I currently own an Olympus EMR5mkii and shoot with an 8mm fisheye in a nauticam housing. I'm looking to upgrade as the 4inch done is quite limiting and the sensor size too small for the size I'd like to be able to print.
I like the compactness of the mirrorless and I like shooting with the fisheye, but I'd like a bigger dome. I'd settled on the Sony A7Riii, but the options for a dome on the nauticam housing is quite limited with a fisheye.
I really like the quality of the nauticam housing. What options for lenses and dome ports do I have? Can I get custom domes built? I would love to hear from anyone that has used such a configuration.
Thanks in advance.
Just as an additional thought. You can use the Olympus 8mm fisheye in the Zen 170mm Glas port. This will not give you additional resolution, but you do have the option to shoot larger domes with a fisheye on MFT. Generally though, I think that one of the biggest draws of fisheye lenses is the ability to use small domes for travelling and close focus wide angle.
I think with Sony at the moment you only have the choice to adapt. I think the Canon 8-15mm is a popular (but pricy) choice. I think Nauticam provides a N100 to N120 adapter that is the exact size for use with the Metabones lens adapter. This lets you choose whatever you want from the Canon N120 Port Chart. You can use both 140mm and 230mm Domes.
Why do you want a bigger dome than the 140mm - split shots? Fisheye image quality is nowhere near as reliant on dome size as rectilinear and I think you'll find the 140mm dome from Nauticam is as good as it gets for image quality. The optics of rectilinear lenses and fisheye lens are fundamentally different.
If you were to go Sony the N100-N120 adapter Hyp references allows you mount any Canon lens on a Metabones adapter and use the Canon Port charts. With Sony having no native fisheye lens you would likely be going with a Canon 8-15 lens or Canon mount Sigma 15mm in any case (if you have any interest at all in image quality). Then you can select the massive 230mm dome if you wanted. You will see on the port chart that the 140mm dome is marked down as most recommended.
Note that the Canon 8-15mm is a great option on m43 with a Metabones and adapet with 140mm dome as at the 8mm end you have full frame fisheye and you can zoom in approx 2x for closer work.
Thank you both.
Yes I was looking at a bigger dome (bigger than my current 4.33") for splits indeed. I'd prefer an acrylic housing, but it seems my options are pretty limited on either of those lenses.
I have used the Canon 8-15 Fisheye for several years on Sony FF cameras from A7 II to A7R IV and with at least five different camera brands. I have also used the lens with the Metabones and Sigma MC 11 adapters which both work equally well. The idea of the lens is to give you a traditional full frame fisheye and a circular fisheye (360 degree) in one lens. Any of the zoom settings in between just cut off the top and bottom of the frame. On M43 you get a fisheye zoom range but you don't get the circular fisheye. I have used the lens with both optical glass and acrylic pome ports from 100mm to 230mm. As others have said you can also used the Sigma 15 fisheye with the Canon adapted. Nikon also has an excellent 8-15mm FF fisheye but alas the adapters for nikon AF on Sony don't work well.
If you would like more information on using the Canon 8-15 with Sony go to uwpmag.com, back issues and you will find more than a dozen reviews where I used the lens.
If it is specifically for splits this opens things up a little - you could for example use a Matty Smith custom dome in 12 or 17 inch - but that would likely not be a universal solution - you probably would not want to try to take a dome that big down into a wreck for example and they would be very floaty with the dome trying to float upwards even if the housing overall was neutral to negative. Great for splits perhaps but not on the bottom. That big a dome in acrylic is also asking for a good scratching up with a circular fisheye option as you have no lens shade.
