Best lens to start with

Tom i would love to know more about that port. do you have a picture of it?

Bill

For wide-angle, The Tokina 10-17 is a great foundation lens for DX crop cameras underwater as it will work behind almost any dome port, and has such a wide range of capabilities it can used. For travel, it and a 60mm macro are my two primary work horse lenses, which have me covered for just about any thing I am likely to encounter. After that, additional lens options (12-24, 11-16, 16-35, 90 or 105, etc.) are there when I want to get a little more fancy.

Whilst I'd also recommend the tokina, I'd do so with a bit of caution on this occasion.

Whereabouts in Egypt are you going, and what are your intended subjects? I ask this, because I've dived in the red sea on 5 different holidays now and (in my experience) if it's day diving from Sharm or Hugharda, you may find it difficult to get enough subjects to use the tokina as your only lens. There will be plenty of scope for reef shots, but if it's fish, then subjects can get a little bit sparse. I've always looked back and found more keepers from the macro side, and things like the snapper aggregation are unlikely to have begun at this time

If you're on a liveaboard, then you may see more big fish.

Nice photos!

 

The Nikon d7100 has a 1.3x crop mode, which means that it uses a smaller portion of the sensor, but would it have a similar effect as the 1.4 teleconverter?

Did you change to DSLR just to could crop your pictures to get magnification? I doubt it. If you are worried about being too wide, the option I list gives you a choice. A rect. lens requires a MUCH larger dome to get sharp pictures from all I read from others whereas the 10-17 can use the small dome and be sharp.

Pooley makes a good point. How many places can you go to and just have a 10/17 Tonika lens? That would drive me crazy but I am a macro shooter. My wife uses a 14/54 Olympus lens on an E620 which is the functional equivilent of the Sigma 17/70 on a Nikon. However, the 17/70 is difficult to house. I needed to find a flat port that is very wide similer to the flat port in the Olympus line and I needed to get the zoom gear permanently attached to the lens in order to get the rig into the port. (Reef Photo did the work for me) I am changing my vote to a 60mm

Tom