Question about the necessity of the WWL-1B in combination with the 28-60mm

Hello, I would like to ask a question about the necessity of using the WWL-1B in combination with the sony 28-60mm behind the nauticam flat port in combination with the sony a7s3. I understand the function of it, but wonder (partly based on this video GoPro Hero 10 vs $16,000 Production Rig ) if the extra cost of the WWL-1B is worth the difference in quality with a gopro for wide angle. Not using the WWL-1B would also give the option to carry a flip adapter with a diopter for macro, leaving me with the flat port image for fish portrait, macro with a diopter, with the only trade-off being I have to use the gopro for the real wide angle image, or am I missing something here? Is the image behind the flat port that misserable that it makes no sense at all to cary an expensive camera like the a7s3 underwater, or is it just the wide angle function that would be lost here?

Thanks in advance for answering my question and helping me with this crazy hobby! 

I would suggest that You tube is a great equaliser as it's known the compression it uses is a problem and a go pro shooting through a flat port can't actually achieve 4K resolutiion - the pixels are there but don't contain any extra information.  The video only shows half the field much of the time and typically murky temperate waters certainly limits potential resolution.

The widest you can shoot with the go -pro is about 94° diagonal - 20mm lens equivalent, the 28-60 with the flat port will give you about a 36mm lens with a 63° diagonal field of view, not very wide at all in UW terms.  Basically this forces you to be further away from target with more water in between reducing intensity of your lights as well. 

The author is obviously very talented and has made videos like this before with somewhat outrageous comparisons and it certainly drives traffic to his you-tube channel, but to be fair he does mention the caveats and I would suggest 90% of go-pro users couldn't match his results and what he is saying the Go-pro is pretty good not that he's about to sell his Sony. 

I think it's a pretty long bow to draw to say that because the go-pro does OK with a flat port a WWL is not needed.  The chromatic abberation from the flat port is probably auto corrected by the Go-Pro itself and the 28-60 in the flat port wouldn't have this built in I don't think.  The field of view is quite different so it's not even apples to apples,   You'll note that he mentions he zooms in 125% on the Sony - a 16mm lens x 1.25 = 20mm to match go-pro field of view.

4 hours ago, Roberto101 said:

Hello, I would like to ask a question about the necessity of using the WWL-1B in combination with the sony 28-60mm behind the nauticam flat port in combination with the sony a7s3. I understand the function of it, but wonder (partly based on this video GoPro Hero 10 vs $16,000 Production Rig ) if the extra cost of the WWL-1B is worth the difference in quality with a gopro for wide angle. Not using the WWL-1B would also give the option to carry a flip adapter with a diopter for macro, leaving me with the flat port image for fish portrait, macro with a diopter, with the only trade-off being I have to use the gopro for the real wide angle image, or am I missing something here? Is the image behind the flat port that misserable that it makes no sense at all to cary an expensive camera like the a7s3 underwater, or is it just the wide angle function that would be lost here?

Thanks in advance for answering my question and helping me with this crazy hobby! 

The colors of his A7S3 footage are off with terrible highlight rolloff

That helps making the gopro look good

I am worried as I am about to go back to sony and i see plenty of example or really bad highlights management must have something to do with the settings or the post I hope and not with the actual camera

Thanks for your insights...I guess I just have to accept the extra costs and more importantly extra luggage to carry around the WWL. I agree the comparison is off, and I see a lot of video's shot with the a7s3 that look a lot better than the ones in the comparison. But it can't be denied that the Gopro has evolved in a pretty capable wide angle camera, especially with the 10bit colour in the 11th, and trusting the gopro to make these wide angle shots would allow to bring more macro capability on the same dive. I wish i lived closer to the ocean so i could actually test these things before going on holiday lol