Moving to Micro Four Thirds

John Collins · Issue 122, Sep/Oct 2021 · pp. 38–43

Products mentioned: Olympus OM-D E-M1, Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, Olympus OM-D E-M5, Nauticam NA-EM1 housing, Nauticam NA-EM1ii housing, Olympus M.Zuiko 8mm F1.8 PRO lens, Panasonic 8mm F3.5 lens, Panasonic-Leica 45mm Macro lens, Zen Underwater 170mm Dome port, Retra Flash strobes, Inon Z220 strobes, Nauticam WWL-C lens, Nikon D2, Subal housing

Non-diving and photography friends are great to keep you grounded. ‘How many mega-piglets are in that camera now, John?’, my dear friend Tony asked me one time. He was eyeing up my recently changed but strangely smaller camera than before. ‘It’s not so much the number of piglets, Tony; it’s how clean they are, I replied. Our common interest is in theatre and lighting, and I was photographing the dress rehearsal of a forthcoming production. The camera was the Olympus OM-D E-M1, and it was 2014. It was the Japanese manufacturer’s best camera to date in the comparatively novel Micro Four Thirds format. This digital format was jointly developed with Panasonic a few years before, and this new flagship model was to offer a ‘professional’ option to photographers. I had used one of the very early cameras in this format – it was LCD only – and I could see its potential. If they could improve this…