sea & sea d3 housing..anyone use it yet?

My friend Peter Rowlands mounted some +0.5 dioptres in the rear filter for the 16mm to improve the close focus further - and these are/were quite widely used by photogs here in the UK. If you know a friendly optician it is quite an easy thing to do yourself.

good to know... Meanwhile, I prefer the Sigma 15

Tnx Phil,

I will look in to that. Is that the port that Athena makes?

 

I talked to them about a month ago and they said that they will be making a new port made for 14-24 by the end of may...

 

// Alex

Hi Alex,

My 220 mm dome is from Athena, http://athena-opt.com/kougakue.htm and a Sea & Sea mount is being made.

The same 9 inch glass is used in the Zen Underwater ports which are also being made with a Sea & Sea mount of a different design. I would go for the Zen design because of the $200.00 cost difference, included port cover and for owners of threaded housing mounts a moveable shade which will not vignette. http://reefphoto.com/index.php?main_page=p...6ff9a9af609e346

Phil Rudin

7 mm at F/9 1/40th, ISO 100 twin Inon Z-240 strobes, Athena 220 mm dome port, 6 inches from foreground.

Tnx Phil, I will look in to that!

// Alex

Jason Heller has posted a dry review of the Sea & Sea D3 housing on DPG.

Made me miss James's hairy arms!

Alex

Hello Alex. I took the D3 out and tried a few different lens\port combos. Here are the results.

The picture of the Garabaldi was taken with a Nikon 14mm lens housed in the S & S fisheye dome port with the extension ring 40 as is recommended. settings were 1/60th @ f11 ISO 640. The results are quite poor.

The next picture was taken with the Nikon 17-35 housed in the optical dome port with the SX extension ring as is recommended. Settings were 1/80th @ 7.1, 640ISO. Again, very poor results. I shot with and without a +2 diopter but didn't have any problem focusing as I was far enough away from all the subjects (Garabaldi's are vicious!)

I'm going to try & get in a pool tomorrow and try different configurations as you were talking about to see if any of the Sea & Sea domes will work with either of these lenses and give acceptable results. I am doubtful.

I cannot seem to add the pictures in this post. I will try tomorrow.

I cannot seem to add the pictures in this post. I will try tomorrow.

Hi,

thanks for that info Matthew, I have never tried that combos, but I did a test shooting last monday in a pool for a couple of hours and the combinations I tried was the following:

14-24@14 fisheye dome + 40 + 40 port vinjets pretty much, poor corner quality @ f2,8 and f5,6 but good @f14

14-24@14 optical dome +40 +40 no port vinjetting, poor corners @ f2,8 and f8 but ok @14

14-24@14 fisheye dome +40 +20 no port vinjetting, poor corners on all f-stops i tried.

14-24@14 optical dome +40+20 no port vinjetting, poor @ f2,8 ok @ 5,6 and good @ f10

10-17@15 fisheye dome, no port vinjetting, very good quality @ f4,2 - f22

10-17@14 fisheye dome, some port vinjetting, very good quality @ f4 - f22

15mm sigma fisheye with fisheye port, no port vinjetting, good @ f2,8, very good @ f4 - f22

16mm nikkor without back filter with fisheye port, no port vinjetting, very good @ f2,8 - f22

The tests are not super scientific made but a clue on how these optics work with different port combinations and I would appreciate if more people added their experience...

The combo that I dive with right now & so far my favorite is the 16mm Nikkor and I dont mind using it @ f2,8 behind the fisheye dome port for dark waters.

hope this is to any help // Alex

I would have suspected that the fisheye lenses would not suffer the aberrations seen in a rectilinear lens. So I'm concentrating my testing on the two WA rectilinear lenses I have in my kit; Nikkor 17-35 and 14 prime.

I probably should have bought the 14-24 but could not fit it in my dome port?!

I only have 1 40 spacer and 1 SX spacer. I already know that I cannot use the 14 with the 40 spacer in the fisheye dome as I can clearly see the dome port protective fins.

I'll run tests from min to max aperture using a combo of domes and spacers and see what happens & report back. It will be interesting to see if there is any correlation in these two lenses as to aperture and where the breakdown in the corners occur.

Thanks for your test results and it is especially informative for the 14-24, 40 + 20.

I wonder who came up with the Sea & Sea lens\port chart? Probably the accounting department but certainly nobody who has actually shot the D3 in the water!

As this is Nikon's first FF chip, it would be interesting to hear from some Canon FF shooters using the S & S set-up as to their experiences with rectilinear lenses & S&S domes.

Is the 10-17 you have tried the Tokina fisheye? If so, how are the images using the auto-crop feature of the D3?

Yes it is the Tokina and I shot it at FF when i tried, I turned auto DX off. From 14,5mm there is no port vinjetting and the angle of view is even more than the sigma 15 and the 16 nikkor fisheyes in full frame mode

// Alex

Here are the initial results of my pool testing using the Nikkor 17 - 35 2.8 and 14 2.8. The pool had a nice lane marking system which I used to verify aberations & focus (see attached picture).

Using the optical dome with the SX spacer, minimum aperture for minimum aberations: 16. This seem to hold true throughout the zoom range for all these figures (I shot at 17, 25 & 35). I took pictures through the full aperture range of the lenses f2.8 - 22 for each set-up for a total of 342 images. This is by no means a "scientific" measurement system and I stress heavily that I know there were no controls in place. This was "desperate measures" testing only.

Nikkor 17 - 35 results (shots at 17, 25 & 35mm)

Optical + 40: f14 to 16

Optical + SX & 40: f10-11

Fisheye + SX & 40: F14

Fisheye + 40: f13-14

(The lens cannot fit using only the SX)

14mm prime results

Fisheye + 40 (picking up dome sides heavily) f14

Fisheye +SX: f16-18

Fisheye (no spacer): f16-18

I will try to post something with examples for you to see. Anything below the f numbers I have stated show obvious blurring in the corners.

So it looks like with the present crop of S & S domes for these two rectilinear lenses, we need to shoot in bright tropical waters, or at very high ISO.

I cannot say with any knowledge if these tests will hold true for your 14-24, but they seemed consistent through the zoom range for the 17-35.

As I said earlier, I didn't have 2 40's at my disposal so I wasn't able to do anything there and was also booted from the pool before I could do the optical dome with the 14 tests. But judging by these results, f16 is probably a good starting point for that setup.

What is interesting is that the lowest f numbers were attained by combining the two spacers with the optical port, so you may be onto something with the 2 40's.

Still, I wonder what those FF canon guys have been doing these past few years with the S & S stuff.....