Underwater camera setup

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

Little observation about wide angle with dome ports...

Unlike a flat port - like your mask - a dome port doesn't give that 20% magnification effect you get when you look into water. That magnification is a result of a flat interface (port/mask) with the water. This means that when you snorkel or dive you see everything magnified. And of course you get used to that, though it's often surprising to me to see something like a beer can underwater as it seems so big at first.

So, if the average human eye is something like a 45mm lens, it's more like a 60mm lens when you have a mask on. (Everything looks bigger than it really is.)

Now you start looking through an optical viewfinder and a 16-35 with a dome port, and suddenly everything shrinks by 20% plus you are looking much wider than your typical mask. You risk ramming the dome port into things because you think they are farther away - look through mask where everything is bigger, but you're used to it. 16-35 seems really really wide at first. I find that it doesn't work well for stills unless you have a very large subject.

But video is another story. There I can't seem to get wide enough, though that may be just due to the novelty for me. When I view my videos shot at 16mm I'm fascinated by the extreme difference in view compared to the very limited angle of view I get through my mask. I see the dive sites in a totally different way.

Either way, corners were poor with my 230mm dome port until I added that S&S filter. Smaller dome ports work for fisheye lenses, but not rectilinear ones. I think you are setting yourself up for failure with a 6-inch port. On the other hand, traveling with a 230mm dome is such a pain in the butt that I can understand wanting to avoid it, not to mention the cost of these things.

I’d much prefer doing macro than wide angle if I thought was feasible, and to be fair, I think it would often work fine, but, I have become somewhat convinced that this would be a suboptimal solution leading to many alterations down the line, so I think it’s maybe better to start with the wide angle, and gain experience from that, particularly how well I manage to control the camera in water and bring it along. If this proves unproblematic then getting a macro and strobes makes sense

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Phoenix Arizona Craig
www.cjcphoto.net
"I miss the days when I was nostalgic."