I got mine on Monday from
Reef Photo & Video!, The Underwater Photo Pros with my eleven year old grandson in mind. He now has fifty logged dives and has an keen interest in learning photography.
If you come from a DSLR background you will find this housing quite small and from a digi cam POV to be a bit large. I see the Oly Pen the same way as a tweener with a much larger image sensor than the Digi cam and a smaller sensor than the larger DSLR's.
Dee, Regarding the lens shade, it threads to the front of the lens and deflects the burst of light from the internal strobe when it fires. The reflection problem you read about was a result of a reflection onto the port from natural light when the lens was pointed to close to the sun ball. Regarding your fiber optic cord, the housing comes with those two little rubber plugs that go into the fiber optic ports on the housing. If you have lost that end piece from the fiber cord, the cord alone can be pushed into that plug and your good to go. The end of the plug needs to be cut off or poked with a pointed tool to allow the light to flash through.
Regarding lens selection, I tried the Pany 45 mm macro in the port and it will work if you are willing to spend $800.00 for the lens which is quite good. Oly also has a 50 macro coming in 2011 according to the roadmap, (I am still waiting for the 100 macro oly placed on the 4/3 roadmap four years ago) my biggest bitch so far with Olympus.
I think the Pany 14 to 45 zoom will also work in the port but it appears to me that the Pany 7 to 14 may be to fat (like the problem with the Nikon 14 to 24 zoom). I say this because I still have hope that an after market dome port will be made for this housing.
I know Oly may not what this said but the housing is made in three parts, the body the back and the flat port which comes with the housing. The port is a bayonet mount with TWO O-rings and can be removed like any other bayonet port by removing the locking device which is held in place by a small screw. Don't try this at home as it will void your warranty. The housing I saw this done with was pressure tested to 100 feet after the port was replaced and in my mind leaves the door open for an after market dome for use with the 9 to 18 and the coming 8 mm fisheye and 12 mm (as seen on the 2011 roadmap).
For the time being I have added a SeaTool tray to the housing but I am sure several others will work. The housing has three mounting holes on the bottom and they are a bit closer together than on some DSLR's so my Inon tray that I use with the SeaTool Olympus E-3 housing will not work with out modification.
I will pickup the 67 mm cap for the macro lens attachment on Monday and will be interested to see how it works with my 67 mm threaded Athena ring flash as well.
I intend to test the housing with live view and with the VF-2, EVF as well, should be interesting to see the difference in battery life between the two.
I am with Jack on the pop-up flash thing, I have made the mistake of not popping the flash up on every Oly housing I have had that uses fiber optics and have always been bailed out by the AUTO trick or a pop-up control built into the housing.
I think we will be seeing a lot of M-43 housings coming into the market as camera sales have been very strong. This is good for U/W photographers who make up a very small section of the market.
It also appears that the 1.1 firmware upgrade has the AF working at the same speed as the Pany GF-1 given the same lens is being used. The Oly kit 14 to 42 being slower and much less expensive than the Pany 14 to 45 zoom.
Phil Rudin
