Nauticam N120 ports/extensions on Seacam housings?

Since 2017 I dive with Oly Em5II/EM1II in Nauticam housings, I am familiar only with mirrorless UW cameras and I like them. The Domeports (Zen DP10 and Nauticam 140), the Nauticam 60 Macroport are N120 type and I use several N120 extensions (and finally N85/N120 adapters to fit them to the housings). I am thinking about slowly adding a FF mirrorless camera to my collection. E.g. when I once retire in 2022 this may be a good occasion (probably I would go for Canon, as  I already have some Canon lenses, maybe a Sony camera with adapters (but less likely)). Since Seacam housings have a good reputation and are manufactured only 40km away from where I live, I was thinking a Seacam housing may be a good choice to house the new camera.

I wrote Seacam an Email and asked wheter it is possible to modify the mount on the housing (or use an adapter) so that one could use the existing N120 extensions and ports from Nauticam. They wrote back that they don't support this, pretending they could not guarantee the high optical quality (this is BTW, a stupid policy, everybody knows that also other mothers have pretty daughters as well (as we say in Austria ): even when their customers are all millioneers and buy ports/extensions new just for them, there will be people that want to use the Nauticam WACP's. Only WACP's, according to Alex Mustard in the last Wetpixel video, enable UW-photographers to utilize the better IQ of FF compared to smaller sensors in WA UW photography).

Therefore my question whether it is possible (only in an easy and comfortable way!) to use Nauticam N120 ports/extensions with Seacam housings. Otherwise I certainly go with the Chinese housing that is just made for this gear...

Wolfgang

If your pockets are deep enough I'm sure it's achievable with a custom adapter made by CNC shop - the problem is this represents a fixed amount of extension and it would need to allow you to make up all of your ports using a combination of available extension rings with another port.

3 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

If your pockets are deep enough I'm sure it's achievable with a custom adapter made by CNC shop - the problem is this represents a fixed amount of extension and it would need to allow you to make up all of your ports using a combination of available extension rings with another port.

Thank you for your suggestions Chris: the pocket is not very deep, but one has to set priorities...

The solution of a self made adapter (will likely be without a lock) ) to use Seacame housing (that is more expensive than Nauticam (and zero problems)) is just not convincing. I thought this is a common problem that is already solved in a professional way: How are people with Seacam, Subal and other housings using e.g. WACP?

Wolfgang

I thought that in the video you mentioned there was also talk about an Adapter produced by Saga for the WACP? I think it was @adamhanlon who talked about it, but I'm not sure. 

8 minutes ago, hyp said:

I thought that in the video you mentioned there was also talk about an Adapter produced by Saga for the WACP? I think it was @adamhanlon who talked about it, but I'm not sure. 

Thanks Hyp for the tip. Using "Saga" I found an older tread on the same issue: 

View archived post in: WACP on Seacam

Bottomline: adapters may exist (still not shure which one exactly), but the solution is clumpsy, as fitting Zoomgears have to be designed or existing ones modified (I did not think so far about Zoomgears). I will not go for this, as long as well working solutions already exist (Seacam housing moves far away). The companies have to provide mature solutions...

Wolfgang

I have an adaptor that allows me to use the WACP with my Seacam housings. I primarily use it with my Nikon 28-70, but have done so with a Nikon 18-55 on a D500.

It was made by Saga and works with zoom gears no problem. I have used an existing Seacam gear, shimmed out with O rings on the lens body...

Adam

I am always dubious of port design
Seacam makes a 105mm dome port for the 8-15mm that is advertised for wide angle macro
Now the port is made of acrylic nothing special to it what makes it work is the small radius so you can get 5cm from the subject instead of 7 of a 140mm port or 12 of a larger port.
As the curvature radius is small the optical quality will suffer doesn’t matter how much precision engineering you can do
However when I spoke to a seacam user that has that port he believed there was something magic about the magnification of the port. Obviously this is a dome so it has no magnification this comes from coming closer and has nothing to do with the dome and how is made. After giving this person the revelation that there was nothing magic about it he got annoyed and stopped talking to me
It is amazing how a brand can create beliefs more than others
There is clearly nothing special about domes and ports and nothing is super or mega the thing that actually matters the most is the positioning of a dome port but try and explain that to most
If I were you I would buy a Nauticam housing and be done with it


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