New RF 14-35 f4L, anyone tried?

2 minutes ago, stillviking said:

Where I can buy a S&S 77mm nowadays? It looks discontinued everywhere!

We all thought that. But check out this post. They seem to be back on sale again - although a lot more expensive!

View archived post in: 14-30 Z-mount with S&S IRC?

I'm wary of the Sea$Sea lenses. They were designed for very specific lens/port combinations and hence there is as much chance of them not working as there is of them helping!

20 hours ago, stillviking said:

Any tips for better performance of the lens and avoid this blurry corners? 20mm f8? What would you do?

You are going to need to keep the aperture above f/12 or so (f/14 is better by the looks of it). This going to mean that you will need to push the ISO quite hard. Ultimately, you can somewhat fix noise in post, but you can't fix soft corners...

3 hours ago, adamhanlon said:

I'm wary of the Sea$Sea lenses. They were designed for very specific lens/port combinations and hence there is as much chance of them not working as there is of them helping!

You are going to need to keep the aperture above f/12 or so (f/14 is better by the looks of it). This going to mean that you will need to push the ISO quite hard. Ultimately, you can somewhat fix noise in post, but you can't fix soft corners...

Thanks Adam!

I also have reservations about buying an S&S lens as they are very EXPENSIVE ($599 + shipping for Europe!) and there is no report that works on this lens and combination!

Do you think that besides the f-spot if I increase the zoom range to 18mm - 20mm it will improve?

Probably, but in general, we need really wide zoom lenses underwater, so as to be able to get close to subjects. 20mm is not really wide enough.

Aperture is the key here..

I can post shots from my 14-30 but I have to upload them here instead of hosting on a web site.  (When I get home I have access to my web site again.)  This is with the S&S IRC behind a 230mm dome with 50mm of extension.

On 9/9/2022 at 3:17 AM, phxazcraig said:

I can post shots from my 14-30 but I have to upload them here instead of hosting on a web site.  (When I get home I have access to my web site again.)  This is with the S&S IRC behind a 230mm dome with 50mm of extension.

This photo looks much better! What was the settings?
Can you upload more?

a couple more with the 14-30.  EXIF should be intact.

Two more from the 14-30 and Z9.  I shot between F8 and F14, but I haven't studied the corners closely.

Thanks Craig, the EXIF unfortunately gets stripped for images posted on Wetpixel.  If possible it would be good if you could add the apertures used.  I assume they all have the S&S lens added on.

Unfortunately no EXIF, if you could post settings below the photo it would be great! (zoom, speed, f-spot, ISO)

Rats on the EXIF stripping.   Yes, all shots taken with S@S IRC filter installed behind a 230mm Nauticam dome port and 50mm extension, using Nikon Z9 and 14-30.

OK, here's what I posted.

On the first B&W shot, 1/160, F9

On the first color shot, I literally can't find the shot among all the others, but I will post alternatives.  (Test shots, varying aperture)

, on the skate shot: 1/160th, F9

On the first B&W shot after the skate: 1/160th, F8

On the second B&W shot after the skate: 1/160th, F8

On that last color shot: 1/160th, F8

In looking through these (first time for some on my large monitor), I found a set of test shots I took with the idea of seeing what happened to the corners as I stopped down from wide open.  I picked a big bed of lettuce coral for the test.  I will post those shots in the next post.

Aperture Test Shots, 14-30.  Here is a quick set of test shots where I tried to hold in one place and get the same shot at different apertures.  No particular processing done on these beyond white balance, a bit of exposure control and default Lightroom settings for sharpening.

In case these don't get displayed in sequence by Wetpixel, look at the file name which is date/time based.   These shots were taken in sequence with the earliest shot wide open and the last shot stopped down the most.   ALL shots taken at 1/160th with the 82mm S&S IRC mounted on the 14-30 in a 230mm Nauticam dome port with 50mm extension and shot with a Z9, firmware 2.1.   Exported from Lightroom with no exposure changes, Camera Standard profile, custom white balance, default Lightroom sharpening, with Lens Corrections enabled.

They go:

F5.6

F6.3

F7.1

F8.0

F9.0

F10

F11

Sorry, should have gone on to F14 and F16, but hopefully this is enough for people to decide where a decent minimum might be.

Here is a nice F14 shot.  I started at F14 for the first few days, then loosened up from there.   I'm really still getting to know the camera and lenses. 1/125th and F14.

5 hours ago, phxazcraig said:

 

In case these don't get displayed in sequence by Wetpixel, look at the file name which is date/time based.   These shots were taken in sequence with the earliest shot wide open and the last shot stopped down the most.   ALL shots taken at 1/160th with the 82mm S&S IRC mounted on the 14-30 in a 230mm Nauticam dome port with 50mm extension and shot with a Z9, firmware 2.1.   Exported from Lightroom with no exposure changes, Camera Standard profile, custom white balance, default Lightroom sharpening, with Lens Corrections enabled.

 

It's not so easy to see the file names, so went in to the post and looked at all the file names and can confirm that the file names are in order of advancing time as are the creation times for the files.

Wow, the pictures got size-reduced so small as to be almost unusable for close inspection.   I'm home now, so should simply get these posted to my own web server, but I'm also fighting covid since I got back so slowing me up a lot.

Let me see if I can at least put the last few shots up on the web.

OK, here are the sample shots saved large (max dimension 5000 pixels) at my web site here:

https://www.cjcphoto.net/lenstests/14-30/

Click on any of those thumbnails for a large version.

32 minutes ago, phxazcraig said:

OK, here are the sample shots saved large (max dimension 5000 pixels) at my web site here:

https://www.cjcphoto.net/lenstests/14-30/

Click on any of those thumbnails for a large version.

Thanks for posting the photos - it looks to me that the S&S lens is quite effective on this combination.

53 minutes ago, ChrisRoss said:

Thanks for posting the photos - it looks to me that the S&S lens is quite effective on this combination.

Hard to tell in that I never took it off so have no 'before' comparison shots.   I can say it is definitely very sharp in the center, and 'feels' better than the 16-35 overall, though I miss the extra 5mm more than I want the extra 2mm width.  Awful lot of distortion on some of those shots with a diver in the corner.

While I am very much still working on the shots, I did just upload a bunch of my Roatan 2022 pics so I can start culling more easily using a web browser to review.   You can see them here: https://www.cjcphoto.net/roatan2022/index.html

All EXIF should be available.  I uploaded with the maximum size at 2048 pixels wide, so hopefully enough detail to evaluate IQ.

4 hours ago, phxazcraig said:

Hard to tell in that I never took it off so have no 'before' comparison shots.   I can say it is definitely very sharp in the center, and 'feels' better than the 16-35 overall, though I miss the extra 5mm more than I want the extra 2mm width.  Awful lot of distortion on some of those shots with a diver in the corner.

While I am very much still working on the shots, I did just upload a bunch of my Roatan 2022 pics so I can start culling more easily using a web browser to review.   You can see them here: https://www.cjcphoto.net/roatan2022/index.html

All EXIF should be available.  I uploaded with the maximum size at 2048 pixels wide, so hopefully enough detail to evaluate IQ.

They look pretty good after f8.  

It would be awesome if we had a NO S&S lens vs WITH S&S lens to see what it does, because nowadays it is really expensive!

5 hours ago, stillviking said:

They look pretty good after f8.  

It would be awesome if we had a NO S&S lens vs WITH S&S lens to see what it does, because nowadays it is really expensive!

Best I could do (maybe, it's getting cooler now) would be a quickie pool test.

My next scheduled dive trip is to Truk lagoon where I may get in as many as 20 dives.  I'm unlikely to use that time for testing without the IRC.   I'm also thinking about a short dive trip, perhaps to Cayman Brac, in January where I could get a test in.

I do suspect it is making a big difference.  When I put the 77mm version on my 16-35 behind the same dome port it was like night and day difference.   Before the IRC I simply had to crop all the images at the edges.   After the IRC I didn't really work about the edges anymore.

Which is why I paid the $700+ price tag for the 82mm.

I suspect the pandemic and subsequent massive reduction in diving had Sea & Sea pull back the IRC to special order status.  

I'm a little surprised Nauticam hasn't come up with something like this.