Underwater camera setup

Architeuthis wrote:

Hi Safaribob,

=> I am not able to say anything concerning I-phone UW, I very seldom take a photo with my handy, even over the water. I doubt, however, that you can make macro and supermacro with an I-phone,

The iPhone 13, which I do not have, can allegedly do this.

the TGs can do this already without further modifications (check carefully before going this route, whether such add on optics is available for UW for the I-phone). In addition very good wet lenses (add-on lenses) for WA exist for TGs (also here check whether you can make WA with I-phone). TGs deliver raw files, very important for post-processing (no idea what format an I-phone delivers).

There is a feature to provide this in iPhone I do not use.

A draw-back of TGs is they do not have manual mode (= very essential mode for UW), but UW-photographers share tricks how they can set the camera what to do...

Would you need manual for hot lights?

(For me personally, the small sensor, the inability to change lenses and the lack of manual mode is the dealbreaker for TG, I never owned one)

I share your perspectives.

Let's say the budget is 1000, how is it best spent?

=>

For 1000 bucks you get #1 or #2 with some acessoirs. Even when buying second hand (a good option), the budget is too low to get a complete rig that fulfills your ambitous desire. Housing your Sony A7Riv (I see from your gear list that you have one) in a cheap plastic housing is a good way to get rid of it by flooding and to be ready then to buy the A1.

you think the seafrogs are that bad?

=> It is up to everybody how think about such housings and good if someone is happy with them - I certainly do not want to hurt someone's feelings here, it is just how I personally think. Fact is that my wife had a similar housing for her Olympus EPL5 (the original Olympus housing, now AOI), which she succeeded to flood - total loss of camera and lens. Minimum requirement for me would be a vaccum system for safety (maybe available for Seafrog). In addition, there are several other reasons why I prefer Aluminium housings (in my case Nauticam) housings:

thank you so much for these insights, very interesting. OEM housings have always seemed the most attractive to me, so very interesting to get alternate take on this.

1. When you ever had a Nauticam housing in your hands and you feel all buttons and levers are organically at your fingertips (e.g. "dhumbfocus lever"), you never will want to go back.

I feel like ergonomics is something that I at least to a certain extent can sacrifice (for cost effectiveness). People always complained about sony, but for me it was fine.

2. Nauticam has a large collection of ports/domports and UW optics, like WAPC, WWL1, CMCs, SMCs etc. ... . I am not sure wich ones could be used with potential adapters on plastic housings. IF it would be possible (probably not) and you would build up an entire system based on plastic, it is like building your house on sand. Some manufactureres build their own domeports, but I have read here that e.g. the Meikon domeports are optically drash. What is the point of using such a domeport together with the latest FF camera model?

This is really good information. I hadn't thought of it this way, as a "system" in its own right. I agree that since the housing is in the optical path, it's optical performance becomes a concern, and again something I hadn't really considered. If it really is so poor as to negate the benefit of a good sensor, then that changes things.

3. Already in the mid-term time range the alu housings are more economically. They represent an entire system (comparable to a lens mount of camera companies) and when you update to a new camera model, you just acquire the camera plus pure housing.

I think I would rather just maintain a legacy body, at least for 10+ years than bring new and fancier bodies into the deep.

The rest of the system stays the same (domes/domeports/extensions/wetlenses). When Olympus made the plastic housings for their cameras, they managed to create three different port mounting standards, so it was depending on luck, whether one could continue to use ports when changing the camera model. I am not sure how upgradeable third party housings and ports are in this respect, but I am reluctant to make an investment there...

This makes sense, and again, thank you!

Wolfgang