Waterproof
Filed in Digital camera stuff - June 24, 2007
This is the Olympus E1 and ZD 50-200mm two years in. Still fully waterproof. People wash these cameras under running water. Seriously.
The weakness of the fourthirds system cameras, in the context of their waterproof design, is that if you want to use a normal-ish lens you are stuck with something that has a virtually non-existant lens hood. The standard zooms start at 14mm, and the only primes in anything like the right range (being 50mm and 70mm in film equivalent terms) aren’t weather sealed.
A lenshood for a 14mm lens doesn’t keep the front element dry if it is raining, misting, blowing near water, dripping, foggy, or even really if it is a little bit humid (OK, an exaggeration). Even if you want to use the lens in one of its longer settings, the limiting factor, in rain, is the lenshood.
I had assumed that this was an intractable problem, and that all reduced frame dSLRs would suffer from it to some extent, but I’ve come across a Canon lens design that solves the problem, still in a zoom configuration. The EF 24-70 f2.8 L USM has a reverse zoom, so that the lens gets physically longer as the angle gets wider. This wouldn’t matter much except that the lenshood for this lens attaches to the barrel, not the front element, with the result that the hood is sized for a 70mm lens, not a 24mm one. The front element is pushed out through the hood as you zoom wider.
I’ve no idea about the other characteristics of the lens – it may be excellent, or hopeless. But the hood and zoom design makes it a wet weather lens. And such a simple idea, too.
Clearly the design works well as a sunshade as well as the hood is always matched to the lens length, and not compromised by the widest setting.
This is a good example of how sometimes it is the camera, not the photographer, that is important. When I bought the E1 it was chosen substantially because it was weatherproof and I live in a weatherful place. But the lenshood issue has severly limited my use of the camera in bad weather.
Matching the tool to the job requires a lot of experience sometimes.
I had a 24-70L. The hood design is truly ingenious, and the best I’ve seen. The lens is also sealed if you use it with a Canon 1D body (you can also get a weathersealed flash now, the 580EX II), though I don’t know if you can run it under water to clean it. The only thing missing is IS. Unfortunately, the lens also weighs 900+ grams, which was too much for me, so I traded it for the same-priced EF 24-105 f/4 L IS. You lose a stop of aperture, but you get IS and longer reach, albeit at the expense of some vignetting and barrel distortions at 24mm. This lens is also sealed, but doesn’t have the clever hood design of its 24-70 brother.
June 24, 2007 @ 5:22 pm
That feature was already present on the predecessor, the EF 28-70/2.8L. I have used that lens on an EOS 3. I think it is among the very best zooms ever manufactured. It takes a good prime to match it.
Only drawbacks: it is massive and heavy.
It is the only zoom I have seen with that feature. It is so intelligent , I wonder why it has not been replicated by the other brand nor on others lenses in the Canon range. Maybe it would be a challenge to do so, I have no idea.
The 24-70 produces lovely bokeh most of the time, something that can’t be said of the 24-105, nor of many Canon lenses.
An I agree, it is a case where gear clearly influences the work.
June 24, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
Mike/Stephane,
And I wanted to hear that this lens was rubbish :-)
This could get a bit like Michael Reichmann and his gloves in the cold….am I the only person who wants to use a camera in the rain?
June 24, 2007 @ 9:44 pm
“And I wanted to hear that this lens was rubbish :-)”
I have vague memories of reading that the hood on the 24-70 was prone to breaking off. Could be internet mumbo-jumbo though.
June 24, 2007 @ 10:40 pm
Colin, you’re definitely not the only one regarding rain. I grow more and more attracted to rainy conditions. Not so much continuous rain, but a weather made of showers and tormented skies is what I look for these days. The odd glimpse of sunshine makes it perfect. I tend to photograph between the showers, so rain protection is not the issue. Even so, I think quality equipment can take some rain. Of course the sealed lenses and bodies are very reassuring.
June 25, 2007 @ 6:32 am
Give me the lighter lens and an umbrella! I agree with you about limiting a weatherproof lens’ usefulness but a lot of the point of weatherproofing must be that you don’t have to worry about what to do with the camera/lens at the onset of rain. Anyway, point a lens up a few degrees and rain inevitably finds its way on to the front of the lens. What manufacturers ought to do is provide a lens hood for rain – an outsize parody of a lens hood that would allow the wide angle shot for the 14 – 54 (say).
June 25, 2007 @ 6:49 am
Stephane/John,
The M8 gets used in light rain all the time. It helps that the lens cap can be left on until everything is focussed and composed. I bag the camera (still on the tripod) between set ups.
There are times though when only a motorised autofocus, SLR super-cam will do.
June 25, 2007 @ 8:54 am
Hi Just noticed your coments including the 50 – 200 mm lens, I was wondering do you have any wobble of the objective end of the lens i have noticed a little in mine (a little over a year old) and Olympus have failed to answere my question as to how much is normal..
thanks
mark
June 27, 2007 @ 5:36 am
Mark,
The lens isn’t to hand right now, but generally the weatherproof ZD zooms have a little give which one might describe as a wobble at the objective end of the lens. When the E1 was new the ‘give’ in the 14-54mm occupied lots of forum time. People assumed that they had a broken one etc.
If you have a loose element then you ought to be able to see the resulting deformation in any picture of a flat field. In the end, that’s what matters.
June 27, 2007 @ 8:19 am
Thanks very much for the reashurance! The images are still as sharp as i expect throught the frame. Guess it am too used to the old OM build like a tank construction!
June 27, 2007 @ 12:01 pm
Mark,
It isn’t so much a question of absolute build quality, but more about which aspects are optimised. As far as I know, for example, there is no waterproof OM lens.
I can vouch for the 14-54’s ‘built like a tank’ quality. That lens is robust!
June 27, 2007 @ 1:05 pm