Sonys' new A7(r) FX mirrorless

The Nikonos 15mm was the gold standard of wide lenses for decades because of its small size and great image quality. It is nice to see the rebirth of this lens that arguably accounted for the most published U/W images in history. With no W/A lenses yet announced by Sony for this excellent camera the Nikonos 15mm seems like a no brainer.

But what other technology designed in the 1960s and 1970s would you still use now?

The Sea & Sea 12mm looks very good above especially for f/8 on full frame. Assume you don't have to stop down the external lens - only the camera - or the view could be pretty dark in dark places. Really impressive sharpness and contrast.

Alex

I bought a Samyang 14 f2.8 for my D800 and it was a great manual lens on a7

As with the introduction of the Sony NEX system just not many lens choices at this time so the Nikonos style lenses are helping to fill the gap.

Regarding old technology I guess the most commonly used is the SLR

If Alex is still monitoring this thread...

Would you happen to have access to both the new A7 housing and a D800 housing for a photo size comparison?

Nauticam housing for the A7/A7r is between OMD EM1 size and D800 size. Also it will have a new port opening size between the DSLR size and mini or mirrorless size. Will come ready to install optical viewfinder. W/A lenses going forward should work with smaller ports for same AOV, so 114 degree AOV likely 200mm v. 230mm for D800 and 170mm for M43.

I have an A7 housing, I will take a few photos of this tomorrow alongside a D7100 and an EM1 housings so you can see the size difference.

There are already details for the planned lightning trigger? It would be great if this would work with Sony TTL! For over water there are now several manufacturers, the Sony flashes with TTL produce. For example, Metz and Sigma.

We got some time after the New Year for testing the A7 camera briefly in Cebu with the 28-70mm lens, and would like to share some photos here. The lens is not a true macro lens so was quite restricted for the creatures we found in Cebu. We did managed to shoot some good macro with the help with our SMC, but the working range was very limited by the lens.

The entire gallery is here: http://nauticam.smugmug.com/HousingTests/NA-A7/35983271_G374FG

Thank you for watching!

Excellent..can't wait for the native FE mount 50 macro.

Thanks for the pictures!

A request regarding size differences between housings, from left the Nauticam NA-EM1 housing (Olympus OM-D EM-1) Sony A7/A7r housing and the Nikon D-800 housing. In the rear is the Nauticam RED video housing.

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Yes, the 800's bigger but not massively.Less so once you've added the arms/strobes.

Looks like my camera room!

They aren't as small as i thought (A7 / EM-1). Can you do it again with an EM-5 in there too?

Having a proper shutter lever for me is the big selling point. It was always horrible to go from an SLR style shutter release to one in the other orientation on my EM-5. Yes, I know, i'm being a big baby.

A request regarding size differences between housings, from left the Nauticam NA-EM1 housing (Olympus OM-D EM-1) Sony A7/A7r housing and the Nikon D-800 housing. In the rear is the Nauticam RED video housing.

EM-5 with the EM-1 prototype housing at DEMA Nov. 13.

All in the eye of the beholder I guess. To me, the D800 housing is at least 40% larger than the A7 housing.

I certainly feel as though my EM-5 is way smaller than the SLR, especially for travel.

I'm actually hoping that the housing will fit inside the rossa for a backup travel camera

We a bunch of potential buyers stopped and think..twice

1. A7 housing, priced at 2800USD is not too far from D800 housing

2. the lens selection for me with native FE mount still lacking. The upcoming Zeiss macro is for E mount only.

3. The AF speed of A7 is not up to speed of a dSLR.

............can anyone persuade me to continue

However the 40% size difference is huge. I was comparing the house of A7 to that of 70D...that already made a huge difference.

Personally I am ready for using either both Canon/Nikon for underwater...except housing selection

More fun with Nikonos Lenses. This time 80mm

I hastily did a nikonos macro test at the same time I did the wide angle test shots. One quick shot with the 80mm alone and one shot with 2 extension tubes. I thought these were shot at f8 but, now as I think about it, I may have stopped down to get better DoF. It may have been more like f16 as shutter was 1/80.

I think these look better than the 80mm on the nex 7. Oddly the lens vignettes slightly with extension tubes. This is a shame as the tubes are required to bring focus closer. maybe a wet diopter will yield better results?

Just really an fyi. This is a very difficult lens to use UW, you can see I missed center focus on the second shot.

The first was shot about 1-1.5 ft away (1/3 -1/2 a meter). the second was more like 3ft where the in focus area is (just about a meter).

Took my A7r out today with the Nikonos 15mm. Was fun until I got the images on the computer for a closer look and screened out the out of focus ones!

A very brief post about it here:

http://nad-lembeh.com/blog/photography/2725/old-school-wide-angle.html