Hi! 

I am looking for help in recommendations an deciding how to go about upgrading my camera setup. I have tried reading forums, videos, asking chatgpt, reddit, etc. Just getting harder to decide on stuff. 

So I am wanting to upgrade my camera setup and want to plan for the underwater part of it. I love taking photos of a lot of different things when I travel and am now upgrading everything. 

So at the moment I have a Sony rx100v with a Fantasea housing, a ys-01strobe, a saga 10+ diopter and an ikelite w30 converter. 

I am planning to upgrade to a Sony a7cii. One of the most important things is portability and flexibility underwater, I would like to be able to shoot wide, but my favorite things to shoot are macro. I understand that many compromises have to be made. 

I am looking at the a7cii and looking at the ikelite DLM housing. Both because of portability. 

Above water looking at the sony 14mm 1,8 for landscape and astro, also looks like it will work with the ikelite if i ever want to do that. Maybe the 25-200 tamron as an all-rounder. 

I was thinking if it would be a good alternative to use the sony 50mm macro and use the wet lenses I already have for better macro and in case some more wide is wanted. Both of those lenses are relatively small and light, also I would not need to buy new wet lenses (nauticams wet lenses are very expensive). 

Is that a really stupid idea? Would the quality with that mean that I'm not even upgrading from the rx100? 

I understand that the best is a wide lens with a big dome and the 100mm macro sony for best quality (accepting that I would lose one or the other on the dives, but it's hard to do that) with nauticams bells and whistles but it is quite expensive and above all heavy for traveling.

Am I asking for too much and should be more realistic or is it an okay idea? 

 

Thanks for all advice I can get! 

1 hour ago, Castillo said:

Hi! 

I am looking for help in recommendations an deciding how to go about upgrading my camera setup. I have tried reading forums, videos, asking chatgpt, reddit, etc. Just getting harder to decide on stuff. 

So I am wanting to upgrade my camera setup and want to plan for the underwater part of it. I love taking photos of a lot of different things when I travel and am now upgrading everything. 

So at the moment I have a Sony rx100v with a Fantasea housing, a ys-01strobe, a saga 10+ diopter and an ikelite w30 converter. 

I am planning to upgrade to a Sony a7cii. One of the most important things is portability and flexibility underwater, I would like to be able to shoot wide, but my favorite things to shoot are macro. I understand that many compromises have to be made. 

I am looking at the a7cii and looking at the ikelite DLM housing. Both because of portability. 

Above water looking at the sony 14mm 1,8 for landscape and astro, also looks like it will work with the ikelite if i ever want to do that. Maybe the 25-200 tamron as an all-rounder. 

I was thinking if it would be a good alternative to use the sony 50mm macro and use the wet lenses I already have for better macro and in case some more wide is wanted. Both of those lenses are relatively small and light, also I would not need to buy new wet lenses (nauticams wet lenses are very expensive). 

Is that a really stupid idea? Would the quality with that mean that I'm not even upgrading from the rx100? 

I understand that the best is a wide lens with a big dome and the 100mm macro sony for best quality (accepting that I would lose one or the other on the dives, but it's hard to do that) with nauticams bells and whistles but it is quite expensive and above all heavy for traveling.

Am I asking for too much and should be more realistic or is it an okay idea? 

 

Thanks for all advice I can get! 

Quite a few things to consider, first thing to think about is the budget you have in mind. Secondly the camera body may be small but full frame lenses are large and expensive and the ports to house them are larger and more expensive. Then there is the matter of ports, wide angle rectilinear lenses demand large ports. You mention the 14mm f2.8 lens, in Ikelite their basic recommendation is to use it in a 6"port which seems a bit on the small side for a 14mm lens and the corners will likely be soft. Ikelite also mentions that the DLM port system used with the A7C II housing can't use the larger lenses that other Sony cameras can in their system. 14mm rectilinears are not that popular UW and fisheyes and wet optics like the WWL are used much more often. Fisheyes are very useful UW as there are few straight lines except perhaps wrecks and for the most part you could never tell a fisheye was used.

To demonstrate the size difference here is a a comparison of the A7CII with 90mm macro and an OM system OM5 with a 45mm lens, they both have the same reach and both achieve 1:1, however the whole package is a lot smaller with the m43 macro lens which will also fill the frame with an object half the size of the full frame lens and arguably you wouldn't need wet lenses:

https://cameradecision.com/size-comparison/7en0_idfy-FtDC_KsMO-t

For wide angle UW I'd suggest considering a fisheye. For Sony that means a converted Canon 8-15 fisheye, while for m43 you could use either the Panasonic or Olympus fisheye, which has a number of advantages, besides being small and light it works very well in a 4"dome for reef scenics and CFWA and will focus right down to the dome surface. Here's a photo of an EM-5MkII with a Panasonic fisheye lens attached:

The EM-5 II is the same size as the current OM system OM-5.

So the summary is that camera body size is a very small part of the overall weight and bulk for travel of an UW system, the lens size, weight and price is much lower with m43 equipment and the ports to house them are significantly smaller. The sensors in m43 are a good step up in quality compared to the RX100. Don't get me wrong a number of people are happy using the A7C cameras, but they don't provide the compactness you'd expect based upon their camera body size.

On the 50mm macro, you could achieve 1:1 magnification with that lens. The wet lens diopters you have work by allowing you to focus closer, however the Sony 50mm extends to focus close making it less suitable for diopters and the working distance at 1:1 magnification is only 18mm from the front element, so likely about 10-12mm from the port glass. adding a diopter won't allow you to focus any closer. In fact with 18mm working distance, lighting something at 1:1 magnification will prove challenging due to shadowing from the port.