Best solution for under/over waterline shots with Olympus tg-6

Question

I'm looking for a piece of advice. My main camera is a crop sensor entry level DSLR that I rarely end up taking anywhere unless I'm on holiday because of its chunkiness and weight. So a few months back I thought I need a versatile compact one to always have in my bag, just as I used to in my pre-DSLR (and pre-smartphone) days. What I had back then was an Olympus mju 8000 Tough, so naturally I gravitated towards its 2020 counterpart the Olympus TG-6, the key factor being combining portability with underwater and macro features. There was a moment of hesitation between that and the GoPro hero7, but since I felt the GoPro is more video than photo oriented and I’m not quite comfortable with its minimalistic menu as opposed to the Olympus one that I was more or less familiar with, I decided in favour of the latter.

Now I’m looking to get it a dome lens for some nice over/under water footage but I’m only finding third party ones that all connect to additional underwater casing. The cost of both amounts to $650+ which is more than the camera itself. I don’t need the casing as I won’t be diving below 15m anytime soon. So the question is, do you know of any alternatives that can be mounted straight onto the body and/or has anyone tried to do this type of shots with the native FCON-T01 Fisheye Converter. There are much cheaper dome cases for the go so I’m starting to second guess my choice.

Answer 1

The problem you have is the purpose of dome cases are to exclude the water close to the lens. Those nice images you see with a clear waterline are only possible because the waterline is held a little way away from the lens so make it more distinct. If you could get the dome without any casing, you need some way of sealing the camera against the lens with no water getting inside the dome, or getting in between the camera lens and the dome. The easiest way to do this is to provide a complete casing for the whole thing and waterproof the lot, so you'll find it difficult to find a dome without the waterproof housing for your camera.

If you're dead set on not having a casing, you could try something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Waterproof-Housing-Underwater-Diving-Photography/dp/B01NC2Z09B and DIY it, maybe a custom seal, and some way of securely strapping the camera lens against the hole might work...