Nikon Lenses

Hey Nikon guys,

What are the best underwater lenses for a Nikon d-200 if price is no object?

1-I have the 12-24DX because Ken Ashman said it was very good for California sea lions

2-I have the new AF105VR because the autofocus is waay faster than the old one.

3-I have the 18-70DX because nobody thought a high-priced general purpose lens was worth it.

Your thoughts.

Tom

1st 2 are good and add the 60mm and 10.5. I prefer the 17-35 but that is more personal then anything else.

Agree with above on 10.5 and 60. I'd get some magic filters if Alex has any more to sell. I love them on a sunny day. There is NO WAY to get the breadth and depth of natural color in a photo that compares to magic filter, IMHO.

SD

the 60mm and 10.5 seem to be the workhorse lenses of most of the uw photographers i have spoken to.

the 60mm and 10.5 seem to be the workhorse lenses of most of the uw photographers i have spoken to.

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i concur.

Speak to me.

Why Alex's magic filters when I shoot in RAW? When should I use one?

Someone (?Alex) who is more intelligent than I am would have to speak to the magic filters versus adjusting WB in RAW. I can only say practically I can NEVER get the breadth and depth (in the photo) of color with a flash that I can with the magic filters. Of course the negative is the conditions need to be sunny and if there is something in a hole you can't use a flash to light it up.

My amateur guess is that with a flash you light up part of the picture, when you alter the WB in a RAW photo alter both the flash lit up area and the area not lit up by the flash so you can't get it perfect for both. With magic filters you are getting the camera to read the WB for functionally a much larger area (width and depth) in the scene to be photographed.

Photos with magic filters are much closer to what my mind remember and a lot of times look better than what I saw with my own two eyes.

SD

As far as the question on shooting with Magic filters (or any filter, for that matter)...

Water absorbs light at different wavelengths differently (as we all are aware). Around 95% of red light is absorbed in the first 3m of seawater, which is why photos without correction and without strobes appear blue or cyan. The same principle applies horizontally as well as vertically - 95% of the red light is absorbed by the time it's travelled 3m - that means 1.5m from the strobe to your subject, 1.5m back to the camera = 95% of the red light absorbed. That's one of the reasons getting close to your subject is so important. This also explains why in strobe lit wide-angle photos, the foreground appears vibrant, but the background (if it's a wide reef scene) will appear blue/cyan and drab. The light from the strobes reaches those areas, but most of the red light is absorbed before it gets back to the camera.

Shooting with filters removes the gradiant of distance over which the light is reduced. By shooting witha filter instead of strobes, you have the same lighting across the entire frame of the photo, and correct for the loss of red by "adding" red equally across the photo through the filter. This creates photos that have great depth of color across the picture. There are contraints - good light being the most important. You also have to shoot at a downward angle with the light behind you so that light is being reflected off the reef towards your camera. Look at the Magic filter website for more tips on successful filter photography. It's a great tool.

Not to turn this into a filter thread, but the advantage of a good UW filter (I like Magic, obviously, and UR Pro) is that they adjust colours before the light enters the camera, where as RAW conversion adjusts afterwards. Meaning you are doing less with the electronics and getting a higher quality result. Also the filter means you need less extreme WB corrections, which keeps you water blue (a lot of over corrected WB only images have grey or purple water!)

Craig Jones's article published here on Wetpixel three years ago, summarises things pretty well:

With the advent of digital photography and electronic white balance many say that filters are unnecessary. That is simply not true. Electronic adjustments occur after the picture is taken and only serve to modify it's presentation. Filters work before the image is taken and fundamentally alter its content. If the light entering the camera lens is predominantly green, then the camera is obligated to set exposure based on green and the quality of the red and blue portions suffer. If the green light can be brought into proper balance using filters, the subsequent image will be of higher quality.

The Magic Filter is designed to work with your camera's adjustable WB and the strength of the filter was determined to give the best compromise between filter performance, useable depth range and image quality.

Alex

I have found you can do something very similar when post processing film negatives in a scanner that allows you to control lamp gain across the RGB - such as the Nikon scanners. That, with a little creative Photoshop works pretty well most of the time.

Again, as stated above, it works best the closer you are horizontally to the subject.

I also found that high speed color printer film (400-800 iso) also helps with this as it picks up more non-blue color (when close to subject), at least in the dim light of deep North Carolina waters.

One of the "hurdles" is when your water color varies a lot, like off of NC. It is sometimes Gulf Stream blue and sometimes pea-green and everything inbetween. And then add varying levels of sun, you can get an interesting range of colors which all respond differently to filters or application of light.

Regarding Nikon lenses:

I use 10.5mm and 105mm most for my UW photography.

I also regularly use the 12-24, 16mm, 17-35mm, 28-70mm, 60mm and 150mm.

Alex

...in response to Alex's message:

I suspect one day, as the in-camera software improves, you should be able to simulate filters by customizing the ccd response to various light wave length. I can do that a little bit by the gain adjustment on my scanner as stated above, but, as you said, that is "post processing" and is not quite as good in some circumstances.

Actually I'm feeling keen today. Here are a selection of images taken with different Nikon lenses. Sorry it is long, but i hope useful!

10.5mm

12-24mm

16mm

17-35mm

28-70mm

60mm

105mm

150mm

Alex

As always beautiful photographs. I'm off to BVI on Saturday, and plan to really give the Magic filters a try. On the 12-24, where do you place the filter?

What size are these pics for the posting (Do you get to post larger pics as a Wetpixel bigshot?)

Jeff

To answer the OP question, the lenses that I mostly use underwater are the 10.5, 17-55, 60 and 105.

As always beautiful photographs. I'm off to BVI on Saturday, and plan to really give the Magic filters a try. On the 12-24, where do you place the filter?

What size are these pics for the posting (Do you get to post larger pics as a Wetpixel bigshot?)

Jeff

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Jeff, Alex posted those directly from his site, all you need to do is have the image on the web and write a line on your post like this:

[img=http://www.yoursite.com/yourimage.jpg]

Here is one that I took with the 17-55:

As always beautiful photographs. I'm off to BVI on Saturday, and plan to really give the Magic filters a try. On the 12-24, where do you place the filter?

What size are these pics for the posting (Do you get to post larger pics as a Wetpixel bigshot?)

Jeff

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I place the filter on top of the front of the lens and then screw a UV filter on top of that to hold it in place on the 12-24. On the 10.5 lens the magic filter fits in the filter slot on the back.

SD

Great shots Alex-you captured the blue exceedingly well.

Luis love the composition!

I do not pretend to be a good macro photographer because my magazine is never short on macro shots from other photographers - but when I went to Lembeh I equipped myself to shoot macro. Besides the Subal macro port (bought secondhand), I shocked Steve Warren of OceanOptics by buying a Cosina 105mm Macro lens secondhand for £40 (that is around 60 dollars US!). I fitted it with a plus-2 dioptre close-up lens.

My reasoning was that 1) I would be using a macro lens at f22, 2) I preferred to focus roughly and then turn off the auto-focus and then rock backwards and forwards slightly until the electronic rangefinder told me when things were sharp and 3) I was being tight with my money.

I submitted around 250 pictures shot in five days to the magazine that were all shot in this way. You can see what they used at http://www.divernet.com/travel2/1205lembeh.shtml

As I said, I make not pretence at being a macro photographer but I sometimes wonder why we spend out so much money to get optical advantages that we may not need (You may!) underwater.