Ocean/surf photography equipment & tips

I second what kelpdiver said and will add some thoughts here. I am by no means a pro photog, just an average joe that loves being in the ocean, surf, and taking lots of pictures. I purchased the aquatech about 2 years ago and the D500 has been around for a while now and while there are much much better cameras out there, it perfectly does the job for me. I would love to shoot more in the surf but living in California my hands get really cold to a point that it's difficult to hit the shutter.

I do not regret one bit with the somewhat expensive investment of aquatech, ports, lenses, etc... I have an absolutely blast and if I lived in Australia, i'd be all over it. I will say this between sport and elite, if you can afford the elite go for it, if not it will be fine. I find myself constantly making aperture and shutter adjustments on the fly. I would not like to be locked into one setting and the elite gives you so much flexibility.

What's interesting is that I thought I would be taking more surf photos when in return I ended up just taking more random underwater shots.  So, my response is if you love photography and don't mind spending the money, go for it!  I find with good equipment you tend to get more excited to use it.  The aquatech setups are very easy to use and so far my equipment has always stayed dry.

I've only used 3 lenses:

1.  Nikkor 8-15 fisheye.  Love the lens but you are very limited with watershots.

2.  50mm 1.8 Nikkor:  It's okay.  Seems a bit slow but does okay above water, like for surfing.  Not good underwater.

3.  Sigma 18-35mm 1.8:  My new favorite one.  Wish I had this one for Fiji but found I used it 90% of the time in Hawaii.

I love all the beautiful work that people show from the macro lenses but I just enjoy more wide angle stuff.

I like the flat dome ports better than my dome ones.  If you ever use the dome ones above water it's very challenging.  Water loves to stick to it no matter how much you lick that dome.

Here are a few shots of the D500 with Aquatech setup.  I've sized them all down from original RAW format so files aren't so huge.   Again, super fun and am loving it.  For me it's about capturing these moments with my family and this lets me do it.  You'll see shots with my daughter and she uses the AxisGo with her iphoneX and has some great footage considering limitations of a phone.

Like KelpDiver said, look for used if you can since these things are built like tanks.  If you can't find it used, I would go for it.  I had a cheaper underwater case for an A6000 that did the job but too many limitations with the camera and housing and I didn't enjoy it to a fraction of what I do now.