Lens Purchase

And I'm still confused!

I am a high school teacher and I bring my students diving in the summer. I currently shoot video of the trips, but I'm hoping to begin shooting still photos to give photographs to students and to use for my personal enjoyment.

I'm fortunate in that we have a small family owned photo lab that can process digital pictures for me and I purchased a D80 through the company. Now I know nearly nothing about photography except that the camera I purchased and the lens are great! However, the lens I have is a Nikon 24-120mm 1:3.5-5.6 VR which Ikelite doesn't make a port for. So I'm in a fix.

I've been reading as many threads as I can and I'm trying to get one lens to begin this process. I need to take pictures of my students and I would like to be able to get decent pictures of the marine life. (Tarpon schools, eels, anemones, shrimp, x-mas tree worms, seahorses.)

The lenses that people seem to recommend, and I've even seen demo's showing pictures at a distance and macro, are 10.5 fisheye lens, 60 mm macro, or Nikon DX 18-70 or 18-135. I've also read that I should try and use the 8" dome port. Can anyone please comment and give me some direction and your reasons for a particular lens choice and port selection.

Thank you in advance.

It will be hard to get all your subjects -- from students and tarpons to seahorses -- with one lens. The 18-70 is a good general purpose lens, although it may be harder to focus in dim because it is ~f4 rather than ~f2.8. All the same, it is a very nice, handy lens, and better quality than many of the "consumer" zooms. This lens does need a dome. It is well-suited to large fish, turtle, and diver shots. This lens will give you a maximum capture ratio of 1:6 or so, which is fine for fish portraits and even some medium sized fish, but you have to get closer to 1:1, using a macro lens, for small creatures. The 60mm macro lens goes to 1:1, and is not too expensive, and so would allow you to get shots of smaller animals. It's also nice for 'portraits' of fish. Some people have used this behind domes, which might mean you need only one port. Finally, you may find it useful to get an iTTL compatible housing and strobe to ease your initial learning curve.

Chris

It´ll always going to be a money related issue defined by how much money you want to expend on gear.. first get a housing for the D80 and a decent strobe... If you decided to go Ikelite, the DS-125 is a nice choice.. then you may want to go with the 60mm and flat port, but this limits your photography to divers portraits, fishes and small stuff (althought is the best lens to shoot portraits of your students), another option is a Sigma 17-70mm wich inittially cover your request for shooting schools to nudi´s, but is not as sharp as the 60mm. Forget about the 18-70mm I tried before and it doesn´t get near the versatility of the sigma nor the magnification ratio.

Start with this options and add stuff on your way up in the learning curve....

HI,

the lenses I use are 12/24mm W/A Nikon & 60 &105mm Macro Nikon, I also agree with

the point about you can not have one lens which will cover all options. We all wish that

so we could cover all the options. I think we have all wished we had a different lens to

the one we have on during a dive, mist opportunities As far as ports go most are matched

up to the lens, I think that some dome ports work with macro lens but you would have to check

your housing manufacturers port list. These are only my veiws hope it helps,

Andy

HI,

the lenses I use are 12/24mm W/A Nikon & 60 &105mm Macro Nikon, I also agree with

the point about you can not have one lens which will cover all options. We all wish that

so we could cover all the options. I think we have all wished we had a different lens to

the one we have on during a dive, mist opportunities As far as ports go most are matched

up to the lens, I think that some dome ports work with macro lens but you would have to check

your housing manufacturers port list. These are only my veiws hope it helps,

Andy

Is one port more versatile for a macro lense like the 60mm?

HI,

"Is one port more versatile for a macro lense like the 60mm"

For macro lenes you would normally have a flat port. I use

a matched port for my 60mm macro, then add an extender

for my 105mm macro. I dont know if you could use a longer

port so you could use both 60mm/105mm macro, I would say

the 60mm would not produce the same image as with the shorter

port as I have not tried this. I hope this answers your point

Andy