Advice on Close Up wet lenses

I am slowly building my rig and planning my Red Sea trip in June.  If eBay comes through for me, I have managed to locate a WWL-C to handle my wide angle requirement.

My mind is now driftng towards night dives and fish portrait shooting.  In the cases where I find that I need to get too close to focus, I was thinking I may need to consider a close up wet lens.  I have an RX100vii in a Nauticam housing, which has the rectabgular standard port. I am therefore considering the flip adaptor with a CMC-2.

I'd love to hear thoughts or experiences of this approach, or suggested alternatives.

**EDIT** I originally said CMC-1, but actually I meant the CMC-2, with the lower magnification.  I am not looking to go anywhere near super-macro, just to reduce my focus distance on "large" macro subjects.  I believe the CMC-2 is easier to use.

You will probably specific advice from someone who has used it.  If you look at the Nauticam port charts they provide magnifications and working distances for the SMC-1 and SMC-2 in a flip diopter on the rectangular port. 

This gives about 0.95x and a frame of 14 x 9mm with the SMC-1.  The CMC-2 is about the same power as the SMC-1.  This would be with the lens zoomed right in , you can zoom out but as you do you might vignette.

Nauticam also list the the CMC-2 with the short port 25 and that gives a frame of 43 x 29mm which sounds more like what you are looking for.  The short port only allows zoom to 65mm.  I suspect the lens is too far back from the port at 65mm zoom to allow you to use it with the CMC-2 at that focal length.    If you are using a WWL-C you'll probably have the Short port for that so you would use the camera with that port for your night dives as and fish portraits and the CMC-2.  The data for the CMC-2 is listed under the RX-100Vi which I believe has the same lens.

If you wanted to use the rectangular port for the night dives and fish, you would probably need to use a much lower powered diopter.  The problem is the 200mm lens means the diopter has much more power.

Thanks Chris

Allow me to digest that info!  

The WWL-C requires the short port 17, rather than 25, so sounds like there are either two ports required here, or there are differences between the VI and VII.

I think you will need the shorter port for the WWL too...

7 minutes ago, adamhanlon said:

I think you will need the shorter port for the WWL too...

Thanks Adam - but by "too", do you mean you agree I need the N50 Short Port 17 rather than the 25 for the WWL-C, or rather that you think I'll need the short port 17 (for the WWL) as well as the short port 25 for the close up lens?

The short post doesn't cost much differently to the flip adaptor for the rectangular port, so the only thing I'd be losing is the flexibility to zoom, fro what I can understand.

19 minutes ago, Sandyzoo2 said:

Thanks Chris

Allow me to digest that info!  

The WWL-C requires the short port 17, rather than 25, so sounds like there are either two ports required here, or there are differences between the VI and VII.

They have the same lens as far as I know - so should have similar requirements.  If you want a single port you can use the short port 25 with the WWL-1/1B - just have to zoom in a bit to 28mm equivalent to avoid vignetting and you get slightly more reach out of the lens with the the WWL-1/1B.  With the short port 17 the lens can only zoom from 24-30mm.  The WWL-1 has the same max field as the WWL-1C.  To me it seems the WWL-1/1B is a better choice for the VI and VII series.  So you could do:

• Short port 17 & WWL-C   to get 10-12.5mm equivalent zoom
• Short port 25 and WWL-1/1B to get 10 - 23mm equivalent zoom
• Short Port 25 and WWL -C to get 11.6 - 27mm equivalent zoom (11.6 mm assumes no vignetting at 28mm on the Rx-100VII)

If you look at the port chart the file dof view is the same for the WWL-1 on both the VI and the VII.

port chart is here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hkNIBDCLa7bbXU9knyVTI3vd6gFph7QJ/view

I had this wet lens for my compact camera Sony RX100 III. It was pretty nice lens, I especially liked soft and creamy bokeh that it produced. But oh boy was it hard to get anything in focus with it, especially with RX100 III, which in my opinion, has pretty weak autofocus system. It has a very short working distance, usually you need to get so close that critter can feel a bit uncomfortable and swims away. If you don't get into that working range, camera will not focus at all. But generally I think this is the problem with all wet closeup lenses, not just CMC-2.

It was great for nudibranches and more stationary fish (like scorpionfish). I produced some very nice images with it, and was overall very satisfied with it.

Thank you.

Seems eBay has come through for me.  The seller has contacted me and sent the lens.  I think I got lucky on price.

Thanks for the replies @Andrej Oblak and @ChrisRoss.  Perhaps as I really only want to get closer if I need to... Rather that deliberately seeking macro... I could find a lower power close up wet lens for m67.