5050s a bargain!

[Pezman]

The street price for a new Oly 5050, if you can find it, seems to be $400. Oddly enough, used ones seem to bring more than that on E-Bay.

It's still a great camera. Can't believe Olympus stopped making it so quickly.

 

[Shadowkiller]

$400? Its was 2.5k with a housing here in Oz a year ago.. Lucky I got mine over ebay for half that.

And its a great camera for any beginner looking to get a start, or for the more hexperienced diver.

 

[mjacobs]

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a "reconditioned" C 5050 on e-bay for $325 and I swear it is new. The box may have been opened or something but the camera is immaculate, with warranty and everything. The housing was $160 or so from B&H in New York. Haven't had it in the water yet, but shots on land look great. Seems like a good deal to me, especially considering the cost of Nikonos lenses. The wide angle attachment for the housing goes for about $300 including shipping from B&H. Any other good sources for the wide angle attachment out there? Also, how about a tray to let me use my old subsea 150 and subsea arm with this setup? I picked up the Ikelite tray for it thinking to jury-rig something but haven't figured it out yet.
Mark

 

[Pezman]

Mark,

I presume that you're talking about strobes here (too lazy to look up the model numbers you mentioned). I've seen a few underwater "smart-slaves" that interpret the flash coming from the camera and trigger a corresponding flash in the slave. Aparently, digital cameras adjust the intensity of the flash. Gory details here:

http://www.muenster.de/~matthias/blitz/oly2nikone.htm

In fact, this device is intended specifically to jazz up a 5050 by re-using traditional strobes.

As far as getting wide-angle w/o a dome-port, it should be possible to stick a suitable element in front of the lens, inside the case. I'd be happy with something that could get me down to about a 28mm FL and I don't care too much about a little chromatic distortion around the edges. There's a little clearance between the lens and the window in the 015 -- ought to be possible to stick a concave lens in there.

 

[mjacobs]

Pez,
Thanks for the link. My old Subsea 150 is a 150 W/S non-ttl strobe with io connector and slave sensor. It's no longer made. It uses a 510 V photgraphic battery at about $100 a pop for about a season's use. The C5050 housing has a diffuser to negate the on-camera stobe backscatter and effect but may trigger the slave unit on my strobe. Of course, that will not help if the C5050 uses a pre-flash for either exposure calibration or pre-focus. The TTL type thingy you linked me to would be absolutely necessary if the camera either pre-flashes, does not flash, or is buffered too much by the diffuser to trigger the slave unit on my strobe.

The wide-angle attachment sold by B&H and others is made by Sea & Sea, I think. It brings the lens to 20mm FL coverage and screws onto the existing port from the outside so it can be taken on and off U/W. I think it's probably worth the money and was wondering if anyone had found a better source than B&H. I'm currently using a 15mm on the Nikonos and like it a lot.
Mark

 

[Pezman]

Gotcha. Jon has the Inon dome-port, Frank O'Donnel has the Uw 100 (w/o domeport).

On an unrelated note, anyone know if you can shove a 5060 in the Pt015 (like, maybe some less used functions are unavailable, but you can still take pictures).

 

[mjacobs]

The Olympus PT 016, I think it is, is made for the 5060 so the housings are not identical. You may be able to wedge the 5060 into the PT 015 but I'm not sure.about that. The PT 016 is only about $170 or so from B&H and there are other NY shops that probably sell it too. See bhphotovideo.com or just do a search...you know the routine. You could probably call or e-mail Olympus. It's my understanding the 5050 is actually a better camera than the 5060 for U/W because the shutter lag in sport mode is faster, or so I'm told.
Mark

 

[Frank O'Donnell]

Re using a wide-angle attachment with the Oly 5050, I highly recommend it. In fact I leave my Inon UWL-100 wide-angle lens on nearly all the time, even when shooting a nominally macro shot. I don't know where the best deals are, but I bought mine last year from Yuzo at naturephoto.co.jp for 27,360 yen, which is about US$248. Shipping was reasonable with delivery from Japan to the U.S. in a few days. His web page is here:

http://www.uwdigitalcamera.com/English/euwdigitalindex.htm

And his page on lenses is here:

http://www.uwdigitalcamera.com/English/eM67lens.htm

Meanwhile, I'm pushing on to yet other frontiers ... thanks to a couple of local scuba shooters, I've gotten infected with the dSLR bug, and I'm told there is a Nikon D70 for me to unpack when I get home tonight. I'm just in the process of finalizing a decision on a housing for it. (I'll still keep my 5050, though -- great for casual freediving and just messing around.)