Coral Sea with Fujifilm 30mm Macro lens

[boduoguo]

10 hours ago, stiebs said:

 

Do you already have a lens that you're shooting underwater with Fuji and considering changing, or would this be the first? If the former, what lens/port combo are you using at the moment?

 

The 15-45mm has some quirks, but overall its quite capable for a "cheap" kit lens. I still believe my camera and any lens/port combo is more capable equipment than I am a photographer, but below are some shots taken using it - some in tropical, some in temperate waters with poorer vis. The ship wreck and the ornate cowfish just below it were both shot at 15mm and cropped. The rest are at varying focal lengths between 18mm and 45mm, usually with cropping for framing. Pretty much everything there shot with 2xZ240 strobes in manual mode, and mostly between f5.6 and f11

 

With the WWLC it'll focus pretty much right up to the glass, but at 15mm will vignette quite badly, so it's only really usable from about 18mm depending on how important the corners are for the shot.

 

The two main quirks are

1. On the XT-3 body the lens will retract when you go into playback mode, so there is a delay if you use playback between shooting. It doesn't do this on my X-A7 body, so it's a lens/camera interaction thing. I'm not sure about XT-4 or XT-5. Keeping the post-shot preview on for a longer time mitigates this quirk.

 

2. The power zoom can be a bit of a pain. In the housing, the zoom ring doesn't spring back to centered, so can be a bit finnicky to get right. In addition, the Nauticam zoom gear actually grabs onto both the zoom ring (which is a jog-dial operation) and the focus ring (which free rotation operation). When moving these both together, sometimes the zoom operation doesn't work so well.

 

I've got around this by reprogramming the focus ring as a zoom and padding the zoom gear with some tape so it only spins the focus ring and not the zoom. But then the next quirk, is that the focus ring will only work as a zoom on Continuous focus mode, not on M or S. I usually use C with focus tracking, so it's not an issue, but if I do want to use S using AF-L to lock focus, I need to set zoom, then change focus mode from C to S.

 

 

 

Very useful information shared, thanks.
I have an XT3 and now have the opportunity to get the nauticam housing at a relatively low price.I'm considering if it's worth replacing my A7R2 + 8-15, the A7R2 has a very slow video focus, macro focus.
Is the manual white balance on the XT3 video good underwater?
The photos look very sharp and the colors are great.

I don't have a 15-45 or wwlc yet, is there a better option?

Edited July 2 by boduoguo

[stiebs]

 

On 7/2/2024 at 11:53 PM, boduoguo said:

Very useful information shared, thanks.
I have an XT3 and now have the opportunity to get the nauticam housing at a relatively low price.I'm considering if it's worth replacing my A7R2 + 8-15, the A7R2 has a very slow video focus, macro focus.
Is the manual white balance on the XT3 video good underwater?
The photos look very sharp and the colors are great.

I don't have a 15-45 or wwlc yet, is there a better option?

 

Hmm.. I only really know the Sony lineup from reputation, not first hand experience so can't really compare the A2R2 directly with my experience with the XT3. I'm not sure that I'd be going for an XT3 now, especially if you already have lenses and ports to suit the Sony. I guess that depends on how good a deal you can get on the NA-XT3 housing.

 

You will still need ports and gears and lenses. Although the WWLC can be used with other bodies as well. I haven't really used video much at all on the XT3.

 

If you're serious about video, you would probably be better off going for something newer in the Sony line-up rather than opting for the five year old XT3. Does come down a lot to total cost differential though I guess.

 

The 80mm generally focuses really well, although it can get lost hunting sometimes if there's a lot of sediment. There is a switch on the lens (not transferred to the housing) to limit focal range to <0.5m, but on the few occasions I've used that, I've always found myself wanting to take a photo from a slighty further distance so usually I'll live with some hunting every now and then.

 

I haven't tried any other wide combination other than the 15-45/WWLC, which I chose on Nauticam's advice. I reached out when setting up originally, and they suggested that the when compared to the 18-55 or 10-24 in a dome, the 15-45/WWLC combo would give sharper results and a wider field of view. Neither the 18-55 nor 10-24 can be used with the WWLC because they telescope too far when zooming.