

[under water]

Thanks for the write up and thanks for that tip about white balance.

I especially like the macro shots that you have. The 45mm lens is a mighty fine lens and can do 1:1, but the addition of the UCL-165 really enhances it. How well did the autofocus work?

Did you get a chance to try the M mode? I started with using A on my first trip, but ended up preferring M on my second trip because of the better control of exposure.

 

[deeper thoughts]

great shots! Love the macro. I too have a ? Did you do any strobe shooting in p mode?