Doesn’t it just drive you crazy during the dive briefing when the guide says, “this is a great spot for seeing mantas…and we often find pygmy seahorses here.”
At DEMA we saw this I-DAS tray and I thought “hmmmm two cameras on one dive, the flexibility to shoot macro and wide or video while taking stills.” Of course many are already doing this with still cameras and GoPros. My line-up…the Sony RX100 and the Olympus OMD-EM5, both in Nauticam housings. The tray does not have the correct holes for mounting the Nauticam housing on top. But get out your marker, a drill and in a few moments you are ready to go.
As mentioned in other posts, articles I think the RX100 with a good wide angle wet lens is on par with most cropped sensor DSLR so it was my choice for wide and shooting video. The Olympus EM5 with the Olympus 60mm 2.8 macro lens and +5/+10 diopters the obvious choice for macro. I also shot the EM5 with the Lumix 8mm fish eye and really enjoyed it. The size is about on par but lighter than most DSLR rigs. With the 6 Stix floats it was very close to neutral. Shooting was much less cumbersome than I expected. Originally I thought I would dive with this set-up just a couple of times as an experiment but in the end I probably dove it 70% of the time. I even shot it when doing over/unders in the mangroves.
These are the first photos I have gotten processed and just starting to look at the video from both cameras. But when shooting the mantas feeding on the surface it looks like it will produce some interesting video with synced stills. Is this my ultimate system? Probably not but the tray weighs next to nothing and as long as you have a couple of duel optical cables what the heck?!?!? No groan from me when the dive master says….
Over/Under shot with the Sony RX100 and H100+Dome
At DEMA we saw this I-DAS tray and I thought “hmmmm two cameras on one dive, the flexibility to shoot macro and wide or video while taking stills.” Of course many are already doing this with still cameras and GoPros. My line-up…the Sony RX100 and the Olympus OMD-EM5, both in Nauticam housings. The tray does not have the correct holes for mounting the Nauticam housing on top. But get out your marker, a drill and in a few moments you are ready to go.
As mentioned in other posts, articles I think the RX100 with a good wide angle wet lens is on par with most cropped sensor DSLR so it was my choice for wide and shooting video. The Olympus EM5 with the Olympus 60mm 2.8 macro lens and +5/+10 diopters the obvious choice for macro. I also shot the EM5 with the Lumix 8mm fish eye and really enjoyed it. The size is about on par but lighter than most DSLR rigs. With the 6 Stix floats it was very close to neutral. Shooting was much less cumbersome than I expected. Originally I thought I would dive with this set-up just a couple of times as an experiment but in the end I probably dove it 70% of the time. I even shot it when doing over/unders in the mangroves.
These are the first photos I have gotten processed and just starting to look at the video from both cameras. But when shooting the mantas feeding on the surface it looks like it will produce some interesting video with synced stills. Is this my ultimate system? Probably not but the tray weighs next to nothing and as long as you have a couple of duel optical cables what the heck?!?!? No groan from me when the dive master says….
Over/Under shot with the Sony RX100 and H100+Dome
