Underwater camera setup

I've read through the various posts now, and I think I have some idea of what your intentions are. I'm coming at this from the standpoint of a scuba diver who doesn't do snorkeling hardly at all. When I did snorkel with a camera, I really struggled to get down and stay down long enough to get even a quick shot. My buoyancy was so positive that I would be finning downward furiously to hold depth at maybe 10 feet for a second or two, then I'd woosh back to the surface for a desperately-needed breath of air.

So an obvious question for you - when you free dive, how long can you stay down at 10+ foot depths, and are you suitably weighted as to be fairly neutral on buoyancy?

The problems I see here are related to your expectations of diving with some of this gear, and the results you expect.

First, let's talk overall size of rig. Pretty much every FF rig I've ever seen had handles on the sides and are pretty darn large. To be honest, I can't see snorkeling with a big rig at all, and the main reason is that i can't see myself controlling a big rig with just one hand, and I can't see myself snorkeling without the use of at least one hand to swim with. Part of that is that I'm typically not snorkeling with weights, but overall I just see an FF rig as being too big to dive with. BUT - if you are one of those people who can easily spend 60 seconds+ free diving underwater, then it may be fine here.

Next, the idea that you can use a 4 inch dome with a 16-35 and get anything acceptable in the corners is false. I have a 230mm (9 inch) dome port, and four years of shooting a 16-35vr on a D810 with it has shown me that a big dome AND stopping down still gives me lousy corner sharpness. I tried it with and without a +2.0 diopter, and never noticed any difference. However, when I added a Sea and Sea Internal Correction lens, my corners improved massively. I consider them decent at F8 now, and acceptable lots of times even at F5.6. The S&S lens is basically a filter designed for lenses like the 16-35 and 230/240mm dome ports. It will not work (as far as I know) with smaller dome ports or other (much different) lenses.

Next, the idea of doing video with a 3000 lumen light. Someone mentioned it would work with macro subjects. I'd agree with that because it wouldn't have enough power to light anything larger at any kind of useful distance. I have a 3500 lumen Kraken, and previously used a 2400 lumen Fishlight as a focus aid and video lighting source. I quickly found out that shooting wide - stills or video - with the focus light running mostly just screwed up the white balance across the frame. If I white balanced for ambient, I'd get a large reddish area where the focus light had enough power to be noticed. If I balanced for the focus light, I ended up with a lot of green ambient-lit areas just outside the subject area.

Bottom line - 3000 lumens isn't close to enough power for video. Shoot ambient as much as possible with video. If you are snorkeling, that should work fine for you.

Finally, cost. A $1000 budget just isn't enough for FF. It's a drop in the bucket towards new gear for FF. It's maybe ok for an old used and unwanted Nikon D90 rig, but it's just not enough for current or last generation gear even used.

Some data points from my experience. My Canon point-n-shoots all cost in the $250-300 dollar range. (SD630, SD850is, s95, s120) All the Canon matching housings were another $200-300 or so, and until the s120 I could get a new rig and camera under $500. The zoom and extra controls of the s120 made for a larger housing with more controls and drove the cost up a bit.

Then I went to a Sony RX100 II plus Nauticam housing, dual YS-D1 strobes, a 2400 lumen focus light, and wet macro and wide angle lenses. Cost: $5000. This rig was signficantly better in results than the point-n-shoots, but really it was just a bigger point-n-shoot. The difference came in the strobes. The weakness was still autofocus speed, like the previous cameras.

So after a year I decided I was sick of getting shots of fish swimming out of frame and decided to take my best DSLR underwater. (D810). I went with Nauticam because I really liked the quality and controls of the Sony rig, and I've got zero regrets there. I moved my strobe arms and strobes to the new rig for the cost of two new fiber optic cables. I moved my focus light directly. Now the total cost of my D810 rig was about $10,000, not including camera.

And I still had lousy corners in wide angle. I cropped nearly every shot, no matter the aperture.

After 4 years, my rig was 'due' for a service involving sending it out somewhere to have all the seal replaced. I never found the cost, but think it was going to be at least $500.

At this point I just decided to get a D850 housing. I'd been shooting the D850 for three years and it had obvious autofocus improvements. Another $3800, plus replaced the Fishlite with the Kraken focus light. (Kraken has more power AND much better battery life. The Fishlite V24 would not go a full hour dive on one battery. The Kraken will, easily. The addition of the ($400) S&S correction lens fixed my big complaint about wide angle.

This stuff is all heavy out of the water. Even if I were to try to take it snorkeling (which I have on a shore dive or two practicing over/under shots in 4 feet of water), I have to carry it there. The wide angle setup weighs about 35 pounds. I was unsuccessful shooting over/unders in 4 feet of water as with the slipperiness of the bottom and a few small waves I still could not stably hold the rig halfway out of the water. It's a specialty needing to address some sort of float to hold the rig up.

I just can't see trying to swim with this setup. On the other hand, I've taken the strobes off the RX100 rig and done snorkeling with that just fine, limited by my very brief breath-holding ability.