Dear fellow photographers,
Although I have been a regular reader of this forum for sometime, this is my first post. I haven’t posted anything before simply because I was not shooting digital underwater. I was hoping since September last year that Nikon would launch a replacement for the D100, something like the Canon 20D. Last month I realized that the D200 would not come soon, and after seriously considering changing my entire Nikon system to Canon, I brought an Aquatica for the D70. I was previously shooting underwater with a F5 and an Aquatica A5 housing. I will be still shooting film at least until September because of the CMAS photo competition (I am part of the Brazilian team). So far I’ve made 7 dives with the D70. So here are some comments about the camera and lenses I used.
The D70/Aquatica.
The housing is very nice. I have the A5 housing working flawlessly for 7 years now and I believe that the D70 will go the same way. The lens release arm inside the housing is longer than that on the A5, and if not carefully placed it may jam the zoom gear of the 12-24 (I did that on the first dive with the 12-24). The D70 viewfinder is very tiny. It is a struggle to do manual focus with a supermacro setup. But it woks on the majority of the situations. The autofocus of the D70 is the weakest part of the camera when underwater. With dim light (a frequent situation) the autofocus hunts a lot, especially with macro. When the off center focus brackets are selected the situation is even worst. On the bright side, the ability to change ISO and not being limited to 36 frames add a lot of flexibility. I also miss the TTL, most of all with macro lenses. After shooting with the F5 for a long time, I became used to it, and learned when it worked and when it wouldn’t work.
Macro 105mm and 60mm
Apart from the autofocus issue, they work great. 105 became a 150mm (35mm equiv) and it is very good for those shy creatures and small fishes. The 60mm became a 90mm (35mm equiv) and works similar to a 105mm on film. I used the 60mm a lot here in the south of Brazil, because most of the time the water is green, with low visibility. The 60mm allowed me to approach the subject and still frame the entire fish. Now with the D70 1.5x crop it’s difficult to frame as entire fish bigger than a human hand in murky water. But the same 1.5x crop is very useful for adding an extra magnification bigger than 1:1 (compared to 35mm).
Nikon 12-24mm
I works similar to the 17-35mm on film. I didn’t use much that lens underwater, and I think I won’t use the 12-24 either. When it focus on a close object the corners of the image became soft, kind of out of focus. But is very good for medium wide angle portraits.
Nikon 10.5mm
Works like a 16mm on film. It is my wide angle lens of choice for most of the situations. Sometimes I get the impression that the 10.5 distort the corners a little more than the 16mm, but I am not completely sure about that. The only downside is that sometimes you need to get very close to subject in order to fill the frame, and it’s not always easy.
You can see some of the first pictures here:
www.underwater.com.br/d70
Best regards,
Marcelo Krause
marcelo@underwater.com.br
