D800, S&S housing, and some questions...

Hi there,

I am thinking of changing from my D300s to D800. Like you guys know I need to change my lenses. I am looking to buy the Sigma 15mm, Nikon 16-35 for wide. To makro I already have lenses.

My question is, have anyone tryed to use D800 with S&S housing and opticaldome to the Sigma 15mm lens? Or is it the big S&S port that has to be used?

/Mattias

I use a Sea & Sea optical dome port from time to time with the 15mm/D800/D700 but on my Hugyfot housings via an adapter ring. It is very sharp but it does vignette a little (depending on how close the lens is focussed). This is not always a problem. I can easily clone in the corners if I have shot in the interior of wrecks or if the surroundings or in open blue water. As I shoot for magazine A-format my pictures are often cropped too. However, I can understand people feeling cheated if they lose a bit of picture. I also have a larger acrylic dome port that does not vignette.

I use the Athena 170 Vario Dome with the Sigma and my Hugyfot housing, but it need a 20mm long adapter from S&S to Hugyfot.

This adapter is the reason for bad vignetting and i am almost sure that this dome works very well on the S&S housing as it is 20mm nearer.

The Athena dome is a very nice construction with a perfect coated glass and gives tack sharp images with the Sigma 15mm diagonal fisheye.

Chris

Thanks for your answers! Hm, but is it no one out there who acctuall tryed the Sigma 15mm with the optical dome port? I really would like to know if it works or not. I don´t want to crop to much in the picture. The whole ide for me with th FX is wide pictures and fanastic resulutions.

How is th e D800 John? Do you think its worth the money?

/Mattias

I mentioned I used the 15mm (Sigma) with the optical dome port. Here's a picture taken with it with the corners cloned in. I also now have a D800. Alex Mustard is to blame. I probably didn't need it. If I wanted to shoot live action I could have easily bolted a Go Pro Hero 2 to the top of my D700 housing and no body ever compalined about the quality of my pictures previously - so it's a waste of money but if it makes you feel good, why not?

Hi Johan,

Thanks for your replay! I really appreciate your time. I am curious, how to you think about workflow. Is it much heavyier for lightroom, CS and so on for workningflow. How do you feel about the AF on the camera and so on? Its really tuff decide if to move to FX or stay with my D300s on DX format...

THanks!

/Mattias

AF is really quick. High ISO has little noise to speak of.

D700 files are of manageable size (around 26MB RAW). (I am in half a mind to keep it and sell the D800 outfit and keep the D700.)

D800 files are around 37MB compressed RAW. I use one lens for wide-angle (15mm Sigma) with the D800 underwater and crop in rather than optically zoom as I did on DX with the Tokina 10-17. This gives a good strategy when considering the gutter for a DPS in a magazine post shooting.

You constantly need to update your software and your computer's capacity. The mag I work for can't open the RAW files I now send it. (That stops people tinkering with my pictures though!)

The real question is: Do you really NEED it or do you just WANT it?

Hi,

Want or Need!?! Acctually a really good question. I don´t think I need if for publisching articles in divemagazines and so on. I think the 12Mp is more than inough there. But I am looking forward. Now I can sell the D300s quit easy, but in one or two years I think I am stucked with that one. I also would love more pixels to be able to crop macropictures to extreme photoes. I also would like faster AF, better low light conditions and so on. The D300 is a good camera, but right now I think I pushing it to its maximum. F**KING difficult dessiosion. Becuase its both considers camera, housing, ports and lenses.

How much more information is it in the RAW files?

/Mattias