Tag Archives: Micro Four Thirds

Olympus Divestment Next Steps and Reflections

October 2, 2020 interceptor121 Leave a comment

On September 30th 2020 the announced deal between Olympus corporation and Japanese Industrial Partners has been signed. Despite all sort of hysteria that is out there on the internet the deal structure is quite simple and there is good information released by Olympus Global on this link.

The Birth of OM Digital Solutions Corporation

The data provided tells us that the current head of the camera business will transfer to the new company that will be headquartered in Tokyo. OM stands for Olympus Maitani however the word Olympus does not feature in clear in the company name perhaps because Olympus corporation did not want to have any ambiguity or misunderstanding going forward on who is Olympus.

So the first indication is that Olympus as camera brand effectively ends when the deal completes on 31st December 2020. What continues is the legacy of Yoshihisa Maitani who originally invented the OM system.

What is included in the deal

This is the official text in the news release.

The agreement applies to Olympus’ global Imaging business, which includes all R&D and manufacturing facilities currently dedicated to its Imaging business. The New Imaging Company will continue to provide high-quality, highly reliable products. Built on a solid foundation, including the Zuiko and OM brands, which are grounded in optics and digital imaging technologies cultivated by Olympus over many years, the New Imaging Company will be appropriately positioned to further pursue new developments. Head of sales and marketing, R&D and designing departments for imaging products will be relocated to the headquarters of the New Imaging Company in Hachioji, Tokyo. Production will continue at the location in Dong Nai province, Vietnam, where imaging products are currently manufactured. The New Imaging Company will continue to provide customer support for the imaging products which have been manufactured and sold by Olympus. Following the transfer of the Imaging business, Olympus will concentrate on Medical and Scientific Solutions, in our ongoing efforts toward making people’s lives healthier, safer and more fulfilling.

So what does this mean? Today Olympus operates as a single company and the imaging business is included in it so they needed to work out what exactly they were selling. From that list this includes:
• The Zuiko and OM (Olympus Maitani) brands
• The R&D department
• The Sales and Marketing Department
• The factory in Vietnam
And Olympus will focus on the medical and scientific business. The new OMD company will take on the after sales responsibility and warranty usually associated with provisions for repairs and returns.

What is NOT included in the deal

What is not included in the transfer is usually anything not specifically mentioned as included so a few considerations here expressing my view on the deal.

The factory in Nagano, Japan is not transferring but according to JIP news release will become a supplier to the new company. This is good for JIP as the factory in Vietnam is less than 3 years old and is in a market where workforce arrangements are more flexible than Japan. The Japanese factory that makes some components for Vietnam and in some cases full lenses will remain as supplier. Olympus also uses Sigma designs for some lenses like the 75mm 1:1.8 and the new 100-400mm 5-6.3 this will continue with OMD.

The Olympus Supply Chain is currently shared with the medical division there are a number of regional and local warehouse that will remain with Olympus together with any stock that is in there. All stock at customers (distributors or resellers) remains the property of those third parties. This is an important implication because it effectively means that OMD starts at zero stock and all the inventory sitting in those warehouses are Olympus corporation problem to clear, we have already seen aggressive promotions on OMD EM1MKII with a free 1.2 Pro prime lens. I bought one of those units and it was manufactured in February 2019 so clearly Olympus corporation distribution network is sitting on years of old stock.

The Olympus commercial network also remains with the seller and this means those entities will continue to trade in the respective markets until such time OMD decides to build their network, they may even decide to use distributors and focus on manufacturing and continue to use Olympus corporation or anyone else as they see fit, what is clear is that OMD is a manufacturing company not distribution. It will remain to be seen how the after sales services will be performed however this could simply mean customers get a replacement product or goods are sent all the way back to Vietnam for fixing or they establish 3rd party service centre to deal with this issue. Panasonic currently does that.

Future Direction of OMD

JIP has mentioned that they will focus more on video and on business customers this is good news as MFT strength really is in those two sectors. Panasonic has exploited that success while Olympus was only sticking to photos and suffering more the smartphone competition. We have seen an announcement that the newer OMD EM1 MKIII E1X will work in ProRes RAW with the Atomos Ninja a first step to get in that territory. Security is a big topic in MFT too as the back illuminated sensor in the GH5s is excellent in low light.
Will JIP review the product range? For sure any situation like this sees a range rationalisation exercise. This means some SKU may be discontinued and some products in future roadmap never go to market. Olympus America website quickly put up a Q&A to that regards the three key answers are here, on the left what it says on the right what I think it means as the writing is not as black and white as you probably would like.

Question	Official Answer	My Interpretation
Will the Olympus brand name continue to be used?	While our official company name will be OM Digital Solutions, you can expect the Olympus brand name to stick around for the foreseeable future. Olympus branded products will continue to be available even after January 1, 2021.	The brands that will transfer are OMD and Zuiko. Olympus supply chain is sitting on a lot of old stock and currently all products being made are still branded Olympus, this will continue like that until the transaction closes. The Olympus brand will continue to be used also because the medical company continues. This does not mean that the cameras produced under JIP ownership will be branded Olympus and there are strong indications they will be called OMD as the word Olympus is associated with the medical company in the deal information and is not part of the new company name.
Will the new lenses announced as under development for sales in 2020 still be introduced?	There are no plans to change our product launch plans within 2020. Products that have been announced as under development will be introduced to the market as planned. You can find the most up to date information on product launches by visiting: http://www.getolympus.com	Olympus can only guaranteed what happens when they own the camera business. All things planned for Winter 2020 are going to happen if they happen before 31/12/2020 afterwards they do not know.
What is the future of Micro Four Thirds? Is there any change to the proposed lens roadmap? Will there be a future replacement for my Olympus product?	We are not able to comment on future product development at this time. For the most up to date information on Olympus products in the Americas, please visit: http://www.getolympus.com	The lens roadmap is an Olympus document what JIP will do with it is not something they know. In fact it is very likely to change if those projects are not going to provide a solid business case. They can also not comment on future cameras nor Micro-Four-Thirds are that is no longer their business

Also to be noted Micro-Four-Thirds is an open standard the fact that Olympus runs the four-thirds website does not mean anybody has to pay Olympus to make an MFT camera. So there is no issue of licensing rights connected to the MFT standard which only relates to AF and AE this is the reason you see many manual lenses not following the standard or not being listed.

Conclusion

The divestment of Olympus Imaging business is a sad moment for most as it marks officially the end of a legacy for what concerns Olympus corporation. With the performance that the business has had in the last years this was not avoidable. The new ownership will start with a streamlined business, a focus on manufacturing and a clean slate with no debts or old inventory to clear. OMD will also start with some good assets the IBIS and Auto Focus developed by Olympus are very effective and can play well especially if the new focus is on video. New more dynamic businesses like BlackMagic Design and Zcam are having success with the MFT format for video and this is an opportunity that Olympus missed entirely and hopefully the new company will grab. Will this be enough to save the MFT format from extinction? Definitely video is a more profitable segment where there are no smartphones that can really compete for those who want to be really doing a good job because the devices heat up, run out of battery and finally the editing process is still too complex that requires a workstation. I hope the OMD business can fully realise the full potential of MFT and provide a truly hybrid system, something Olympus failed to deliver with their still focussed product line. In the short term, and by this I mean the next two years, not much will change to the user experience, but we need to understand if Micro-Four-Thirds will have enough traction to continue for photography with new models or it becomes a video specialist segment.

MFT Lenses, Micro 4:3

What Happens After the Olympus has fallen?

July 5, 2020 interceptor121 Leave a comment

On June 24 2020 Olympus corporation has announced they will divest the imaging business and sell the business to be carved-out to JIP (Japanese Industrial Partners).

The full script is here: Memorandum.

Olympus had already delayed the disclosure of financial results for the year ended 31 March 2020, Nikon had already done the same. Clearly companies need to build some accounting provisions for Covid-19 however you would argue that for the year ended on 31st of March the impact of Covid-19 was not substantial as most countries only entered lockdown in March and this is not a prime period for camera sales anyway.

As as an M&A consultant specialising in carve-outs and divestment I have my views on how this will turn out based on my experience but this is not the purpose of this post. What I wanted to do is to perform a short analysis of what I think has gone wrong and what is likely to be the most significant challenge to the newco that will be formed from Olympus imaging business.

The overall situation of the camera market

According to CIPA worldwide sales in units have fallen 87% since 2010.

The overall number of images is actually growing however as of 2017 85% of those pictures are taken on mobile phones.

According to DxOMark and other sources, mobile phones are closing the gap on cameras on a number of aspects. Mobile phones have a lot of development behind and have powerful processors that combined with multiple lenses can produce stunning images.

Most images are consumed on mobile phones and are usually limited to resolutions lower than 4 megapixels or even 1.5 megapixels like Instagram we can understand where this is all going. There is software that allows you to retouch your images directly on your phones one of the reason why instagram is so popular.

As the market for digital camera shrinks camera manufacturers feel the squeeze and this means business will disappear in the process with Covid-19 putting a final stake in what was already a walking dead: Olympus camera business.

Why Olympus?

First of all Olympus is not the first company going through this, it has already happened to Pentax though this entity was sold at profit in the golden years of digital cameras. Contrary to what most people think Olympus was not originally a camera brand but started out with medical and microscopes in 1919 only in the mid 30s Olympus started making cameras and as of today Olympus is predominantly a B2B enterprise. Olympus has also been at the centre of significant corporate fraud in 2011 and in 2016 was also in the middle of a bribery scandal in US. The last ten years of Olympus corporation history have been plagued by misconduct and therefore nobody would go anywhere near a possible acquisition of Olympus assets at least until now.

As of FY 2020 the imaging division has posted 3 consecutive years of losses with a 10% revenue reduction on FY 2019. Olympus had started the restructuring of their manufacturing operations in 2017 and has cut c45% of their operating losses as result. As a division is still loosing cash and therefore if you had to evaluate the business in terms of EBIT multiplier, a common method for corporate transactions, Olympus Imaging Division is worth nothing and actually it has negative value means it costs cash just to run.

The improvement trajectory and the nature of the distressed business has fallen in the interest of JIP who specialised in acquiring divisions of loss making companies and had already closed deals with Sony, Nec to name a few.

Some Olympus consumers have felt betrayed by this move as Olympus had repeatedly affirmed they were continuing the camera business however the reality is that nobody was likely to go anywhere near it until now and the moment they have a prospective buyers this would most likely proceed as it has happened. From corporate point of view, despite the various scandals, Olympus has been increasing their operating profits as the other divisions are all successful. Removing a loss making divisions will greatly benefit the shareholders and investors and will also allow Olympus to focus on the segments that are successful. If the proposed transaction completes Olympus will effectively exit consumer markets.

So in short Olympus is divesting the imaging division because is loss making, it dilutes shareholder value and they now have a potential buyer, it would be crazy for them not to proceed in consideration of the overall situation of the camera market.

Questionable Choices

In addition to the compression of the digital camera market, Olympus has also made some questionable choices, and is affected by the overall stagnation of imaging sensors. Olympus does not make their sensors since a long time, previously they bought them from Panasonic, then lately from Sony.

Sony who makes sensors for most brands including Nikon and Panasonic, has not released anything new in the micro four thirds segment since 2017. For this reason we have not seen a rush from Panasonic to release new models and things have been pretty quiet on their front since the G9 camera in 2018 with the rest of the range just aligning to the 20 megapixel sensor.

Olympus instead has released a few models of their flagship OMD range, the EM1X and the EM-1 Mark III, both based on the same sensor technology of the previous OMD EM-1 Mark II released December 2016.

The EM1X specifically aimed at the professional wildlife photographer has a RRP of £2,699, that is the same price of a Nikon D850.

Combined with the Olympus 300mm f/4 prime the EM1X is 2.3 Kg while the D850 with the Nikkor 500mm f/5.6 prime is 2.4 Kg. The Nikon set up ends up being around £6K while the Olympus is £4.7K at RRP. I am not sure this is an appealing proposition considering the significant IQ difference between the two cameras and the pretty identical weight.

Also to consider that at £1,499 you can buy a Nikon D500 that has the same RRP of the new OMD EM-1 MKIII. Now it is possible that Nikon is heavily discounting items and they are going to go bust next, however you can clearly see that competing with those boys may not be a good idea.

The Micro Four Thirds Benefits

The benefits of MFT are listed in the four thirds website here.

There were 3 key items:

Radical reduction in thickness, size and weight
An interchangeable lens system designed to handle video in the future
Continued use of four thirds lenses

Looking at the reduction in size the EM1X is not a good example for this and we can argue the Panasonic G and GH series body are neither. Panasonic had to accommodate item 2 video handling and to do that needed to include an heatsink in their models and this makes the shape of the GH5 large. Then they continued that trend with the G9: both cameras are very similar to an APSC DSLR and larger than Sony A series.

Olympus never cracked the video space, their cameras are limited in that respect while Panasonic has scored significant success and now brands like Zcam and Blackmagic Design use MFT sensor for semipro cinema cameras that perform very well in that segment.

So MFT has not disappointed as a whole, though Olympus seemed to have lost track of the manifesto, and ended up competing in territories where other players are already consolidated. It has to be said they have done that on their own accord as the OMD EM-1 MKII is a very capable camera for who does not want to invest in a large rig and with a battery grip gives you pretty much the same of the EM1X at half the cost or less at today prices.

What happens next?

It is worth looking at what is in scope and what is the envisaged structure of the imaging division after the carve-out.

Scope

There is mention that the prestigious brands of OMD and Zuiko will continue with NewCo. In short this means that OMD and Zuiko that really were product lines become brands. This is because Olympus corporation will continue and therefore NewCo cannot be called Olympus cameras or similar. There is no mention of Pen or Tough lines to be in scope of the transaction specifically, this may be simply omitted or those are not in the interest of JIP.

NewCo will also maintain the R&D and manufacturing functions, this is important as otherwise product development would not be possible. We need to understand practically what does this mean in terms of key people and which one will move along and which one will leave.

Timetable

JIP is currently performing diligence and, subject to confirmation of their assumptions, the deal would be signed at the end of September and then close at the end of 2020. JIP has now access to Olympus data and financials and this will help them confirm their offer, but potentially could also mean they back off if the situation is worse than expected. Olympus has also committed to continue the restructuring already in progress, this is important as that has an impact on the valuation of the business.

Transition Agreements & Rebranding

When the transaction is complete it is possible that there are still dependencies on the seller and therefore transitional service agreements are put in place. It is easy to imagine that those will go ahead for 18 to 24 months and the largest question mark is up to which point the NewCo will be allowed to use the Olympus brand and how they are going to deal with re-branding. Re-branding can be lethal to businesses I do not want to provide a long list but there is an intangible value to the name of a brand and is not simple to switch consumer to the new brand and keep them all, people sometimes, actually most times, go elsewhere and Panasonic will most definitely benefit from this.

The immediate future

Usually when those type of transactions are announced there are all sorts of activities to say that is business as usual, things will get better and products roadmaps and other events are promptly coming out to reassure consumers. The prime reason for that is that consumers may want to switch right now or if they were planning to buy this specific brand they may change their mind. The reality is that carving-out a business is not easy and nobody really knows how things will turn out.

Micro Four Thirds Future

The crisis at Olympus is not a good thing for Micro Four Thirds there is no doubt about it, however this should not be too much of a worry for day to day life. DSLR has been pronounced dead years ago but is still there and MFT is an important step towards mirrorless. It is evident that cameras will eventually move towards mirrorless and the advances of Olympus cameras on autofocus are an important step, today only Sony and Olympus have decent autofocus on mirrorless. Canon and Nikon are playing catch up but their pro equipment is still DSLR.

The market is shrinking and Olympus is not going to be the last company to struggle, who will survive is not necessarily linked to who has the best product, but to those who can manage the market situation and can align to consumer needs.

Canon EF lens, Fisheye lens, Micro 4:3, Panasonic GH5, Underwater Photography

Canon 8 – 15 mm Fisheye on the Panasonic GH5 Pool Tests

November 30, 2019 interceptor121 2 Comments

It was time to get wet and test the Canon 8 – 15 mm fisheye on the GH5 in the pool so I made my way to Luton Aspire with the help of Rec2Tec Bletchley.

I had the change to try a few things first of all to understand the store coverage of the fisheye frame, this is something I had not tested before but I had built a little model.

In purple the ideal rectangle built with the maximum width and height of the fisheye frame

This model ignores the corners the red circle are 90 degrees light beams and the amber is the 120 degrees angle. A strobe does not have a sharp fall off when you use diffusers so this model assumes your strobe can keep within 1 Ev loss around 90 degrees and then drop down to – 4 Ev at 120 degrees. I do not want to dig too deep into this topic anyway this is what I expected and this is the frame.

You can see a tiny reflection of the strobes together with a mask falling on the left hand side… In order to test my theory I run this through false colour on my field monitor, at first glance it looks well lit and this is the false colour.

As you can see the strobes drop below 50 at the green colour band and therefore the nominal width of those strobes is probably 100 degrees. In the deep corners you see the drop to 20 % 10% and then 0 %.

Time to take some shots

The lens is absolutely pin sharp across the frame, I was shooting at f/5.6 in the 140 mm glass dome.

Performance remains stunning across the zoom range. I also tried few shots at f/4

There is no reef background but looks pretty good to me.

The pool gives a strong blue cast so the shots are white balanced.

If you want details of the rig and lens mount are in a previous post

https://interceptor121.com/2019/11/02/fisheye-zoom-for-micro-four-thirds/

Canon EF lens, Fisheye lens, MFT Lenses, Micro 4:3, Panasonic GH5, Sunbursts, Underwater Photography, wide angle

Fisheye Zoom for Micro Four Thirds

November 2, 2019 interceptor121 16 Comments

Looking at Nauticam port chart the only option for a fisheye zoom is to combine the Panasonic PZ 14-42 with a fisheye add on lens. This is a solution that is not that popular due to low optical quality.

So micro four thirds users have been left with a prime fisheye lens from Panasonic or Olympus…until now!

Looking at Nauticam port chart we can see that there is an option to use the Speedbooster Metabones adapter and with this you convert your MFT camera to a 1.42x crop allowing you to use Canon EF-M lenses for cropped sensor including the Tokina 10-17mm fisheye. This is certainly an option and can be combined with a Kenko 1.4x teleconverter giving you a range of 14.2 to 33.8 mm in full frame equivalent or 7.1 to 16.9 mm in MFT terms fisheye zoom of which the usable range is 8 -16.9 mm after removing vignetting.

A further issue is that the Speedbooster gives you another stop of light limiting the aperture to f/16 while this is generally a bonus for land shooting in low light underwater we want to use all apertures all the way to f/22 for sunbursts even if this means diffraction problems.

Wolfgang Shreibmayer started a trend time ago in WetPixel https://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?/topic/61629-canon-ef-lenses-on-mft-cameras/ to use full frame lenses and in this post I want to do a deep dive on what is for me the most interesting lens option the Canon 8-15mm fisheye.

This lens on full frame can be used for a circular and diagonal fisheye but Wolfgang has devised a method to use it as an 8-15mm fisheye zoom on MFT.

What you need are the following:

Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L fisheye USM
Metabones Smart Adapter MB_EF_m43_BT2 or Viltrox EF-M1 Adapter
A 3D printed gear extension ring
Nauticam C-815Z zoom gear
Nauticam 36064 N85 to N120 34.7mm port adapter with knob
Nauticam 21135 35mm extension ring with lock
Nauticam 18810 N120 140mm optical glass fisheye port

The assembly is quite complicated as the lens won’t fit through the N85 port. It starts with inserting the camera with no lens in the housing.

The next step is to fit the port adapter

Then we need to prepare the lens with the smart adapter once removed the tripod mount part.

Canon 8-15 on Metabones Smart Adapter IV

As the port is designed for the speed booster the lens will be few mm off therefore the gear will not grip. Wolfgang has devised a simple adapter to make it work.

This shifts the gear backwards allowing to grip on the knob.

3D design is here

Looking at nauticam port chart an extension ring of 30mm is recommended for the speedbooster and now we have extra 5mm in length Wolfgang uses a 35mm extension. ~~however looking at the lens entrance pupil I have concluded that 30mm will be actually better positioned. Nauticam have confirmed there won’t be performance differences.~~ You need to secure the ring on the dome before final assembly.

The rig looks bigger than the 4.33 dome but the size of the GH5 housing is quite proportionate. It will look bigger on a traditional small size non clam style housing.

The disassembly will be made again in 3 steps.

I am not particularly interested in the 1.4x teleconverter version consider that once zoomed in to 15mm the lens is horizontally narrower than a 12mm native lens so there is no requirement for the teleconverter at all.

This table gives you an idea of the working range compared to a rectilinear lens along the horizontal axis as diagonal is not a fair comparison. The lens is very effective at 8-10mm where any rectilinear would do bad then overlaps with an 8-18mm lens. The choice of lens would be dictated by the need to have or not straight lines. The range from 13mm is particularly useful for sharks and fish that do not come that close.

Focal length	Horizontal	Vertical	Diagonal	Horizontal Linear Eq	Width	Height	Diagonal
8	130.9	95.9	170.2		17.3	13	21.64
9	114.9	84.7	147.8
10	102.5	75.9	131.0	6.9
11	92.6	68.7	117.8	8.3
12	84.5	62.9	107.2	9.5
13	77.7	57.9	98.4	10.8
14	72.0	53.7	90.9	11.9
15	67.0	50.1	84.6	13.0

Wolfgang has provided me with some shots that illustrate how versatile is this set up.

As you can see you can even shoot a robust ghost pipefish!

The contrast of the glass dome is great and the optical quality is excellent. On my GH5 body there is uncorrected chromatic aberration that you can remove in one click. Furthermore lens profiles are available to de-fish images and make them rectilinear should you want to do so.

I would like to thank Wolfgang for being available for questions for providing the 3D print and the images that are featured here on this post.

If you can’t print 3D and need an adapter ring I can sell you one for £7 plus shipping contact me for arrangements.

Amazon links UK

Canon EF 8-15 mm f/4 fisheye USM lens

Viltrox EF-M1 Mount Adapter

Note: it is possible to use a Metabones Speed Booster Ultra in combination with a Tokina 10-17mm zoom fisheye and a smaller 4.33″ acrylic dome.

UK Cost of the canon option: £3,076

Uk Cost of the Tokina option: £2,111

However if you add the glass dome back

UK Cost of Tokina with glass dome: £2,615

The gap is £461 and if you go for a Vitrox adapter (would not recommend for the speedbooster) the difference on a comparable basis is £176 which for me does not make sense as the Canon optics are far superior.

So I would say either Tokina in acrylic for the cost conscious or Canon in glass for those looking for the ultimate optical quality.

MFT Lenses, Micro 4:3, Panasonic GH5, Tips, Underwater Photography, wide angle, Wrecks

Using Rectilinear Wide Lenses Underwater

October 13, 2019 interceptor121 5 Comments

I was checking the technical details of Alex Mustard Underwater Photography Master Class and the majority of wide angle pictures are taken with a fisheye lens. In the section about shooting sharks Alex says that he prefers to shoot sharks with a fisheye otherwise they look ‘skinny’.

If you look online on underwater video forums you frequently see comments on problems with wide angle lenses connected with the use of a rectilinear wide angle lens in a dome.

The two most common complaints are soft corners and distortion.

Soft corners are due to a combination of lens optical issues and dome port optics. In short any lens is to some extent curved and therefore if you shoot a flat surface the image may be sharp in the centre and softer as you move to the corners. Issues with field of curvature are corrected stopping down the lens. The issue with field of curvature happens everywhere not just underwater.

Right now there are four wide angle lens that can be housed for a micro four third camera:

Olympus 9-18mm

This lens has a nice working range that allows to capture 100 degrees diagonal at widest setting and still has a 35mm equivalent at the tele end. This is a pretty little lens at $699 is the most affordable option that can be put in a housing. You will need a wide angle port and the zoom gear. The whole combination for your Nauticam housing comes at $1,399. This lens can also be combined with a glass dome but this will make the whole combination much more expensive and you may want to think about getting a better lens instead.

Olympus 7-14mm

This is an outstanding lens especially on land due to the fast f/2.8 aperture. It is expensive at $1,299.99 and very heavy and bulky. The lens does not fit through the N85 port opening and requires a port adapter this gives the extra benefit of a focus know but with such a wide lens is not really useful due to high depth of field. You will need a 180mm glass dome and the zoom gear for the lens to complete the set up ending at a whopping $3159.99.

Panasonic 7-14mm

I have owned this lens and I have to say that at $799 is the right compromise between wide field of view and price. Furthermore once you get the zoom gear you have the option of a cost effective acrylic dome that will give you a very wide set up for $1589.99. There are reports of poor performance with this lens and it is true that is not as sharp in corners but the results are perfectly acceptable if you stop at f/8 in close shots.

Steering Wheel Truck — Panasonic 7-14mm with acrylic dome 9mm f/8

Exploring the Chrisoula — Panasonic 7-14mm with acrylic dome 7mm f/5

This lens is prone to reflections and flare however once you add the N120 port adapter and the 180mm glass dome this will get you to $2819 at that point you may want to consider the Olympus combination instead.

Panasonic Leica 8-18mm

This is my favourite lens is sharp does not suffer from field of curvature issues and has a very useful zoom range 16-35mm in 35mm equivalent. The zoom gear and the 7″ acrylic dome will take you to 1889.99 that is an excellent price point. The lens is not prone to reflection or flare and as the 7″ dome has the same curvature radius than the 180mm dome it will produce very similar results.

Encircled — Panasonic 8-18mm in 7 acrylic dome f/8

Sunset Neat — Panasonic 8-18mm at 8mm f/10

The significant size of the acrylic port and the fact it floats make it ideal for split shots and this is the lens that gives me the best results.

This lens can also take port adapter that allows you to use the 180mm glass dome. This adds up to $2919.99 if you experience bad reflections and shoot frequently in the sun it may be worth it but I have not had any issue so far with this lens probably because of its nano coating.

I have found the 7mm focal length too problematic for dome ports and the amount of perspective distortion excessive generally it would be preferred to shoot at 9mm and narrower however this maybe insufficient for wreck interiors if you want a rectilinear look.

Perspective Distortion

One of the regular complaints of video shooters especially in wrecks or caves is that the edges look horrible and distorted and that there is an issue with the corners pulling. This is in fact not an issue but a problem with perspective as you shoot very wide angle. The following test shots will illustrate that the issue happens on land and has nothing to do with dome ports.

Shot at f/2.8 with Panasonic 8-18mm at 8mm shows sharp corners

As we can see the football looks like an oval and the chair is pulled. This is due to a perspective issue and is not a lens problem. When you shoot underwater video the objects on the edges of the frame change shape creating this pull effect that most people dislike.

At 9mm the amount of perspective distortion is reduced and this is the reason why 18mm on 35mm equivalent is one of the favourite focal length for rectilinear video and the maximum angle that should be used in small spaces to avoid the pulling edges.

One of the reason why a lens like the Nauticam WWL-1 is preferred for video is because the corners look sharp but is that really true?

Not really let’s apply some barrel distortion to simulate the WWL-1 to the image that looked badly distorted.

Now the football looks circular as we have applied -60 barrel distortion, obviously the rest of the image is now bent but this seems not to be of a concern to most people!

It needs much less correction to bring the 9mm shot into shape and for sure between the 8mm and 9mm the 9mm is the dimension that produces the most acceptable results.

It has to be said that in video with 16:9 aspect ratio most of the issue will be cropped away at the edges but the distortion in the middle of the frame will remain. For the same reason the 9mm image will appear practically rectilinear with no issues

16:9 crop still showing the edge ‘pulling’ at 8mm

I hope this post was useful there are four options for micro four thirds shooters to use rectilinear lenses I have settled for the Panasonic 8-18mm as in most cases it is still possible to control the perspective issue, I found this impossible at 7mm.

Bike on Hold 2 — Bike in hold 2 on SS Thistlegorm Panasonic 8-18 at 8mm

Bubbling Bike — Shot at 7mm showing the front tyre pulling outside the frame

Obviously if you shoot in the blue this problem will not be visible however rectilinear lenses are popular with wreck shooters and I think this posts gives an idea of the challenges at play.

Finally I would discourage the use of the 7-8mm focal length range for video to those that want to have a rectilinear look.

From this post I started supporting Bluewater Photo in US for my links because it still provides multi brand and choice and because I learnt a lot from Scott Gietler Underwater photography guide back in the days where there was no internet resource to learn from.

close up lens, diopters, Fish Portraits, Flat Port, macro, MFT Lenses, Micro 4:3, Panasonic GH5, Underwater Photography, UNDERWATER VIDEO, Wet lenses

which macro lens to pick for your gh5 or micro four third

September 14, 2019 interceptor121 1 Comment

I see many posts on line debating which macro lens is best for your micro four third system.

If I refer to the Nauticam system we have 4 macro lenses:

Olympus 30mm
Panasonic 30mm
Panasonic 45mm
Olympus 60mm

For the purpose of this article I will skip the Olympus 30mm as the Panasonic lens is known to be sharper and will focus on the other 3 lenses.

DxOMark is a popular tool for comparison as it gives you the results on one page. I have run it for the Oly 60 and the Pana 30 and 45 on the 20 Mpix OMD E-M1 MKII

DxOMark Comparison on Olympus OMD E-M1 MKII

Surprisingly the much more expensive Leica performs worse than the other cheaper models, this is confirmed on all internet sites running other type of tests.

What we can see is that there is little difference between the Panasonic 30mm and Olympus 60mm when it comes to image quality so whichever lens you choose your subject at the same level of magnification and aperture will have more or less the same detail.

Common Misconception: Shorter focal length give more depth of field

Many people think that using a longer lens is harder because there is less depth of field this is actually incorrect conceptually.

Let see why

Using an online calculatore like Dofmaster https://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Enter for the Panasonic GH5 the following parameters

Circle of confusion: 0.015 mm

Focal length 30mm

Distance 10.5 cm (minimum distance of the 30mm Macro)

Aperture f/11

Result Total depth of field 0.3cm

Now enter

Focal Length 60mm

Distance 21 cm (as it achieves the same magnification)

Aperture f/11

Result Total depth of field 0.3cm

So depth of field is not a consideration when choosing a macro lens…

Shooting a subject close to the background

In the following 3 shots am taking an image of a widget at f/11 at 29-44-60 mm on a Leica 12-60 (it is just easier it makes no difference to the outcomes)

At the same aperture you can clearly see that there are no difference whatsoever in the detail and actually overall in the picture you don’t notice anything.

Shooting a subject far from the background

For the second shot I have moved the widget away from the wall.

Again there is no difference in the level of detail of the widget however looking at the background we can see that

The 60mm shot reveals one brick and less than one quarter
The 44mm shot reveals one brick and a half
The 29mm shot reveals two bricks

So while the subject is exactly the same as the 60mm lens has a narrower field of view we see much less of the background.

This means that if you are shooting a nudibranch on the sand or something flat on a rock you won’t notice anything however if there is space behind the subject you will capture much more of that resulting in less subject isolation.

Underwater Comparison 30 vs 60 mm

In the first shot the Rhinopia is taken with a 60mm lens

In the second shot the same Rhinopia with the 30mm (in a different place to be fair)

I have marked up with red the areas that with a longer focal length would have been minimised.

Which Lens to choose?

Now that we have clarified that depth of field is not a consideration and as each macro lens will have the same magnification there are only two factors that matter:

Working distance
Isolation from background

The 60 mm will have a longer working distance and at the same magnification will isolate the subject better from busy backgrounds, the 60 mm is also better for skittish subject because of the longer working distance. I have this lens and I have borrowed the 30mm in couple of occasions but do not have the 30mm yet.

There are however situations where longer working distance is not a benefit, specifically when the visibility is poor and there are suspended particles or the subject is really large.

In the example below I was at one meter from the two frogfish, a 30mm would have been better however the shot came OK.

Conclusion

I believe the Olympus 60mm is a must lens to have. To date I have not felt the need for the Panasonic 30mm that is indeed a very sharp lens because I have always managed to pull out the shots. However for someone diving in murky water and focussing on nudibranches or subject laying flat on the seabed the Panasonic 30mm could be a better choice. I also want to say that using the 14-42mm at 42mm for me is actually a better choice for portraits and with a close up lens works very well with small subject not super macro and therefore as I already own the 14-42mm and various diopter for me the 30mm is not on the shopping list.

Dome Port, Fisheye lens, MFT Lenses, Micro 4:3, Panasonic GX7, Underwater Photography, wide angle, Wrecks

Panasonic Lumix G X Vario 14-42mm with Fisheye Converter DMW-GFC1

February 22, 2015 interceptor121 3 Comments

The Panasonic 8mm Fisheye lens for micro four third is a clear winner for close focus wide angle however the lack of zoom and the really wide 180º cover mean that there are many subjects that will look tiny in the frame.

The next option in terms of width is the Panasonic 7-14mm wide angle lens however this requires a large dome for optimal performance making the set up expensive.

Is there anything else left if you don’t want to buy a wet lens and you already have the Panasonic PZ 14-42 X Lumix G?

Panasonic produces an add on lens DMW-GFC1 that is declared to provide 10.5mm equivalent and reduce minimum focussing distance to 16 cm all specs can be found here.

This add on lens can be used with the 4.33″ dome for the 8mm fisheye and the 30 extension.

I took a few test shots and the results are pretty good.

This first shot is at f/5 and is very sharp in the centre.

Fisheye Converter f/5

Getting a bit closer and stopping at f/8 the results are pretty good for an adapter that is less than £100 on amazon.

Barrel distortion is contained so this combination may be good for wrecks where the fisheye effect is a bit disturbing.

If you have the Lumix G Vario X PZ 14-42mm you may want to invest in this little accessory before getting the much more expensive 8mm fisheye even if the Nauticam 30 extension is required. Later on the extension can be used with the flat port 35 and the Olympus 60mm for super macro and the 4.33″ dome of course with the 8mm.

I think it is amazing how much can be obtained out of this lens if we consider wet diopters, wet wide angle lenses and this adapter before you need to get a second lens.

This lens could also work for video with the Panasonic GH4 at 4K however zoom is not recommended with it.

close up lens, diopters, Flat Port, MFT Lenses, Micro 4:3, Panasonic GX7, Stabilization, Underwater Photography, UNDERWATER VIDEO

Panasonic Lumix G X Vario 14-42mm / F3.5 – 5.6 / Power OIS and Nauticam Macro Port 35

January 25, 2015 interceptor121 Leave a comment

The Lumix G X 14-42 Power Zoom lens is designed for video with a silent motor zoom controlled by a slider that is quite effective to use.

The focal range in 4:3 format is 14-42mm which corresponds to 29-87mm in the standard 35mm format (the crop factor is 2.08 36/17.3 and not 2 how commonly thought in the classic 3:2 aspect ratio).

This lens is not exactly a best in class in terms of performance especially considering quite a bit of vignetting at wide end and distortion that anyway gets corrected nicely in camera for most. A detailed review is here http://www.photozone.de/olympus–four-thirds-lens-tests/765_pana14423556hd

You can see that this is lens is quite sharp at 2868 LW/PH to give you an idea the much more expensive Lumix 12-35mm reaches 3110 LW/PH though sharpness drops at corners to around 2100-2200.

Another interesting characteristic is that this lens performs best at f/3.5-f/5.6 which is close to the widest aperture as we will use this lens with the Nauticam flat port 35 this is all good news.

The lens fits very nicely inside the port leaving space for small filters and close up lenses but not really a lot.

The lens does not really move much between 14 and 42 mm and reaches his longest at 14mm.

I have tried using a set of Inon diopters to see the degree of magnification you can get.

This shot is with an Inon UCL-165 +6.06 diopter.

Lumix G X 14-42 PZ @ 42mm with Inon UCL-165

The smallest frame width with this lens is 42mm however in video mode using the ex tele converter option this becomes a much smaller area achieving in fact super macro easily with the added benefit of larger depth of field.

If you are into pixel peeping you can see some chromatic aberration on the edges this is a combination of the lens and the wet diopter.

I also tried stacking an UCL-165 with the UCL-330 this achieves a capture width of 32mm so we are in super macro zone.

Lumix G X 14-42 PZ @ 42mm with Inon UCL-165+330 Stacked

Image quality does not get much worse but there are some internal reflections here on the white surface as the Inon lenses are not coated externally.

Finally I wanted to see if the Inon UCL-100 would work and it does achieving super macro without any fringing. If you want to use this lens for pygmy sea horse photography and do not want to get an Olympus 60mm this or the sub see 10 are the close up lenses to get, also the nauticam SMC is in the same range.

Lumix G X 14-42 PZ @ 42mm with Inon UCL-100

Now onto what is really good of this lens port combination and this is the versatility as you can attach the Inon UWL-H100 and get a very wide 18mm flat wide angle that is very sharp indeed as per previous images

_1000200 — Nauticam 35 Port with Inon UWL-H100 on Panasonic Lumix 14-42mm

Consider that this image is taken at f/3.5 and the ruler is in the corner at ISO 1600 and you can see that sharpness is more than acceptable.

More interesting is that for some reason with this lens you can fully zoom through even down to 42mm without soft corners.

I have no idea how this is possible but it works just fine.

So if you are a video junkie you can cover the whole 100 degrees wide to super macro with this lens the Nauticam 35 Macro Port the Inon UWL-H100 and the UCL-100. For video it gets even cheaper with the UCL-165. You can of course use the flat port to do nice fish portrait in the mid-range of the zoom.

I forgot to mention the zoom gear which is actually pretty expensive because of the complex spring design.

The total cost for the Nauticam 35 with zoom gear is $510 plus of course the lens itself $290 total of $800.

Inon UWL-H100 + LD adapter = $654

Inon UCL-100 = $282

Inon UCL-165 = $205

Wet Lenses Still total = $936

Wet Lenses Video total = $859

Let’s compare to getting an Olympus 9-18mm with 4″ wide angle port and the Olympus 60mm with 30 extension ring total price $2129.

Price gap for stills $393 but you now also have a mid range lens for portraits, personally I don’t really like the Olympus 9-18 behind that port comparing side by side images taken with the 14-42 PZ and Inon lens I am not sure the Olympus is any better and definitely needs diopters due to mushy corners. For macro the 60mm Olympus lens has the advantage of increased working distance but is a very specific lens that you would only use for really small stuff.

For what concerns video you would probably look at the Panasonic 7-14 and forget the Olympus 60mm the combination is worth $1800 which is a difference of $636. Again the issue with rectilinear lenses and dome ports is there and the 7-14 does not take diopters.

So if we were to use the lenses on land no doubt you would need additional glass but in water wet lenses can be quite cost effective especially if you use a micro four third camera for video.

Peter Rowlands uses a Panasonic GX7 with Inon UWL-H100 and dome successfully and I am joining that club now.

Stay tuned for more tests next to come will be the Panasonic Fisheye 8mm with the 4.33″ dome which is another essential buy for the micro four third cameras underwater, obviously for pictures and not video.

Interceptor121 Photography & Video Workshops