Your Expert Advice, Please: CP8400 or D100

I stepped from my Nikon CP5k to the 8400, selling my housing but retaining my 2 Ikelite DS-120 with Ultra-Light arms.

I now have the CP8400 and my D100 with 14, 17-35, 35-70, 60Macro, and 105 Macro lens to choose from.

I am fortunate enough to be faced with a high class problem:

Which Ikelite housing should I buy for a June trip? If y'all recommend the D100, then which lens for all around shooing. I know the 60 is razor sharp but will it share a port with the 17-35.

This board is full of experts and I need your expertise!

Thanks in advance!

Ron

You poor thing

What a dilemma to be facing!

I wouldn't hesitate to house the D100 over the 8400. Although the 8400 is a nice camera, the advantages of the DSLR in terms of release lag and TTL viewing would certainly outweight the slight rez advantage of the 8400. Others may disagree, but I almost reckon this is a no brainer. :?

I guess the ability to go from macro to wide in one dive would be nice, but otherwise, I'd be going for the DSLR.

The 17-35 would be a nice lens for all round use. You may want to consider picking up a 12-24 as well, or perhaps a 10.5 FE.

As far as housings, an Ike won't let you house the 17-35 and I don't know enough about the others manufacturers to recommend anything.

If your only consideration is image quality the D100 is the obvious choice.

The CP is smaller and will allow you to somewhat more flexability in that you can shoot both wide angle and macro in the same dive.

With dual strobes your going to have a big rig so the size difference is not as much so I would go with the D100.

As far as ports. The Ikelite port system uses a different port for each lens.

see Ikelite website for a chart that matches lens with ports

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/2port_nikon.html

I would recomend the 14mm for wide angel lens(the wider the better especially on crop-factor cameras) but it will not fit in an Ikelite port.(Probably to large diameter)

No the 17-35 uses a different dome port than the 60. Most people recomend a flat port for macro anyway.

60 vs 105 with the 60mm you can take both fish portraits and smaller critters but you have to get so close to get to 1:1 it is almost impossible. With the 105mm you wont be able to take a picture of larger fish but you will have enough distance that 1:1 is actually feasable. You could get ports for both and pick the one depending on what you want to do on that dive.

Ikelite has a cool port for the 105 that allows you to switch between MF and AF so that might be a reason to go witht he 105 over the 60.