Fashion/portrait photography gear recommendation

Dear Wetpixel forum users,

I’m looking to assemble a kit for underwater fashion and portrait photography.

I’ve been reading a lot on this forum to get an idea of the gear people are using.

There’s a lot of experience on this forum and I was wondering if you have recommendations for my specific use case.

I am looking for the following:

I want to take full body photos and also want a close focus good enough for a face close up.

I want to take split level photos

I only want to use natural sunlight, mostly taking photos just above the waterline, split level, just below the waterline, max a few meters deep.

I will be snorkeling or freediving. I do scuba dive, but for the photos I want to make freediving gives me more freedom.

I actually don’t like the exaggerated perspective of wide angle lenses for portraits. My most used lenses on land are 35mm, 50mm and 85mm full frame equivalent. I do understand however I need to have the ability to get wider than 35mm underwater, since the visibility underwater can be quite poor.

I plan to shoot in lakes, swimming pools and the mediterranean sea.

Ability to zoom from wide angle to normal/telephoto would be very handy.

I have a GFX100S camera, but plan to get a smaller Sony full frame camera for underwater.

I see there are a lot of options, different housing manufacturers, dome ports, wet lenses.

Was wondering what would give me the best image quality and usability.

Thanks for reading and I would love to hear your experiences.

My preference in GFX would a 30mm or 24mm on 35mm "full frame". The wet lenses like WACP-1 are all a bit fisheye compared to rectilinear. On my Sony A7R V and A1 I shoot the 12-24mm F/2.8 on the 24mm end in a 230mm Zen glass port. The problem is that this does not cover the long end for head shots and other portraits. I think the best combo for this type work will be the Sony A7R V for the high MPs 61 and stellar AF plus the new Sony FE 20-70mm F/4. It will outperform the 24-70mm F/4, 24-105 F/4 and 24-70 F/2.8 and is very close to the 24-70 F/2.8 Ifor less than half the costI. It is more than adequate on the wide end and also ideal on the long end with minimum focus distance below 10 inches. A 230mm dome port would provide best results. 

You have Nauticam, Subal and others on the higher end and Aquatica, Marelux and others on the lower end for housings and ports.

The Nauticam housing for the GFX 100s is over $13000.00 and it requires a 250mm port for lenses from 23mm on to about the 32-64 zoom. I have used Hassy and Phase MF cameras with like lenses and even with a large dome DOF is a problem even with wide lenses. 

Thanks for your advice! Good to know those wet lenses are a bit fisheye, so that’s not a good option for me. The Sony 20-70mm F4 sounds like an interesting option. Haven’t read about anyone using it underwater yet, the lens is very new of course. Very curious to know what the image quality will be like behind a dome over that zoom range.

I’ve done some more research and I’m starting to think a surf housing might be better for me than a dive housing. Depth rating of 10m/33ft of the Aquatech EDGE is more than enough for me. I’m wondering what the best surf housing manufacturers are nowadays. I see there’s Aquatech and they even have a reasonable priced housing for the GFX100S. Their domes and flat ports are all acrylic though. I would think anti-reflective coated glass would be best for highest image quality. Looks like their flat ports do have an anti-reflective coating though. Does anyone know how good the image quality is of the Aquatech domes and flat ports?

Good point about the DOF with MF cameras. FF might be the best compromise. What camera housing are you using for your Sony camera with your Zen glass port? Would the 20-70 work with that dome you think? Also, since that zoom extends quite a bit, the lens zoomed in might not be in an optimal position in the dome?

36 minutes ago, Bart_D said:

Does anyone know how good the image quality is of the Aquatech domes and flat ports? 

A wide-angle lens behind a flat port will suffer from severe pincushion distortion. Example 16mm APS-C (24mm FF-equivalent) behind a flat port in a pool:

Thanks for the example, yes I understand. What about longer focal lengths like 35mm/50mm/85mm FF-equivalent? Macro lenses are mostly used behind flat ports. At what focal length would a flat port give better image quality than a dome? It might also depend on the focus distance? I'm not planning to do macro shots, but like to use longer focal lengths for a human face or half-body shot for example.

10mm (15mm-equivalent):

30mm (45mm-equivalent):

50mm (75mm-equivalent):

On 2/10/2023 at 8:28 AM, Bart_D said:

Dear Wetpixel forum users,

 

I’m looking to assemble a kit for underwater fashion and portrait photography.

I’ve been reading a lot on this forum to get an idea of the gear people are using.

There’s a lot of experience on this forum and I was wondering if you have recommendations for my specific use case.

 

I am looking for the following:

I want to take full body photos and also want a close focus good enough for a face close up.

I want to take split level photos

I only want to use natural sunlight, mostly taking photos just above the waterline, split level, just below the waterline, max a few meters deep.

I will be snorkeling or freediving. I do scuba dive, but for the photos I want to make freediving gives me more freedom.

I actually don’t like the exaggerated perspective of wide angle lenses for portraits. My most used lenses on land are 35mm, 50mm and 85mm full frame equivalent. I do understand however I need to have the ability to get wider than 35mm underwater, since the visibility underwater can be quite poor.

I plan to shoot in lakes, swimming pools and the mediterranean sea.

Ability to zoom from wide angle to normal/telephoto would be very handy.

 

If you are planning on doing mostly splits, be aware that you generally need to stop down significantly (probably f22 on full frame or so) as the UW portion of the image is formed from the virtual image located very close to the dome and you will want to be able to focus at or near infinity for the above water portion of the frame.   A large dome around 230mm or more works best for this.  Both to get a thinner waterline and it helps with depth of field as the virtual image is located further from the dome in a large diameter dome.    Availability of large domes is one parameter to consider when selecting a housing.

You may prefer normal/short tele lenses for portraits but you will be pushed towards using wide angle lenses for splits to be able to get enough depth of field to cover the in/out of water portions of the frame. 

In addition, even in very clean water the light being absorbed is significant and the UW portion will be dimmer than the above water portion, being closer to the subject helps here as well due to the light travelling through less water overall.  You also want to be close as water degrades the image.   Due to this shadows tend to be much darker and you might find depending on what effect you are after some fill light might be needed.  This would be less of a problem in a pool due to the shallow bottom reflecting light up.  

All very good points, thanks!

So using an even larger dome like the 16" Aquatech would help getting a thinner waterline and more DOF. But that's not a practical size to travel with. Around 230mm sounds like the best solution, also for manoeuvrability underwater. I'm planning to do mostly non-split UW shots, so would like to optimize for that. I think I'm going to wait for reports of how well the 20-70 Sony lens works underwater, could be a great one-lens solution.

The problem with the very large mostly acrylic domes in the 16 to 18 inch range is that you need to add weights to control the dome just to get it half way under the water, going all the way under is much worse. The 12 inch size can be handled without needing to add weight to the port. Many of these ports like the Matty Smith Photo brand are rated to a maximum of two meters which is great for working at or near the surface but not really designed for SCUBA at all. I am sure the New Sony 2-70mm will work well with optical glass ports in the 180 to 230mm range depending on your tolerance for corner sharpness. Most fashion and portrait work is done with defocused backgrounds so this will only be an issue for some images. Longer portrait lenses like the Sony 90mm F/2.8 macro and Rokinon AF 135mm F/1.8 for FE mount would both work well from behind a flat port. Both of these lenses fit into the same macro port. For me the 20 to 24mm range is a sweet spot for full body shots. 

Attached is a photo of the Matty Smith 12 inch dome on the Marelux Sony A1 housing and the split of the two women was done with that setup with the Sony FE PZ 16-35mm F/4 at 16mm. The other two shots are done with the Sony FE 12-24mm at 24mm. You can see the distortion of the legs and feet being a bit closer to the camera than the upper body even at 24mm. 

13 hours ago, Bart_D said:

All very good points, thanks!

So using an even larger dome like the 16" Aquatech would help getting a thinner waterline and more DOF. But that's not a practical size to travel with. Around 230mm sounds like the best solution, also for manoeuvrability underwater. I'm planning to do mostly non-split UW shots, so would like to optimize for that. I think I'm going to wait for reports of how well the 20-70 Sony lens works underwater, could be a great one-lens solution.

I think it would be fine for pure UW use, however you might struggle to do splits with it if you want infinity focus, plug the numbers into a depth of field calculator and you will see focusing on a virtual image at about 0.35m and infinity is borderline at 20mm.  You can see Phil's final shot is not reaching infinity focus, while the first shot with the 16mm does.  The depth of field calculator shows this as well.

Hadn’t thought about the depth rating and needed added weight for very large domes, good point. The very large domes would be too cumbersome for me. Thanks for the photo examples Phil!

Thanks for pointing this out Chris. I think I’m allright with infinity not completely in focus for most of my shots. But good to know I need to go very wide if I do want everything in focus in a split shot.

I used to shoot a lot of underwater fashion. I used a 24mm lens on a Nikon F in a custom housing with 8 inch hemispherical dome.

After moving to digital I used an eight inch dome, Light and Motion Titan housing with a d100 and 10-20 Sigma. But I also shot macro with the dome with a 60mm nikkor macro, excellent results. I think the macro lens would be a good option for head shots. I think water visibility

will be your limiting factor for headshots. There are a couple of underwater shots with the 24mm at this link.

http://modelmayhem.com/toby111