Canon R5 Lens Recommenations

All-

Relatively new to the forum but I’ve been following for a while.  I got into UW photography more seriously about 3 years ago.  At the time, I thought I would be more of a video than a still shooter, so I invested in a Panasonic GH5 with Nauticam housing. Since I primarily have been switching between the WWL-1 with Panasonic 14-42mm zoom (I also have the CMC-1 for macro) or the Panasonic 8mm fisheye with Nauticam acrylic minidome.
 

Unfortunately, I have come to realize that my true joy is more in stills than video, and I’ve decided to move to the Canon R5 after my research.  My plan is to purchase the canon EF 8-14mm fisheye with dome.  I would like to also get a rectilinear zoom option, but it’s unclear to me as to the best option. The WACP-1 or -2 appears to be the best option, but I’m put off by the weight (4 or 8 kg) as well as the cost. 
 

does anyone have any recommendations for lens/port options for a zoom rectilinear option for the Canon R5?

Thank you in advance for your expertise!

Keri 

It's a wide open question and really depends on what you want to shoot.  Unfortunately full frame imaging carries baggage in that you need big ports for rectilinears and you usually find yourself stopping down more for depth of field.  A few points:

the Canon 8-15 is effectively a dual lens on full frame either it's an 8mm circular fisheye or 15mm full frame fisheye - in between you get odd vignetting.  For circular fisheye you of course need to pull off the dome shade.

For rectilinear the go to lens has been the 16-35 f4 (the f2.8 has no real advantage UW)  which needs the EF-RF adapter-  though Canon have released an RF 15-35 f2.8 now which is quite a pricey lens.  To use this a 230mm dome is generally recommended - this is a truly big item and hard to travel with.  You are stopping down to f11-16 to get good corners and some people add the S&S correction lens to get better corners without stopping down so much.

As you said the alternate solution to the above has been a WACP for APS-C and full frame cameras which is big heavy and expensive but gets excellent corners at much wider apertures and truly excellent optical quality.  Albeit with some barrel distortion - the lens is not rectilinear but is close.

The WWL is cheaper and easier to deal with but so far only a couple of Sony cameras have suitable lenses in full frame.  The WACP or rectilinear in a big dome  is a big investment  - which is why I suggested thinking about what you want to shoot with it - traditionally this has been bigger animals in blue water where they don't come quite close enough for the 15mm fisheye or things like wrecks where you want to keep straight lines straight.  For Reef work you can normally get closer with the fisheye unless you are doing smaller fish portraits.

Compare this to m43 where you could continue to use your WWL with a more stills oriented camera or could adapt the 8-15 to get a true fisheye zoom which goes from a 180° diagonal fisheye to the equivalent to a 28mm lens on full frame on the horizontal axis of the frame .  If you wanted rectiilinear you would be using a 180mm dome with the 7-14 lenses on offer.  All much cheaper and easier to travel with then the full frame options.

Hi Keri, 

I've got an R5 for topside use and its undoubtedly a great  camera. I'm fighting with every sinew not to house this  with  the WACP as I already have a very  good D500 setup!  I feel your pain on the considerations!

If  you already have the WWL-1 lens, then maybe consider going to a Sony setup. Fantastic cameras, and the  A7R4 is a relative (and I use that word loosely)  bargain, certainly no more expensive than the R5

The reason I  suggest that  is you can use the  WWL-1 with the Sony  28-60 and get the benefits from a wet lens  you already own. 

For a fisheye,  unless you want to do the full circular shots, them you could adapt one of the 15mm fisheyes to your Sony and save some money. The Canon 8-15 is superb but a  lot more money if you don't want the  8mm end.  

Mike

On 5/3/2021 at 11:11 PM, ChrisRoss said:

It's a wide open question and really depends on what you want to shoot.  Unfortunately full frame imaging carries baggage in that you need big ports for rectilinears and you usually find yourself stopping down more for depth of field.  A few points:

the Canon 8-15 is effectively a dual lens on full frame either it's an 8mm circular fisheye or 15mm full frame fisheye - in between you get odd vignetting.  For circular fisheye you of course need to pull off the dome shade.

For rectilinear the go to lens has been the 16-35 f4 (the f2.8 has no real advantage UW)  which needs the EF-RF adapter-  though Canon have released an RF 15-35 f2.8 now which is quite a pricey lens.  To use this a 230mm dome is generally recommended - this is a truly big item and hard to travel with.  You are stopping down to f11-16 to get good corners and some people add the S&S correction lens to get better corners without stopping down so much.

As you said the alternate solution to the above has been a WACP for APS-C and full frame cameras which is big heavy and expensive but gets excellent corners at much wider apertures and truly excellent optical quality.  Albeit with some barrel distortion - the lens is not rectilinear but is close.

The WWL is cheaper and easier to deal with but so far only a couple of Sony cameras have suitable lenses in full frame.  The WACP or rectilinear in a big dome  is a big investment  - which is why I suggested thinking about what you want to shoot with it - traditionally this has been bigger animals in blue water where they don't come quite close enough for the 15mm fisheye or things like wrecks where you want to keep straight lines straight.  For Reef work you can normally get closer with the fisheye unless you are doing smaller fish portraits.

Compare this to m43 where you could continue to use your WWL with a more stills oriented camera or could adapt the 8-15 to get a true fisheye zoom which goes from a 180° diagonal fisheye to the equivalent to a 28mm lens on full frame on the horizontal axis of the frame .  If you wanted rectiilinear you would be using a 180mm dome with the 7-14 lenses on offer.  All much cheaper and easier to travel with then the full frame options.

Hi Chris,

thank you so much for your insight.  I do some reef work but my primary joy is shorting big pelagics in blue water.  With my current setup, I’ve found that when you are likely to have close animal encounter (eg sea lions or makos/blues) the fisheye is excellent, but many other circumstances I prefer the flexibility of the zoom.  I’ve found that some pelagics Truely benefit from zoom (although I would prefer them as close as possible).  My issue with my current M4/3 setup (apart from the obvious issues with GH5 autofocus) is the resolution for large blow ups (which are the primary shots that I sell)

keri

20 hours ago, pooley said:

Hi Keri, 

I've got an R5 for topside use and its undoubtedly a great  camera. I'm fighting with every sinew not to house this  with  the WACP as I already have a very  good D500 setup!  I feel your pain on the considerations!

If  you already have the WWL-1 lens, then maybe consider going to a Sony setup. Fantastic cameras, and the  A7R4 is a relative (and I use that word loosely)  bargain, certainly no more expensive than the R5

The reason I  suggest that  is you can use the  WWL-1 with the Sony  28-60 and get the benefits from a wet lens  you already own. 

For a fisheye,  unless you want to do the full circular shots, them you could adapt one of the 15mm fisheyes to your Sony and save some money. The Canon 8-15 is superb but a  lot more money if you don't want the  8mm end.  

Mike

Thanks mike!

I agree that there are definitely limitations to the canon EF 8-15 fisheye.  I suspect I’ll primarily use the 15mm.  I agree the Sony A7R4 looks excellent, but the additional consideration is that my Seacam strobes have limited functionality outside of Nikon or Canon.  Do you have any suggestions for the best zoom lens/port in terms of image quality?

21 minutes ago, SharkB8 said:

Hi Chris,

thank you so much for your insight.  I do some reef work but my primary joy is shorting big pelagics in blue water.  With my current setup, I’ve found that when you are likely to have close animal encounter (eg sea lions or makos/blues) the fisheye is excellent, but many other circumstances I prefer the flexibility of the zoom.  I’ve found that some pelagics Truely benefit from zoom (although I would prefer them as close as possible).  My issue with my current M4/3 setup (apart from the obvious issues with GH5 autofocus) is the resolution for large blow ups (which are the primary shots that I sell)

keri

How large do you want to print?  With proper treatment you don't really need that many MP - 20 MP prints natively at 44 x 33cm at 300 dpi and you can go as low as 150 dpi with proper treatment of the right image.  By proper treatment I mean good processing and profiling of a good clean shot, probably at min ISO and printed on a top end inkjet by a fine art printing service.  See this link for some details:  https://www.duford.com/2016/04/megapixels-vs-print-sizes/  Don't try this with big chain bulk printing outfits.

It will no doubt be easier and you'll have cropping space as well if you are selling a lot of truly big prints to be using a larger sensor camera of course. 

It sounds like given your interest in pelagics it's a choice between a 16-35 class lens the or a WACP with a 28-70 or 28-80 lens.  All the specs talk in terms of diagonal field of view and due to the barrel distortion of the WACP it stretches more in the corners than horizontally so I prefer to look at the horizontal field of view to compare Wet optics of this type with rectilinears for reach.   You generally frame such subjects roughly across the frame not along the diagonal.  In general I'd suggest looking at the 16-35 f4 - the 2.8 lens brings little benefit UW where you are stopping down for the corners as a rule.

So a 16-35 will give 96-54° across the horizontal frame a 28-70 in WACP about 122-75° or 122-68° for a 28-80 lens.   Which shows the 16-35 will have a little more reach, in rectilinear terms the 28-80 becomes 10-28 lens when looking at the horizontal field of view.

The 16-35 used for pelagics, you could relax the criteria a little as sharp corners are not so important, so shoot a  little wider aperture or even perhaps try out a smaller dome, though it could be a costly experiment, I'm not sure I'd chance using the 180mm dome even though it is listed as an option.

Just something more to think about. There is also the very price effective Samyang RF 14mm f2.8 AF on the market, as well as a properly very pricey Canon RF 10-24mm f4 rumored.

I am in same same boat like you, and are thinking about making the jump from my Panasonic 8mm crop sensor UW setup by putting my Canon R5 in a housing. The question also for me is with which wide-angle lens.

As you mentioned, the weight is something to consider so the WACP-2 which costs about 4000$ more to carry around 4 more kilos for that extraordinary image quality is a bit too much for me, both weight and price wise.

As I am owning the Samyang 14mm (fov 114°), which I am extremely happy with so far on the land, I will probably go with that first until a wider RF version will be released. The 8mm Panasonic (16mm ff equivalent, fov 180°) I often found to be too wide underwater easily having bubbles of other divers in the shot, although it is excellent for macro-wide angle. I therefore won't be waiting/adapting a fullframe fisheye lens, since as mentioned by others when going anywhere near 10mm and below you have to be a fan of the barrel look and need an extremely wide dome to make use of it. It remains now for me to find a suitable dome tube combo for the Samyang, that might also for with upgrades

1 hour ago, world.explorer said:

Just something more to think about. There is also the very price effective Samyang RF 14mm f2.8 AF on the market, as well as a properly very pricey Canon RF 10-24mm f4 rumored.

I am in same same boat like you, and are thinking about making the jump from my Panasonic 8mm crop sensor UW setup by putting my Canon R5 in a housing. The question also for me is with which wide-angle lens.

As you mentioned, the weight is something to consider so the WACP-2 which costs about 4000$ more to carry around 4 more kilos for that extraordinary image quality is a bit too much for me, both weight and price wise.

As I am owning the Samyang 14mm (fov 114°), which I am extremely happy with so far on the land, I will probably go with that first until a wider RF version will be released. The 8mm Panasonic (16mm ff equivalent, fov 180°) I often found to be too wide underwater easily having bubbles of other divers in the shot, although it is excellent for macro-wide angle. I therefore won't be waiting/adapting a fullframe fisheye lens, since as mentioned by others when going anywhere near 10mm and below you have to be a fan of the barrel look and need an extremely wide dome to make use of it. It remains now for me to find a suitable dome tube combo for the Samyang, that might also for with upgrades

The problem with 14mm lenses is you really starting to push the limits with the corners of the frame even with a 230mm dome, people complain about corners with their 16-35 zoom lenses and it gets to be more of a problem the wider you go.  The other problem is that good performance on land does not always translate to good performance behind a dome and there does not seem to be good guidance on how to tell without trying the lens.  Some examples are the excellent (on land ) Nikon 14-24 and Canon 11-24 which are said to be somewhat disappointing underwater - the Canon perhaps more due to the attempt to get good corners in a reasonable size dome. 

I would also note that you don't need a huge dome for fisheyes- the recommended Nauticam dome for 15mm full frame fisheyes is the 140mm glass dome.  You certainly would be looking at a big dome with a 10-24 lens assuming it was rectilnear. 

As far as housing the 14mm Samyang the 14mm Canon lens would give a good starting point, being the same length (94 vs 96mm) .  Most ultra wide (weitwinkel) lenses have the entrance pupil right towards the front of the lens, so it is likely to need close to the same amount of extension.   You would also need to sort out your own focus gear as no one supports the lens that I am aware of - as an aside there is usually a reason support is not provided.

Very helpful comments Chris, thanks a lot. Good to know that for UW use the Canon 11-24 EF isn't as fascinating as it appears on paper, this eases the temptation of hoping for the 10-24mm RF to be released.

I have contacted Nauticam if they would be able to provide some guidance for the Samyang 14mm RF. But as you suggested I checked the EF port chart and have found the Sigma 14mm EF, which is almost identical with the Samyang 14mm RF (both have a 114° fov & are 95mm). Taking the Sigma as a guidance, the 230mm Optical glass fisheye port II + Extension Ring 70 is the preferred combo for the EF setup, which would be ideal, as this is also the 'preferred' Nauticam combo for the Canon RF 15-35mm f2.8 on an RF setup. This is a lens I am considering to replace my Samyang with for a bit more land flexibility due to the aperture, as well as that extra bit of flexibility underwater by having access to zoom and the required readily available gears. So perhaps at least for me the way to go will be getting the 230mm dome and 70 ring to make use of my Samyang 14mm, until I will be able to afford the Canon RF 15-35mm.

Thanks a lot. Hope this was also of help for SharkB8

5 hours ago, world.explorer said:

Very helpful comments Chris, thanks a lot. Good to know that for UW use the Canon 11-24 EF isn't as fascinating as it appears on paper, this eases the temptation of hoping for the 10-24mm RF to be released.

I have contacted Nauticam if they would be able to provide some guidance for the Samyang 14mm RF. But as you suggested I checked the EF port chart and have found the Sigma 14mm EF, which is almost identical with the Samyang 14mm RF (both have a 114° fov & are 95mm). Taking the Sigma as a guidance, the 230mm Optical glass fisheye port II + Extension Ring 70 is the preferred combo for the EF setup, which would be ideal, as this is also the 'preferred' Nauticam combo for the Canon RF 15-35mm f2.8 on an RF setup. This is a lens I am considering to replace my Samyang with for a bit more land flexibility due to the aperture, as well as that extra bit of flexibility underwater by having access to zoom and the required readily available gears. So perhaps at least for me the way to go will be getting the 230mm dome and 70 ring to make use of my Samyang 14mm, until I will be able to afford the Canon RF 15-35mm.

Thanks a lot. Hope this was also of help for SharkB8

No problem, don't forget the 230mm dome is a big piece of gear!   you need to actually see one to appreciate it.  Also by the time you buy the 230mm dome, 70mm ring and an RF15-35 that comes to just over $AUD 7,000 and the WACP would only be a few hundred $ more based on new prices ex Nauticam distributor and digi direct for the 15-35 in Australia  and the optical quality will no doubt be better in the WACP.  The 28-80 lenses are very cheap ex Ebay.

Also don't discount the need for a focus gear for the Samyang - you really can't set it for hyperfocal distance due to the dome port optics.

27 minutes ago, ChrisRoss said:

No problem, don't forget the 230mm dome is a big piece of gear!   you need to actually see one to appreciate it. 

A point Chris and I have made a number of times in various posts. If dive travel is important for you, I'd suggest as Chris points out, you try and see one before you order.

The difference between an 8" dome and 9" (230) doesn't sound much - but in reality it is significant.  I was shocked when I got mine a few years ago. If you have a 20kg or so baggage allowance for travelling it becomes something of a challenge (note the British understatement).

I actually sold mine on as the dome combined with the other 20-30 kgs of camera gear just became too much. Especially for my partner's patience......

I found as I was just as happy using a 15mm fisheye (the Sigma) and a smaller dome.

I have the R5 and just purchased the Ikelite housing for it. I have been shooting a 5D IV for a few years in an Ikelite housing so I can use all my current ports. I plan to use the EF 100 macro, EF 8-15 fisheye, and EF 16-35 wide angle. I will have to use the adapter, but I’m ok with that. Looking forward to getting it in the water.

fwiw, Canon recently filed a patent for an RF mount 8-15mm L fisheye with image stabilization. The IS would likely price it over $2k though.

15 hours ago, Hetland said:

fwiw, Canon recently filed a patent for an RF mount 8-15mm L fisheye with image stabilization. The IS would likely price it over $2k though.

Bloody 8-15mm lenses! Why on earth don't manufacturer go for a Tokina 10-17mm like lens (FOV wise) :/

11 hours ago, Nicool said:

Bloody 8-15mm lenses! Why on earth don't manufacturer go for a Tokina 10-17mm like lens (FOV wise) :/

It's an APS-C size lens and there does not seem to be much interest in any APS-C lenses it seems.