There was a rubber part to adjust the focus ring that had gone brittle and broken off and there's no way to repair it. Had to chuck the whole thing out. But it's ok, I've had it for more than 5 years. In the context of UW photography, that's a long time.
I've decided to stick with Olympus but didn't want to go the OMD range because the UW housing for these cameras are quite expensive.
The closest "smaller" camera that matches the features of OMD under the PEN series is E-PL7. There's a newer E-PL8 but not much better so E-PL7 has better value for money.
It's a beauty, isn't it? I decided on the silver one because it has a classic feel to it.
When it was launched in 2014, the price was about RM2,400, I bought it now at RM1,780 at Lazada. Since Olympus has it's 80th Anniversary promo, I got additional one year warranty plus one extra battery worth RM259.
[Never chase the latest technology and pay premium prices. This camera was launched 2+ years ago and still has the technology that's pretty much above my photography skills.]
That's one hell of a value for this little pocket power house.
The reviews are here and here.
I also needed to get the UW housing and paid RM2,210 for it. Here. [Nowadays if you know what you want, you can pretty much buy anything online.
This housing can fit in the 12-42mm pancake lens, as well as the 12mm, 17mm, 25mm, and 45mm.
You can fit in bigger lenses such as the obligatory Olympus 60mm macro lens or the Panasonic 8mm fish eye by changing the exiting macro port to the Zen series of macro/dome ports . But I have decided to go with the kit lens but use a wet lens on the outside.
Anyway, to continue.
The housing does not come with zoom gear the 14-42mm lens. So you have to get one from 3rd party.
Buy it here.
For the diopter, I planned to buy either the Aquako or Subsee
The Aquako III gives you 2.2x magnification.
The Subsee +10 diopter will give you up to 3.5x magnification DEPENDING on the focal length of your lens. At 42mm, the magnification is only 1.3x.
There's one more that I can get but I'm not going to because it is bloody expensive.
The Nautical Super Macro Converter!!
To fit into the 67mm groove of the housing I've gotten the double flip adapter. Some local dive shop (I won't mention the name) wants to charge me like RM2,000 for some shit Malaysian made flip adapter. I'd rather buy from Europe at half the price.
You can buy it here. This online store has got a lot of selections and prices are reasonable. When you buy from here, you don't have to pay for their VAT which can be quite a big sum. Postage is about Euro 40-50 depending on the size of your package.
I need to change my housing tray and handles so I've decided to go with Nauticam because it's lighter than Ultralight and seemed to be very well made. The new housing comes with two tripod holes so I need to change the tray anyway. My old housing has got only one tripod hole.
I will use back my existing arms and float arms.
Although I may add one or two more float arms by Aquako. They are kind of cool and you and put some funky toys inside the float arms. Something to talk about on the dive boat.
Eventually, i will looks something like this but not exactly.
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