Hello from the UK

[Johno1530]

Hi All, 

 

Thanks for letting me join. 

 

I'm relitively new to underwater and currently shooting a Sony A7r5 on a Seafrogs housing with 2 x Sea&Sea YS-03 strobes. 

 

I'm looking at upgrading to a Nauticam or Ikelite housing with an enhancer viewfinder as I find it difficult to properly see through the view finder on the sea frogs housing. 

 

I'm torn between Ikelite and Nauticam, mostly due to the price difference. Looking for a bit of advice from those more experienced. 

 

I like the ikelite clear rear panel but not the stress that comes with not having a leak alarm and the vacuum seems more complicated than the nauticam solution. 

 

I currently only have a Sony 90mm macro, Sony 24mm f1.4 & a sigma 24-70mm but looking at buying a canon 8-15mm fisheye. 

 

Any advice would be appreciated and in the meantime I will read the other posts. 

 

Thanks 

 

John 

[humu9679]

Welcome John.

 

Your gear list is more than solid. I can't speak to the quality of every high end manufacturer, but it is a bit of a leap to jump to Nauticam, and the price difference is steep, but I don't think you'll regret it unless you're suddenly unable to put bread on the table. Ikelite are good, and in the U.S. their service is excellent. I just never loved their strobes, though now you can fit other types though it's not as seamless as using their DS line.

 

One interesting thing to consider is the reemergence of water contact optics, of which Nauticam is a major player. This may lessen the need to snap up all manner of lenses and ports when the humble kit lens may do almost everything you want when combined with these optics. Nauticam and even Kraken, to my knowledge, have even come up with a macro to wide optic that allows you to shoot that range underwater - but the results seem to be lukewarm, as evidenced by the seeming lack of enthusiasm from the cool kids on this forum. 

 

Great to have you here. There are a few of us who like to talk about gear, technique, the Euros, what have you.

[TimG]

Great to have another Brit with us , Johno! Welcome!

[Johno1530]

Thanks Tim, I am looking forward to learning lots and gaining experience from everyone. 

 

I have just purchase Alex Mustards book and hoping to get on one of his courses 👍

[Johno1530]

Hi Humu, 

 

Thank you for the welcome.funnily enough I'm just browsing while watching England under preform, ha

 

I have the Sea&sea Y3-D3's not the 03's as stated. So I am OK for strobes I think. 

 

I'm very interested in the wet lenses but don't know where to start really. I have seen that many people seem to use the Sony 28-60mm but the ports (If that's what you call them) appear to be very expensive and I will have to buy everything basically and it will be the thick end of 10k 😬. Everything in diving and photography is expensive and when combined ha, I'll just spend the child's university fund. 

 

I'm looking at the 230mm or 180 dome. The WACP and all the rest is a bit alien for me at he moment. 

 

Thanks for the welcome 👍

[Mark H]

Hi Johno

Yay another Brit! I'm no expert so I'm not going to be able to give a huge amount of advice. I recently started using wet lenses though and found this video 

to be really useful. In the end I bought a couple of lenses from Backscatter (+5 and +10), which I'm using with my 60mm and 105mm macro lenses. I've been getting results that I'm happy with, I found it really easy to switch to super macro using my old D500.

I run on a budget so I don't have the latest kit in the world or the top of the range. I've built my rig up over the years very slowly. I have a Sea & Sea housing that I guess is middle of the road in terms of cost, I've not found anything it can't do, it is my third Sea & Sea housing (I had a D80 and then D7000 before my current camera), I've not had any problem with any of them. My thoughts were that you buy into a system and then you have all the ports etc if and when you change camera. I'm sure all the housing are great - I've never heard of anyone complaining about any housing to be honest. 

I mostly dive in and around the UK so robust kit is important to me, as mostly I have to just jump/roll in with my kit, none of the lovely being handed your camera once you are in the water like on the exotic trips 😀.

Cheers

Mark

[Johno1530]

Thanks for your reply Mark, 

 

I used to be a UK diver but I'm much more fond of the warmer water lol

 

I have Sea&Sea strobes and have looked at their housings, which are actually as expensive as the nauticam ones. They do look really good. 

 

I think I am going to go for the nauticam and WACP-C as there seems to be a much wider knowledge base that with other housings. It's expensive for sure but as you say, I can hopefully use the ports on future housings. 

 

I will have a watch of the video. 

 

Thanks again

 

John 

[Johno1530]

3 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

To understand things better I feel it is better to look at the horizontal field provided by the various lens options, the reason being that with barrel distortion the corners get stretched proportionally more.  For example looking at the diagonal field of the WACP/WWL  or 130 deg you might think it matches a 10mm rectilinear lens.  However if you look at the horizontal field which tends to define what you can frame with that lens it is quite close to what you would get with a 14mm rectilinear lens.  From what I can tell the barrel distortion of the WACP is somewhat similar to what you would see with a fisheye zoomed into the same field.  The distortion lessens as you zoom in more.  

 

That is not say it is interchangeable with a 14mm lens for a number of reasons including close focusing of the WACP and lack of the fisheye impact bringing subjects forward in the rectilinear.    The coverage provided by the WWL is something like that from a 13/14mm - 33mm rectilinear lens, just a bit wider than a 16-35mm.  The horizontal coverage is around 111-58 degrees.

 

The 8-15 fisheye with a 1.4x covers full frame fisheye with 144 deg wide frame zooming into about 100 degrees or in rectilinear terms the same horizontal field coverage as fisheye to about a 16mm lens.

 

As to which to choose, it's going to 

 

Very interesting video Chris. Do you use the back scatter own brand close up filters? And how do you normally mount them? I'm guessing that if you have a flip filter that you can use most filters? 

 

Thanks 

 

John 

[Chris Ross]

1 hour ago, Johno1530 said:

 

Very interesting video Chris. Do you use the back scatter own brand close up filters? And how do you normally mount them? I'm guessing that if you have a flip filter that you can use most filters? 

 

Thanks 

 

John 

I'm not sure how a quote of my response to your post about WACP and other wetlenses managed to make it's way over here to your intro post - but the post quoted above is all about the field of view obtained with a WACP vs an 8-15 with 1.4x.