Sony A7R IV / Ikelite housing suggestion needed

Hello folks, 

Would anyone be so kind and give me some suggestion please. I finally upgraded my camera from Sony A6100 to A7R IV, with it I got Tamron 17-28 mm F2.8 lens. I am used to the cheap Seafrogs housing and have no idea about more expensive stuff, that’s why I came here for help. After reading this forum I have decided to get Inon Z 330 - type 2 strobe. First question is, I like to take videos as well as photos, would it make sense to get along with a z300 strobe, Weefine Smart Focus 10 000 lights? It works as strobe, but would I be able to pair them together? Will one 10000 be enough for video?

As for the housing, I cannot afford at the moment Nauticam so I have decided on Ikelite. And here is another question, for Tamron lens there are two options of dome configurations, would compact option be good enough or should I go with larger dome? Can I get Sea&Sea  internal lens correction for this setup?

Also will I need special cables to connect those strobes or any Fiber optic will do? 

Thank you!

a few responses to your questions:

• Ikelite housings do not have fibre optic ports, you need to use electrical connections.  I believe INON strobes will be manual flash only connected electrically. 
• the full size dome will be better.  The full 8" dome is generally considered superior.  The lens is not positioned optimally in the compact dome.  it is a compromise to have a more compact dome for travel.  An 8" dome is considered a little small for a 17mm wide angle lens on full frame, a 230mm dome is better but not available from ikelite. 
• The S&S correction lens should improve corners.  It is designed for the 240mm S&S dome, however I have seen reports that the lens works on smaller dome, just not quite as well.
• On the question of strobes vs video lights a strobe is at least 6 stops brighter than even a 14,000 lumen video light.  You will struggle to balance ambient light from background water and subject illumination  Increasing ISO won't help, the lighting needs to be stronger than the background ambient light.  Video is different in that you add light from your video lights and do a custom WB on the mixed ambient and artificial light.  The INON strobe is way brighter than the video light so balancing between the two will be difficult. 

2 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

a few responses to your questions:

• Ikelite housings do not have fibre optic ports, you need to use electrical connections.  I believe INON strobes will be manual flash only connected electrically. 
• the full size dome will be better.  The full 8" dome is generally considered superior.  The lens is not positioned optimally in the compact dome.  it is a compromise to have a more compact dome for travel.  An 8" dome is considered a little small for a 17mm wide angle lens on full frame, a 230mm dome is better but not available from ikelite. 
• The S&S correction lens should improve corners.  It is designed for the 240mm S&S dome, however I have seen reports that the lens works on smaller dome, just not quite as well.
• On the question of strobes vs video lights a strobe is at least 6 stops brighter than even a 14,000 lumen video light.  You will struggle to balance ambient light from background water and subject illumination  Increasing ISO won't help, the lighting needs to be stronger than the background ambient light.  Video is different in that you add light from your video lights and do a custom WB on the mixed ambient and artificial light.  The INON strobe is way brighter than the video light so balancing between the two will be difficult. 

thank you Chris! That was very helpful! 
so I will just get two z330. 
 

Is Ikelite housing worth its money? My budget for housing is 2000 and it looks like it’s either cheap Seafrogs or Ikelite, the rest of housing are 2500 and up. 

Will it be more difficult to operate strobes in manual with electric sync cord? 
 

much appreciate for all the info guys

10 hours ago, cristoir said:

 

 

Hello folks, 

 

Would anyone be so kind and give me some suggestion please. I finally upgraded my camera from Sony A6100 to A7R IV, with it I got Tamron 17-28 mm F2.8 lens. I am used to the cheap Seafrogs housing and have no idea about more expensive stuff, that’s why I came here for help. After reading this forum I have decided to get Inon Z 330 - type 2 strobe. First question is, I like to take videos as well as photos, would it make sense to get along with a z300 strobe, Weefine Smart Focus 10 000 lights? It works as strobe, but would I be able to pair them together? Will one 10000 be enough for video?

As for the housing, I cannot afford at the moment Nauticam so I have decided on Ikelite. And here is another question, for Tamron lens there are two options of dome configurations, would compact option be good enough or should I go with larger dome? Can I get Sea&Sea  internal lens correction for this setup?

Also will I need special cables to connect those strobes or any Fiber optic will do? 

 

Thank you!

 

First let me say that I have used and reviewed a verity of Ikelite housings for compact, DSLR and mirrorless cameras. I have always found them to be a basic and well made product. They are head and shoulders above other polycarbonate housings like the Seafrogs housings. They do however tend to be proprietary in that they tend to work best with other Ikelite products. Case in point if you select Ikelite strobes you will have excellent TTL built into the system but with the Inon Z330 I/II which also have excellent TTL you will only be able to use them in manual mode and you will not have an easy way to use fiber optic cables which have become the industry standard.

I have also used several of the Weefine/Kraken lights both as video lights and in the flash mode. bottom line night and day in flash mode v. a real strobe like the Inon Z330.

Regarding the Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8 it is a great lens and I have used it with and without the Sea & Sea conversion lens. As a dome choice from Ikelite I would highly recommend going with the full eight inch dome rather than the 8" "compact" dome. To use the S&S correction lens with the 17-28 you will need the 77mm lens and a 67mm to 77mm stepup ring, about $10.00. 

If you would like to see any of my Ikelite reviews or the Tamron review go to UWPMAG.com, back issues, put Phil Rudin into the search engine and the articles will be listed. 

4 hours ago, Phil Rudin said:

First let me say that I have used and reviewed a verity of Ikelite housings for compact, DSLR and mirrorless cameras. I have always found them to be a basic and well made product. They are head and shoulders above other polycarbonate housings like the Seafrogs housings. They do however tend to be proprietary in that they tend to work best with other Ikelite products. Case in point if you select Ikelite strobes you will have excellent TTL built into the system but with the Inon Z330 I/II which also have excellent TTL you will only be able to use them in manual mode and you will not have an easy way to use fiber optic cables which have become the industry standard.

I have also used several of the Weefine/Kraken lights both as video lights and in the flash mode. bottom line night and day in flash mode v. a real strobe like the Inon Z330.

Regarding the Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8 it is a great lens and I have used it with and without the Sea & Sea conversion lens. As a dome choice from Ikelite I would highly recommend going with the full eight inch dome rather than the 8" "compact" dome. To use the S&S correction lens with the 17-28 you will need the 77mm lens and a 67mm to 77mm stepup ring, about $10.00. 

If you would like to see any of my Ikelite reviews or the Tamron review go to UWPMAG.com, back issues, put Phil Rudin into the search engine and the articles will be listed. 

Phil thank you so much for detailed answer! 

may I only ask one more thing, can I pair one ds161 and one ds230 or should I get two ds161? It just ds230 almost double the price of 161 so I cannot afford both of 230. 
 

Thanks 

26 minutes ago, cristoir said:

Phil thank you so much for detailed answer! 

may I only ask one more thing, can I pair one ds161 and one ds230 or should I get two ds161? It just ds230 almost double the price of 161 so I cannot afford both of 230. 
 

Thanks 

One thing to consider with Ikelite strobes is that they are quite heavy and bulky compared to the INON strobes.  It seems now they offer the DS160 - II and DS 162 as well as the DS230.  You also need to budget for the TTL module if you want to use TTL and you will be using electrical sync cords which is another item to maintain - fibre optics are much simpler.

If you went with 2 x INON the backscatter price is $1300, 2 x DS-160 II plus plus a TTL module that would be $2440.  You could take the difference and that would get you an Isotta housing.  Of course the Isotta domes are probably more expensive, but spare batteries for the INON are 4 x eneloop, while the ikelite is a battery pack at $250.  The Isotta housing uses fibre optics and you would need to add in a TTL  trigger to the price as well.

I would suggest you price out the various options to get the package price and look at the pluses and minuses for each of them.

1 hour ago, ChrisRoss said:

One thing to consider with Ikelite strobes is that they are quite heavy and bulky compared to the INON strobes.  It seems now they offer the DS160 - II and DS 162 as well as the DS230.  You also need to budget for the TTL module if you want to use TTL and you will be using electrical sync cords which is another item to maintain - fibre optics are much simpler.

If you went with 2 x INON the backscatter price is $1300, 2 x DS-160 II plus plus a TTL module that would be $2440.  You could take the difference and that would get you an Isotta housing.  Of course the Isotta domes are probably more expensive, but spare batteries for the INON are 4 x eneloop, while the ikelite is a battery pack at $250.  The Isotta housing uses fibre optics and you would need to add in a TTL  trigger to the price as well.

I would suggest you price out the various options to get the package price and look at the pluses and minuses for each of them.

Hm something to consider indeed! 
Isotta housing with double z330 will be same price as Ikelite with double ds162

Pity Isotta doesn’t support Tamron lens. I would need to buy some used Sony lens I guess. Between 16-35 F4 and 24-70 F4 which one is better for uw. I could get used lens for a good price. 

1 hour ago, cristoir said:

Hm something to consider indeed! 
Isotta housing with double z330 will be same price as Ikelite with double ds162

Pity Isotta doesn’t support Tamron lens. I would need to buy some used Sony lens I guess. Between 16-35 F4 and 24-70 F4 which one is better for uw. I could get used lens for a good price. 

Isotta supports one of the Tamron 17-28 lenses:

https://www.isotecnic.it/images/pdf/port-chart/eng-isotta-port-chart-tamron-mirrorless-sony.pdf

The 24-70 needs a diopter to focus in a dome I believe.  I know at least one person using the 16-35 f4 UW and they seem pleased with it, but it really needs a 230mm dome at the wide end.  The choice really comes down to where you are diving and what you are shooting.  You could also consider the WWL-1 with 28-60 in a flat port - adapting it to your chosen housing might be tricky though. 

The Price for the ikelite strobes I quoted was for the new DS-160 -II and think they are newly introduced and are down as pre-order items.  The price for two DS-162 was $2590 or $3040 with a TTL module.  Two DS-160 would be $2440 with TTL module. 

I would suggest still to add up all the components you need for each system so you don't have surprises.  The prices I quoted are for purchase in US, if you are buying elsewhere you need to check local prices.  So you'll need housing, dome and extensions, zoom gear, flash trigger or TTL module, strobe cables, strobe arms (probably same or similar both systems) and of course the strobes.  I'd also recommend a vacuum system for whichever housing you get.  Read the fine print as well you might need an extra handle on the ikelite and check the Isotta comes with handles. 

9 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

Isotta supports one of the Tamron 17-28 lenses:

https://www.isotecnic.it/images/pdf/port-chart/eng-isotta-port-chart-tamron-mirrorless-sony.pdf

The 24-70 needs a diopter to focus in a dome I believe.  I know at least one person using the 16-35 f4 UW and they seem pleased with it, but it really needs a 230mm dome at the wide end.  The choice really comes down to where you are diving and what you are shooting.  You could also consider the WWL-1 with 28-60 in a flat port - adapting it to your chosen housing might be tricky though. 

The Price for the ikelite strobes I quoted was for the new DS-160 -II and think they are newly introduced and are down as pre-order items.  The price for two DS-162 was $2590 or $3040 with a TTL module.  Two DS-160 would be $2440 with TTL module. 

I would suggest still to add up all the components you need for each system so you don't have surprises.  The prices I quoted are for purchase in US, if you are buying elsewhere you need to check local prices.  So you'll need housing, dome and extensions, zoom gear, flash trigger or TTL module, strobe cables, strobe arms (probably same or similar both systems) and of course the strobes.  I'd also recommend a vacuum system for whichever housing you get.  Read the fine print as well you might need an extra handle on the ikelite and check the Isotta comes with handles. 

Chris, thank you for that info, can you tell me regarding the dome, better to have 8” or 6” will do good job too? 
also what arms and floats will need for 2 Z330?

Definitely 8" and 9" would be better.  Dome port optics with rectilinear lenses mean that you need a big dome with 16-17mm and wider lenses to get good corners.  How important that is to you depends on your standards and also subject matter.  If you are shooting big animals in blue water, soft corners are not so much of a problem as there is only water there.  Reef scenics and wreck internals though you will often have important detail in the corners you would like sharp.  If you were talking a fisheye lens the 6" dome would be OK.

You have not mentioned what you like to shoot. this can make a difference.  As far as arms go there are a lot of options.  Float arms are not so straight forward, you need to know the weight in water of your rig and you usually have to end up measuring it.  If you go with ikelite with an 8" port you might find the rig floats and will need weights.  An Aluminium housing will probably benefit from some flotation and how much depends on port size among other things.  A large acrylic port will tend to float up while a glass port being heavier tends to be better balanced.

Arm lengths will depend a little on subject as well.  The rule of thumb is to have your strobe arms so that distance between strobes is about equal to your subject distance.  So you might want short arms for close focus wide angle and longer arms for big animals that are a 1-3m away. You basically need two arms and 3 clamps for each strobe - you just need to choose the lengths. 

cristoir, just adding to what Chris explains:

I agree with him on float arms - not straightforward and, in my view, a bit inflexible. If you've not found it already, worth checking out "Stix" floats. They slide on to the ULCS type arms and can be added or subtracted as necessary.

Just to give you an idea, I find with a Subal housing for a D500, 60mm lens, port, 2x Retra strobes I need 10 pieces of Giant size Stix to get pretty much neutral buoyancy. Switch to a Tokina 10-17 with an 8" domeport and I need to add another 2x 1/2 Stix. The nice thing is with the Stix you can, as I say, just add or remove them as necessary and quite easily. 

On arm lengths for most jobs I find 1x 5" plus 1x 8" for each strobe works pretty well. It's only if I'm doing real wide-angle shots that I switch to 1x 12" plus 1x 5" for each strobe. But the 5+8 combination is a great default.

Right, so I dive in Ireland mostly, and in winter I go on holidays Red Sea, Indian Ocean. I upgraded to a better camera so I can learn with it and not keep constantly upgrading kit. For now I was looking for something universal, like taking pictures of crustaceans, nudis, small fish, wrecks, reefs. Thought Tamron 17-28 might do a job, and then buy macro lens or whichever. 
I asked about the floats and arms so I could calculate the price of both Ikelite and Isotta just to see how I do with budget. 
I will be ordering from uwcamerastore.com they seem to have both Ikelite and Isotta housing etc. and price looks not bad either

26 minutes ago, TimG said:

I agree with him on float arms - not straightforward and, in my view, a bit inflexible.

You can get adjustable float arms.

https://www.weefine.com/product/163.html

https://www.hugyfot.com/hugyfloat-compact/hugyfloat-adjustable.html

Thanks, Barmaglot. I hadn't seen the Hugyfot ones before. Interesting.....

I'm assuming (dangerous) that the Weefine adjust in terms of length but not buoyancy?

35 minutes ago, TimG said:

I'm assuming (dangerous) that the Weefine adjust in terms of length but not buoyancy?

Both Hugyfot and Weefine arms that I linked adjust in terms of buoyancy - there's a button that you can press to open a valve that lets water in.

Inon makes adjustable length arms, out to a meter on the largest model - http://inon.jp/products/armsystem/arm.html#carbontelescopicarm

OK, ta. 

Yeah, I'd seen the Inon ones. 

9 hours ago, cristoir said:

Right, so I dive in Ireland mostly, and in winter I go on holidays Red Sea, Indian Ocean. I upgraded to a better camera so I can learn with it and not keep constantly upgrading kit. For now I was looking for something universal, like taking pictures of crustaceans, nudis, small fish, wrecks, reefs. Thought Tamron 17-28 might do a job, and then buy macro lens or whichever. 
I asked about the floats and arms so I could calculate the price of both Ikelite and Isotta just to see how I do with budget. 
I will be ordering from uwcamerastore.com they seem to have both Ikelite and Isotta housing etc. and price looks not bad either

I would expect the Tamron lens could do wrecks and reefs but might struggle a little with smaller stuff, the max magnification is only 0.16x, which on a full frame sensor means your field of view would cover 220mm - in air.  This is achieved about 50mm or so from the dome surface, but with dome port optics coming into play the closest object you could focus on would be around 10cm in front of the dome approximately, so your smallest frame might be 250mm across or more.

A universal solution generally means some compromises - you can do medium size critters with this lens but small stuff won't go near to filling the frame and a fisheye is often preferred for reef scenics - though you can certainly take some nice images at the wide end of the Tamron lens.   It depends on your preferred subjects really -if you mostly wanted to shoot small stuff a different lens might be good to start off with.

I wouldn't worry about arms so much - you'll end up with more or less the same arm setup no matter which housing you buy. 

8 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

I would expect the Tamron lens could do wrecks and reefs but might struggle a little with smaller stuff, the max magnification is only 0.16x, which on a full frame sensor means your field of view would cover 220mm - in air.  This is achieved about 50mm or so from the dome surface, but with dome port optics coming into play the closest object you could focus on would be around 10cm in front of the dome approximately, so your smallest frame might be 250mm across or more.

A universal solution generally means some compromises - you can do medium size critters with this lens but small stuff won't go near to filling the frame and a fisheye is often preferred for reef scenics - though you can certainly take some nice images at the wide end of the Tamron lens.   It depends on your preferred subjects really -if you mostly wanted to shoot small stuff a different lens might be good to start off with.

I wouldn't worry about arms so much - you'll end up with more or less the same arm setup no matter which housing you buy. 

Chris, could you recommend a better lens for this? One that can be good with the small stuff, wrecks or reefs? 

cristoir,

Regarding lens selection for the Sony A7R IV some of the things you should know are that first, in general the higher megapixel count cameras reveal more lens flaws than lower MP cameras. The A7R IV at 61MP is the highest MP full frame camera on the market you would need to go to medium format to get more. 

Even on a 36MP camera the Sony 16-35mm F/4 one of Sony's first FF is average by todays standards while the Tamron 17-28 and I suspect the new replacement Sony FE 16-35mm F/4 II will result in much better image quality. The older Sony FE 12-24mm F/4 also has much better image quality and the 12-24mm F/2.8 is just outstanding. Adding a dome port and extensions as you already know makes things worse with some ports and extensions being worse than others.

Regardless of which full frame lenses you chose be it from Canon, Nikon or Sony rectilinear lenses are challenging in regard to corner sharpness. As a result the prevailing wisdom is bigger ports(230mm over 180mm) and a starting F/number of 13 or above are the recommended starting point. 

Two highly recommended water contact optics give you a distinct advantage on full frame the Nauticam WACP-1 and the "poor mans" WACP the WWL-1. WACP can be configured with lenses for Canon, Nikon or Sony while the WWL-1 is most compatible with Sony FF cameras.

WACP-1 and WWL-1/1B will give better corner sharpness and more at any given F/number than a lens in a dome port. WWL-1 has the added bonus of being removable allowing you to shoot from 130 degrees to about 1:1 with the Nauticam CMC-1. The only thing these two lenses don't allow to do well is shoot splits. I would highly recommend that you at least consider a housing that can support one or both of these lenses. Sagadive.com has an adapters that will support WACP-1 on just about any housing. For WWL-1 the possibilities are more limited. 

I am in the unique position to have tested and reviewed all of the lenses and many more for UWPMAG.com. All of my reviews can be found in the back issues (top of the home page) of UWPMAG by putting my name Phil Rudin into the search engine and downloading the desired issue. All issues are free PDF downloads.

You can PM direct if you have any technical questions. 

P.S. Also remember that even when shooting in APS-C mode the file size for Sony A7R IV is 26MP larger than most APS-C cameras including your old A6100 which leaves room to crop from FF if corners are a bit soft.       

I'm not saying don't get this lens, just recognise its limitations.   There is not really a universal solution to covering everything in full frame.  It will certainly take nice reef and wreck shots and larger fish (200mm long plus - depending on how close they let you get).  It sounds like you are planning to get things in stages - you might consider getting a setup best suited to the subjects you encounter the most and you want to get images of and add to it over time. 

Doing both big and small on the same dive is not really feasible.  You could get a WWL with the 28-60, but you would need to add a diopter to get more magnification than what you get with the 17-28 and that is also a relatively expensive item and the WWL is a big item and taking it off and swapping to a closeup diopter is not easy as we need somewhere to stow the WWL. 

You could consider getting a fisheye lens for reefs and a macro lens for small stuff and doing them on separate dives.  The advantage of the fisheye is you can get away with a smaller dome. The downside is that you need the Canon EF version with an adapter to use the 15mm fisheye.