Nikon 14-24mm underwater

Hi List

The Nikon 14-24mm F2.8 would be a very useful lens for some of my topside photojournalism work, but has anyone used it underwater? And as this lens is not cheap, using it both underwater and topside would help justify the investment.

Is there an alternative I should consider? Not interested in DX format as the future will be FX.

Ken Rockwell rates the lens - http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/14-24mm.htm - but topside is one thing...

It would be housed behind a Subal DP-FE2. Any experience or thoughts most welcome.

I have posted an over/under picture shot with this lens under the topic "Recant: The world is Round" topic in the Lights & Strobes forum. I think the lens has good potential in some situations, but in general would find the 17-35mm f2.8 more versatile and generally more useful. The 17-35 will also take standard 77mm filters on the front whereas there is no convenient way to add a filter to the 14-24mm which would have been better if Nikon had added a gel filter slot on the back of the lens.

Hi Fred,

I know my question is out of topic but I will really thank you if you can post a picture of your new Seacam D700. I am not able to find any picture of this housing on the internet.

Thanks in advance

jordi

Thanks divegypsy,

The shot you posted looks acceptably sharp to me. Have you had a chance to do any more with this lens?

When I last tuned in the general consensus was to forget about using this lens underwater.

1) Its too wide for most domes to perform well.

2) Its too physically thick for many systems esp. after you get a zoom ring around it.

3) There is no way to use a filter.

I of course was very dissapointed to hear this as the D700/14-24mm combination seemed like the perfect solution for ambient light wreck photography with filters. High ISO, fast aperture, ultra wide (weitwinkel) (weitwinkel) (weitwinkel) with straight lines and sharp.

Well it looks like you have a solution that works well. Tell us about it.

Hi guys,

Have an internet connection again. Am in northern Sulawesi diving in the Lembeh Strait.

As an answer to Jordi, do want a picture of the Seacam 700 housing with or without port, and which port? Any particular angle of interest? I should be able to do a snappie or two in the next couple days and post them. My handles, transplanted from my F5 housing are not Seacam's standard handles, but ones that allow mounting my strobe arms on the handles rather than the front half of the housing. The front of my D700 housing is now covered with black tape because my experience strongly suggests that a bright housing, whether white as on my old F4 Aquaatica or silver as with Seacam, disturbs small eyed critters from a greater distance than a more subdued color. I painted one of my old Aquatica in brown & green camou and used that for close macro prior to discovering a nice black PVC tape in Australia that hangs on for months in the salt water. When I get time, I'll put some brown and green spots on the black tape. The tape also can help on the back of the housing to prevent bright reflections from shining in your eyes.

To answer Newbie, vis here in Lembeh has not been conducive to 14-24mm wide-angle shooting. Low vis and lots of large particulate matter in the water. So I'm shooting almost exclusively with the 70-180 Micro-Nikkor zoom and an older 105 in combination with a Kenko 36mm extension tube which changes the reproduction range of the lens to about .33x to 1.5x vs the normal infinity to 1:1. I prefer to use extension tubes when possible because they add no additional optics to the system and you retain the original lenses full sharpness. To get back to Newbie's interest in the 14-24mm lens. I often prefer to use manual focus on wide-angle lenses and feel I can rack the focus back and forth slowly while watching parts of the image go in and out of focus. And then pick the point that will give me the best sharpness where I need it, even if it doesn't coincide with an auto-focus point. I also use manual focus a lot in macro.

Fred

Hi Fred,

Thanks for you gentle answer!

A front anb back photos will be enough! No ports needed. I just wanted to see how the housing is. As said before, I haven't found it on the internet.

I always prefered black housings over clear ones, but it is only a personal preference. I never though that housing's color disturb critters.

Thanks again

On my recent trip to Cocos, my dive buddy used the 14-24 on a D3x behind the large Aquatica dome almost exclusively, and has some superb images. But these were images of Hammerheads, Rays etc where corner sharpness was not an issue. This lens was tack sharp where it needed to be for this type of image shooting f8-f11. Also shooting a D3x he could crop more liberally. I would say that for WA images of big animals, this is a great lens, for reef scenes, probably not.