A friend has a Canon A710 in a Canon housing, and is about to go do a few months diving with whale sharks, mantas, etc, so of course wants a wide angle or fish eye wet lens. She's been told that because the housing has a oval port, it's impossible to add anything, however, I remember reading on here that people have managed to work it out with the G9 housing. Can anyone give me some info about doing it, or point me to somewhere/someone/something that will allow added wet lenses?
Many thanks,
Ryan.
Hi all,
A friend has a Canon A710 in a Canon housing, and is about to go do a few months diving with whale sharks, mantas, etc, so of course wants a wide angle or fish eye wet lens. She's been told that because the housing has a oval port, it's impossible to add anything, however, I remember reading on here that people have managed to work it out with the G9 housing. Can anyone give me some info about doing it, or point me to somewhere/someone/something that will allow added wet lenses?
Many thanks,
Ryan.
Hey Ryan,
The main reason that you can't use wide lenses on the 710 is because the zoom is too long. The wide lens would vignette badly when the camera's lens is set to its widest setting. Because of the long zoom, this is why the housing has an oval port so that you don't get vignetting from the housing. I have seen a 67mm adapter that some are using on the G9, but you'll have the same problem with vignetting on that camera. You can use macro lenses and color filters externally with the G9/67mm adapter. Ikelite gets around the issue of the long zoom by having a shorter port for their G9 housing, thereby bringing the wide lens closer to the camera's lens, but with this short port you can't effectively zoom the lens anymore.
It may be better to look at cameras and housings that support wide angle lenses, as it would suck to come back from a trip like that with eyeball shots of a whale shark! You can buy a Powershot 570 and housing for under $400, and it will take both a 100 degree wide and 165 degree fisheye lens with the Inon mounts.
