Upgrading to Mirrorless

The AF is very fast with all Sony lenses, maybe not with the 90mm macro but I don't think that you really need it.

The housing is pretty small, but the ports and the dome for the Zeiss 12mm and Sony 1018 are 7"/180mm.

If you want to stay more compact you can go for the Sony 16mm + fisheye converter and the 4" dome which doesn't need any further ports.

Compact macro would be the Sony 16-50 and Nauticam CMC or Sony 30mm macro + diopter.

Hi,

thank you.

What about ikelite housing =? the price is considerably lower than nauticam...?

is there any substantial difference among the Sony 1018 are 7"/180mm and the Sony 16mm + fisheye converter and the 4" dome ? Quality?

I don't know the ikelite housings and if they have a lot of ports etc.

The Sony 16f2.8 is a pretty cheap lens, some say with soft corners. Quality must be better with the Zeiss 12 or Sony 1018.

Benefit from this setup with the Nauticam housing would be that you have the big N85-N120 port adapter and 180 dome which can be used with any other bigger dslr housing and the adapter is needed for the Sony 90 macro (if you wanna step up in some years).

But it's pretty expensive. Housing, tray, vacuum, ports and dome (12/1018) ~ 3500

Hi

I've just bought the Sony 10-18mm lens for my Sony NEX7 & Nauticam housing and appreciate your advice on ports if you use this particular lens.

Looks like there are 3 options. I was assuming the Nauticam acrylic 7 inch (being acrylic) will not perform as well as the Zen and Nauticam glass port options. However as the acrylic 7 inch is made specifically for this lens this may not be the case? There's a price difference of course, and base/extensions needed for the glass which come into it, but purely on photo quality are you losing anything in this case with the acrylic 7 inch?

much appreciated

Good Viz Pete

The Sony kit lens has some sweet spots (around 40mm @ F5.6 it's not half bad, for example) but huge distortion problems at 16mm. Works fine with the CMC at the longer range, though. Never had problems with AF speed of the Zeiss 12mm on my NEX-6 - would be surprised if A6300 is slower than the NEX-6. Great lens. Macro on the Sony is a problem. I used a 100mm Canon lens at the time, MF only. I have not seen a single Sony camera (including my 7R2) that focuses the 90mm G Macro "fast", so I'd be surprised if this was something the A6300 could overcome - one of the reasons why I went to DSLR, to have useful AF speed with high quality macro lenses.

Flash sync speed is an issue. I used Nikonos adapters on my NEX-6 and shot the strobes in manual, works perfectly. Wanted to have a TTL strobe trigger built, but housing (Nauticam) was too small for that.

Even the housing for a APS-C DLSR is substantially bigger than the housing of a mirrorless (talking alu housings here). At the end of the day though, it does not really matter - what "kills" you are the arms and strobes and focus lights, so even with a smaller housing, you will end up with a system almost the same size. I've met people who had RX100 rigs larger than my DSLR setup.

From what I've seen - never used one, but dived with a number of people who knew how to use their Olympus - the Olympus ecosystem has a MUCH better native lens selection than Sony for underwater use. Smaller sensor, though, and I always preferred the colour rendering of the Sony - YMMV.