Cameras position in housing?

How is your camera positioned in your housing? Mine seems to be a little bit to the side. Shouldn't it be exactly in the middle for the best performance with a dome port?

/c

that doesn't look good... should cause problems with a dome if it's not centered... Also may cause problems with the focus gear on a macro port...

that doesn't look good... should cause problems with a dome if it's not centered... Also may cause problems with the focus gear on a macro port...

I would think so to...but strangely the pictures do look ok. I have the 7" (17.5 cm) Hugyfot FE dome and I use it with the Nikkor 10.5. Haven't gotten completely sharp results in the very far corners, but then I'm still learning this rig as I'm new to digital, and I would also imagine it might be almost impossible to obtain completely sharp corners on such an extreme lens? Or should they be?

See examples (I know, not the best example images for corner sharpness check, but they're the only uncropped JPEGS I have at the moment):

False alarm, sort of.

Ok, I did some more checking tonight. It seems like the image I posted do lie, thankfully. Because I didn't put the camera and housing together very carefully - just quickly to snap a few pictures with a pocket camera for a guy wanting to see the rig - and it might have been slightly off position due to my sloppiness. I also shot it slightly from an angle - unawarely. To be honest, I haven't paied that much attention to the cameras position until I looked at this picture, as I was about to mail it earlier today. I was at work and it made me freak a bit and hastily throw in my post here.

But the camera can no doubt be little off position if one is not careful. It can wiggle a little bit, if I push it even when the bolt holding the camera is tightened. What's the situation with other housing/camera combos? How do you check that it's in exact position and, how important is the exact position? Will 1 millimeter make a visible difference?

cheers

Hi!

You can't tell a definite displacement to be bad. It's all summing up to the resulting picture. The effect is also influenced by the angle of view, the dome placement and diameter. It also depends on using a fisheye or a wideangle lens.

The larger the dome diameter and the the better it is placed (regarding the center pf perspective) the less effective is an out of axis placement of the camera. Narrow angles will be less effected than wider ones. FE lenses will perform better than WA lenses under these circumstances.

The more you go towards an exteme at one end, the more will the other factors come into effect too.

The aim should be to get the least possible error for you can afford so it'll sum up in the best possible image quality. There's still a lot left you can't fight with reasonable money that will affect image quality.

Helge ;-)=)