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EQUIPMENT TEST
By Robert Spray
With the macro port the rig fits into crannies pretty well, though you can see how large the housed FL-36 is
In ultra low viz the wide end of the 7-14mm saves the day...
these Dutch cuttlefish were hiding in less than 1m of viz.
The 50mm macro caught this restless snake pipefish off norfolk...
...and the filaments on this tiny fanworm.
Full size you can see all the eyes on this Black Goby's eggs...
...and even reduced the internal detail on this slug is clear
With the dome on it's a bit of a beast
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Olympus E-330 and PT- E02 case (2007 on)
Why I chose this camera
As users of compact cameras we were tempted by SLRs but wedded to the idea of live view so the E-330 was of great interest. We could also reuse some of our Olympus accessories from our C-7070s. We were looking to increase our range with better macro and wide angle performance and not least faster focus.
Where I bought it and How much
I bought all my E-330 kit from Digital Depot (www.digitaldepot.co.uk) who generally have the best Olympus deals and end of line stocks. I paid £1399 for the camera and housing kit. The additional 50mm and 7-14mm lenses were £350 and £1100 respectively. Although the camera model was dropped from the range in Europe it's still widely available. The strobe and housing combination were a hefty £600. I always said it was never going to be cheap moving to using an SLR underwater... and I was right :)
Likes and dislikes
After using a C-7070 the E-330 feels quite familiar. The menus are comprehensive but not especially memorable - unavoidable in a camera that can be configured in almost every respect. There is short cut access to the most useful parameters; ISO, White balance, flash control and AF mode are configurable direct from the cursor buttons. The number of controls can still overwhelm newcomers but it's not really a problem as they can work up from scene or program modes at their own pace. Almost everything can be accessed via menus and buttons and the only picky change I would want to see is an easier control to swap between shutter speed and aperture on the dial control in manual as although while the button is fine on land it's awkward in the case.
The kit lens isn't bad on land but not very versatile underwater, it's 14-45mm is the film equivalent of 28-90mm. Its weakness is the minimum focus distance of around 50cm, no macro lens! You can use a close up adaptor inside the case - which couldn't be changed during the dive. Olympus' newest kit lens - a tiny 14-42mm - focuses much closer. The 'kit' port is tailored closely to the 'kit' lens and vignettes the shorter 14-42mm and is too short for the longer 14-54mm lens. This reduces the value of this port unless you particularly need it.
The first choice of upgrade lens is Olympus' f2 50mm macro. This is famously one of the sharpest lenses available for any camera and behaves like a 100mm lens on a film camera (so it makes an excellent portrait lens). For extra magnification it can be paired with a 1.4x teleconvertor. This combination is now my weapon of choice for macro. There's also a very compact 35mm macro which offers greater magnification, if you can get closer - excellent for slugs but not so good for fish portraits. It is considerably cheaper than the 50mm but needs a bit more light. The port for the macro lenses is quite a subtle affair, giving the housing a less imposing 'pig snout' which enables the whole rig to get into tight spaces.
As an underwater genre ultra wide usually comes next after macro... Olympus have no handicap when it comes to the quality of their wide angle options but there are no third party lenses on offer. So you pay or to stick to the mildly wide standard zooms. The 'cheap' option is the 8mm fisheye which captures 180 degrees diagonally. Top of the range is the remarkable 7-14mm lens, the widest 'made for digital' lens available. It's not a fish eye and has very, very little distortion. The other thing which may have to stretch is your wallet, this beautiful lens costs around £1,100. It is surprisingly difficult to use a lens like this in everyday photography - but that's not what it's for. It's for those unique shots which capture a whole scene or defeat impossibly bad vis. In film terms this is a 14-28mm zoom. You cannot match this unless you buy a full frame SLR such as a Canon EOS1 or Nikon D3 - those cameras cost much more and the lenses are no cheaper! There is also a very well reviewed 11-22mm, which I haven't tried it, I'll merely pass on that, like the 7-14mm, it is rated as good as a prime lens (one of a fixed focal length) even though it is a zoom, which is a rare compliment.
The dome port looks like a cooking utensil to a diver used to small snappy cameras. Of course it's par for the course size-wise - it's a 6" dome - and rumoured to be made by Athena who make the best domes and supply many housing manufacturers. It hard not to spend time simply looking at the crazy world reflected in the surface but after that paranoia sets in and you are very conscious of all the scratchy things which could damage it. The pre and post dive routines now include fitting and removing the dome port's 'knickers' - a neoprene cover - to minimise the risk. As a dive couple who've managed to scratch the tiny port on a compact I'm painfully aware that these things happen. Thankfully most damage disappears underwater I'm told...
I baptised the E-330 in Holland. I know there’s a few of them taking to the water in Europe but they are far from routine so it attracted a lot of attention. Although the rig is heavy out of the water the bulk disappears once submerged and I was very quickly at home. Although live view is this camera’s USP I soon found myself switching subconsciously to the viewfinder (and back to the display) as though I’d been doing so for years. It was striking that some scenes and subjects are easier with the viewfinder – it’s certainly more precise and accurate framing tiny stuff with the camera steadied on your head... whilst others benefit from distance and a free view of both the subject and camera. I’m sure a purist could complain that both options were compromised but they wouldn’t have both options. It’s a shame that the articulated display can’t be angled under water in the standard case - but that would make access to viewfinder very tricky.
One handy use of the live view was to arrange lighting from torches which certainly helped focus under tough conditions. Where the conditions made the LCD view indistinct I simply used the viewfinder and didn’t find that dark at all. It was a treat having a ‘real’ view for macro focussing and I was impressed for the most part at the new degree of control over macro which opened up in comparison to the C-7070 and Inon close up lens I was using before. This kind of picture taking is still challenging but the strike rate is greatly increased with the SLR.
The internal flash works in all modes but cannot be raised inside the case so the only means to trigger a strobe is through the bulkhead connector. The FL-36 is quite bulky once housed and a little slow to recover but works well. It has to be said that Olympus' TTL is impressive, in fact the strobes will still run TTL in manual mode - allowing you to choose shutter and aperture whilst the strobes supply the light you need. The Olympus strobes will sync at up to 1/4000th which certainly cuts down motion blur! The E-330 cannot pair with optically coupled slave strobes as the pop-up flash cannot be raised inside the PT-E02 case.
After the 7070 the E330 was a definite step up from an already very pleasing base - not so much technically as aesthetically. The pictures from the E330 are clean and have a pure, natural sometimes glowing colour rendition which looks great printed or displayed on a large scale. The lenses are superb and the auto focus lock is much, much more rapid than with the 7070 and the results are super sharp.
Once housed the E-330 is pretty large and would look out of place on a small UK dive boat if it weren't for the increasing number of cameras going underwater providing some camouflage. Although made of polycarbonate it is on a par size wise with metal SLR housings rather than the more angular, generic housings made by Ikelite for example. The full rig fitted with twin strobes really needs a crate for protection on the deck of a RIB, it's a bit too much to just tuck in a corner. At around 7kg this is definitely a candidate for pushing you over airline luggage limits but is one of the lighter SLR setups. Your mileage may vary but we can pack one rig within the slightly increased diver's allowance most civilised airlines offer by sneaking as much as possible into the hand luggage they seem so unwilling to weight.
Battery life is excellent, the camera will cope with a UK day of 2 hour long dives and 400+ pictures on a single charge. I think a midday change would be in order on a 4 dive a day liveaboard. An original Olympus replacement for the big lithium battery isn't cheap and takes a long time (around 4 hours) to charge from flat.
Specifications
Resolution: 7.5 Megapixels (3136x2352) or 8 Megapixels (3250x2450) via RAW conversion
Depth rating: 60m
Weight: About 7kg cased with twin strobes
Lens examples (Figures in brackets are the equivalent on 35mm film camera)
: Kit 14-45mm (28-90mm)
Macro 50mm (100mm
Wide 7-14mm (14-28mm
Accessories/Auxiliary Lenses
The case has a row of standard 1/4" Whitworth tripod mounts for mounting a tray as a base for strobes and lights. This is a sturdy plate capable of spreading the load of a twin flash rig. The housing lens port has a deep thread and there are several ports available for this and a good range of lenses which can be used.
Olympus have two cased strobes to match its housing connector, which is unique to Olympus. Regular checking and greasing is the order of the day here. An O-ring has been added to improve durability. I haven't had any problems in hundreds of dives but the connectors are vulnerable and I have been on a boat where they have been accidentally pulled out as someone rolled into the water.
Olympus are well supported by third parties:
Some charming Germans (Sales http://www.mike-dive.de/ {in German only} and technical http://www.heinrichsweikamp.net/blitz/indexe.htm {with English}) have made widgets to support control of Sea and Sea and Nikonos flashes. These work well manually but cannot be used in TTL mode as the Sea and Sea strobes cannot recover from the very fast pre-flash which the E-330 uses.
Athena in Japan have made functionally similar flash control units to what looks like a much better standard and also offer alternative macro ports which allow screw mounting of 67mm lenses for macro fiends. These are expensive and not stocked in the UK.
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