Sony A6500 or A7iii to photograph whales underwater?

Hello!

I am planning on going to Norway to photograph whales underwater.

I currently have a Sony a6500 and was thinking of getting the Sigma 16mm 1.4 to be able to capture the whales with as much light as possible.

Now, I'm wondering if getting and using the Sony A7iii (with perhaps the Sony 24mm 1.4) would make a difference in terms of image quality, sharpness, etc...?

I'm no pro by any means, but I do want to be able to capture the best possible images since it's a once in a lifetime opportunity for me!

I'm also wondering if the underwater housing has any effect on the image taken depending on the brand? Or in this aspect they are all the same?

Any tips and/or suggestions are of course welcome.

Thanks in advance

Be careful with planning for wide apertures - when you're shooting in a dome underwater, you're actually shooting a virtual image produced by the dome, and this virtual image is curved and located pretty close to the lens - this makes depth of field a significant challenge, because edges and corners are significantly closer to your lens than the center. Bigger domes alleviate the issue to a degree, but those 230-250mm domes used by full-frame cameras are huge, heavy, and cost thousands of dollars. Fisheye lenses avoid this issue, and they work well with small domes, but there's no native fisheye zoom for E-mount (and no native fisheye at all, unless you count converters for 16/20/28mm primes), and of course there's the fisheye distortion. Nauticam WACP is, by all accounts, awesome, but at $2850 for the housing + $3950 for the port, it represents a very big investment.

Another thing about primes - I've never shot whales, but I imagine that controlling the distance may end up problematic, so you might want to have a useful zoom range, as they might come in close to fill the frame, or they might keep their distance, forcing you to zoom in lest you bring home a memory card full of tiny specs.

Thanks a lot for this very useful information!

I am trying to obtain as much information as possible to do the best that I can. I know it won't be easy, I know it will be cold and I know that my photographs will probably not look like the ones taken from the guys who have done it many more times before!

My plan is to decide on the equipment rather soon, so I can buy the housing and maybe the camera/lens and start practicing in a pool at least.

Any housing brands I should avoid, according to your experiences?

kelpdiver wrote:

Miguel_A81 wrote:

I am planning on going to Norway to photograph whales underwater.

I currently have a Sony a6500 and was thinking of getting the Sigma 16mm 1.4 to be able to capture the whales with as much light as possible.

Now, I'm wondering if getting and using the Sony A7iii (with perhaps the Sony 24mm 1.4) would make a difference in terms of image quality, sharpness, etc...?

I'm no pro by any means, but I do want to be able to capture the best possible images since it's a once in a lifetime opportunity for me!

I'm also wondering if the underwater housing has any effect on the image taken depending on the brand? Or in this aspect they are all the same?

It's more about the ports that housing lets you use that can impact quality. This is the main knock against the cheap housings, and sometimes the OEM offerings. Nauticam, Aquatica, etc will use extensions specific to each lens so that the lens to glass distance is most conducive to IQ.

As B already noted, for rectalinear lenses, the bigger the better is usually the came for domes, though the cost and the travel hassle grows rapidly as you go from the 6 to the 8 to the 9.5" choices.

Now frankly, getting the best possible images depends much more on you than on the equipment, given you're already at an APS-C sized sensor. Switching to new gear you're not familiar with may be counterproductive. Unfortunately, hard to practice for. But if you go that route, for a 'once in a lifetime' type trip, you should also look to costs and choices available to you as a rental. If you can get the trip organizer to provide the gear, even better. You can still bring your existing equipment as alternate or fall back. Don't invest a lot for a single trip and end up with gear of limited added value going forward. Esp when there's the chance you could get skunked - bad weather, unsocial whales, etc.

Also, if cold water is not normally your scene, spend time thinking about best suit choices and how that impacts you otherwise. Will you need to wear gloves ,and is that unusual for you? I don't wear gloves unless the water temp goes below 11C/52F. This at least you can practice with in a pool or even sitting on the couch to some degree.

Next step for you I think is to look for prior participants reviews and galleries. You're looking for the ones that describe the photographic challenges/successes, or at least tag their images with the lens choice and exposure settings. In particular, you want to see how close the whales get, and how well that fits in the frame. That can affirm or counter your gear or considered options.

It's a bit striking, and unfortunate that there are no fisheye choices available for Sony. For massive subjects that can get close, it's often the only viable choice. The compactness of the port is also a boon when you're dealing with currents or are snorkel based chasing the moving animals.

I spent the first week of December at Tiger Beach. Using a 4/3rds, I split time between the 8mm fisheye (4" dome), and the 7-14 rectalinear (with a 6" dome). Having both was right for this trip, but the fisheye generally was more productive as the sharks frequently came to point blank range and one even took a bite at the 6" dome. Other times the distance was 10-15 feet and fisheye was no longer as good. The 7-14 could still fill the frame, however the distance and the silting often still meant a lower impact image. As always with UW, close is usually best.

Now in contrast, last year I was at Guadalupe with the white sharks and they rarely got so close. I exclusively shot with the 7-14 I had just gotten....without it the trip would have been a big fail on the photographic side. My wife did very well with a compact (G7XII) and a tiny "wide" angle nauticam port that just restores normal 24mm width. Ended up being perfect for 10-15' sharks at 15-20' distance.

Barmaglot_07 wrote:

Be careful with planning for wide apertures - when you're shooting in a dome underwater, you're actually shooting a virtual image produced by the dome, and this virtual image is curved and located pretty close to the lens - this makes depth of field a significant challenge, because edges and corners are significantly closer to your lens than the center. Bigger domes alleviate the issue to a degree, but those 230-250mm domes used by full-frame cameras are huge, heavy, and cost thousands of dollars. Fisheye lenses avoid this issue, and they work well with small domes, but there's no native fisheye zoom for E-mount (and no native fisheye at all, unless you count converters for 16/20/28mm primes), and of course there's the fisheye distortion. Nauticam WACP is, by all accounts, awesome, but at $2850 for the housing + $3950 for the port, it represents a very big investment.

Another thing about primes - I've never shot whales, but I imagine that controlling the distance may end up problematic, so you might want to have a useful zoom range, as they might come in close to fill the frame, or they might keep their distance, forcing you to zoom in lest you bring home a memory card full of tiny specs.

Thanks a lot!

I know there are some housings that are extremely expensinve (I'm sure they are completely worth it).

I was thinking of using a prime lens for the added sharpness but I think you are right, a zoom will surely give me more versatility. Unfortunately, there are no fast zooms for the APSC Sony system, I would have to get a lens made for FF.

I have to agree with the point about these big domes being BIG!   I have a full-frame Nikon DSLR in a Nauticam housing with a 230mm dome port.  I'm using a 16-35mm zoom, and it's quite wide.   I wish it were a bit less wide and a good deal longer, but lens choices are limited.

As for the dome size, the rig is too large to fit in my rolling carryon.  The dome is half the space, and it really sparks the interest of the TSA agents when they see it on an xray.   Logistically, it's the biggest pain to pack of anything I've ever traveled with.

Would love to dive with whales, though not in cold water.   A wide lens would certainly be my choice, and I'd hope for very clear water.

The OP asks about housing recommendation.  I only know Canon (perhaps made by Meikon) polycarbonate housing for their point-n-shoots, and my Nauticam housings.  (One for RX100, one for Nikon D810).   The polycarbonate ones always worked for me, but the Nauticam stuff is really good - high quality, everything fits, all the buttons and controls work, and you have big paddle levers for the most-used funtions.  In addition, the expensive ($3300) D810 housing has a vacuum leak detector that I swear by.  Saved the rig once already, and a lot of peace of mind.

The big challenges for me underwater are framing moving targets and their backgrounds, water clarity, and backscatter with strobes.  I've solved the framing problem by cropping to some extent with a high pixel count A7RII (soon to be A7RIII in a week).  Water clarity and backscatter I tackle with varying success in Lightroom and Photoshop.  This all depends on how I display the results.  I like large prints.  On a computer screen or DVD on TV, there's a lot more latitude.

Chasing optical image quality as I do in land photography has not been very productive.  For me, under water, most important are ease of use, equipment bulk,  and framing versatility (zoom lens).  Packing dive and photo gear for air travel is another matter.

daveco2 wrote:

The big challenges for me underwater are framing moving targets and their backgrounds, water clarity, and backscatter with strobes. I've solved the framing problem by cropping to some extent with a high pixel count A7RII (soon to be A7RIII in a week). Water clarity and backscatter I tackle with varying success in Lightroom and Photoshop. This all depends on how I display the results. I like large prints. On a computer screen or DVD on TV, there's a lot more latitude.

I also do a lot of cropping with underwater shots, almost 100% due to corner issues and framing issues.  With 36mp to work with, I can get away with a lot when using output intended for the web.

I haven't used Photoshop in years, probably since the version I had quit supporting a newer camera.  I don't want a subscription model, so I'm doing everything in Lightroom now.   There is quite a bit you can do in Lightroom easily, and I haven't even got to play directly with the tone curve yet.

The biggest problem I have with wide angle shots is water clarity.   I have a trick that helps me a lot, and that is using the black slider judiciously.  Once I have all the sliders and adjustments about where I want to finish, I pull the black slider down until the left histogram just about touches the left edge (it's a judgement call), and a lot of the haze in my shots sort of disappears.  It also darkens a lot of the shadow areas, so I usually have to do some more adjustments to lighten the whole scene back up.   But it can be very effective, as the following example shows:

This was taken in St. Thomas on the first dive I ever did with my new Nauticam D810 rig.   Big dome port.   My late wife took this picture with a Canon point-n-shoot, and it shows the conditions pretty well.

And my shot of her looked about the same out of camera.   Since I shot in RAW mode, I had a lot of adjustment possibilities.

The following shot looked very much like the previous until I adjusted white balance and pulled the black slider down.

Chasing optical image quality as I do in land photography has not been very productive. For me, under water, most important are ease of use, equipment bulk, and framing versatility (zoom lens). Packing dive and photo gear for air travel is another matter.

Sony A7Rii and A7Riii sound like chasing quality...

For me, everything is important.  The reason is simple: shooting underwater is photography in a very challenging environment, and every camera feature/advantage is both tested and useful underwater.

Ease of use / Handling?  Important to get the shot.  Especially if having to change settings a lot.  The Nauticam helps me here having very convenient paddles for the most important functions and buttons and dials for the rest.   For instance, I have a thumb paddle (most convenient) for the Info button where I can instantly see all kinds of settings and change most.   (Important partly because the housing covers the top display LCD).  I also added a high eyepoint viewfinder that makes it easier to see to the corners with my mask on.

Bulk:  No way around this issue.   DSLR rigs are big, and FX wide angle is the biggest.  Having strobes hanging out on both sides vibrating in the current, and camera so big it's difficult to hold and use one handed makes it tougher.  Shooting with a big rig also limits where I can physically put it for some images.   It's all a drawback, in the water and out, though in the water it's not hard to use.

Framing versatility:  I do love having some with a zoom, though I would be happier with a 24-70 than the 16-35 zoom range I have.  While I can crop in a lot with the 16-35, I normally can't get anywhere near the closeups I can with my 105 macro.   With the wide lens I zoom for framing and crop for the edges.   With the macro, I crop for framing.

Packing - once I actually held my big dome port, which I had never done before ordering one, I was kind of shocked.   My shock didn't really lessen when I found I could not come close to fitting all the gear into a carryon.   Here are a couple of tricks I use.

First, I put all this into my rolling bag, partly to make use of a bag that was a bit of a mistake.  I have a Thinktank backpack, and I really wanted one with wheels after carrying a 31 pound backpack around the world.  I bought a Thinktank roller bag, but I didn't do my homework to realize it didn't come with backpack straps.  (Means when I get to an airport and try to move my  two suitcases, I have three handles to drag, and I can't temporarily put the roller bag on my back to get to/from the airport.

The roller bag doesn't hold as much as my backpack, due to the handle and wheels taking a lot of space.   But the backpack would not have held everything anyway, and it would have been around 40 pounds if it did.  Anyway, the lack of sufficient space forces me to split the rig up between suitcase and carryon.

First, I have to remove the strobe mounting balls from the housing so the housing will fit in the bag.  I put the spare parts in a ziplock with a small pliers for reassembly on-site.  I take the six strobe arm clamps and one more for the focus light, and I store them inside the dome port extension.  I can't put anything inside the dome itself, except maybe some cloth wipes, so it won't scratch.   Same for the macro port, due to glass there.   I take a lens off the camera and put it inside the housing.   The housing and dome port then go into the rolling bag, along with bubble wrap.   Those two items now fill the rolling bag, and I fill in gaps with some of the other bits, like the strobes, the focus light, and any small bits that fit in the small cracks left over.   The macro port and dome extension (holding all those clamps) have to go into checked luggage, along with my laptop, and most of my scuba gear.

I also wear a waist bag while traveling (Thinktank Speed Racer), and I carry the lenses in there, often along with a backup underwater rig (Sony RX100 II inside a Nauticam housing).

I end up with

1. roller bag with most of the D810 gear

2. waist bag with 16-35, 105vr, RX100 in dive rig, some extra lens for above ground (might be 85f1.4), dive computer, all the batteries I need, travel docs, a book to read and a water bottle.

3. 50 pound suitcase holding all my dive gear (BCD, wetsuit, mask, fins, boots, regulator, etc), 36 quart soft-sided cooler for the D810 rig, battery chargers, and not much else.

4. 40+ pound suitcase holding my clothes, sundries, bathroom supplies and more, spare equipment.   Also a scale to weigh the bags when I repack.

When my wife was alive, it was easier as we could share a suitcase for clothes, though combined we had 75 pounds of dive gear.

Craig,

Those are good tips.

About the packing, I would add that I try to stay with a small backpack for the primary and backup camera bodies; a roller carryon for the housing, regulator, and lenses that I could not do without; and a checked duffel for the dive gear, chargers, housing tray/arms, and strobes.  The carryon is no problem when I depart and make connections to large airports; but when the planes get necked down to once-a-week island transports, the roller carryon needs to get checked for a fee ($50-100).  I can live with that, but would not want to push it to $400 with another bag for both directions.

My switch to a7RIII is a long, torturous story having to do with many tradeoffs besides image quality.  So was the search for strobes which also ended this week with two Inon Z330s.

I would greatly prefer to stay entirely in Lightroom except that Photoshop offers the Filter>Noise>Dust&Scratches tool for eliminating particulate reflections which I have not been able to replicate in Lightroom.  I'm going to investigate that black slider some more, as you describe.

I sure would prefer to have all optics and camera bits on board with me in carryon, but the stuff is just too big.   My roller bag fits under a seat, by the way, at least if I end up with a full size underseat area.  In those small planes, I have to resort to that, but in those planes I also think I have less risk if the bag has to get gate-checked.

My alternative is to use the Thinktank backpack instead of the roller bag, because it would hold more gear.  But even then it would not hold everything, and then I'd have to carry it (plus the waist bag), which has just gotten too heavy for me at age 65.  As it is, I put the most expensive gear in the roller bag, and pad the suitcase as much as I can.  Considering I have a 36-quart flexible cooler and a neoprene wetsuit, as well as a BCD and fins, I can pad things up pretty well.   I stick the laptop inside the cooler for extra protection.

Here is the out-of-camera shot before Lightroom.

And again, after:

White balance using eyedropper tool on the metal in the mouthpiece, I think.  Possibly on some black part of the gear.

Various edits to reduce highlight glare and boost shadows.   I do this a lot - reduce the recorded dynamic range as desired.  I select a profile to apply in here too, usually Camera Standard.   I overboost the shadows a bit in anticipation of using the black slider.

Done judiciously, the black slider makes that 'haze' vanish, at the expense of lost shadow detail.   Once you are near the edge, a small bit of movement (of the black slider to the left) can push you over the edge and much the whole shot up.  Before the black slider, the shots looked almost the same for haziness, though the subject looked pretty good.

That was Connie's last dive, and the last underwater picture I ever got of her.  RIP.

Well, you sure made a believer out of me.  I'm definitely going to spend more time on white balance and that black slider.

Yes, packing takes a lot of preparation and tricks; but at 75, it's still worth dealing with the weight and the hassle.  Maybe when I'm 80 I'll think of a GoPro.

I'm sorry your wife isn't with you to join in what you obviously enjoy very much.

I did experiment with orientation for the brief times I had at various targets, and did manage some acceptable shots while adjusting manual exposure; but for sure, a lot more practice is needed. As for the "acceptable" shots, I found tiny white particles scattered throughout that I was able to see in prints on close inspection.  The PS scratch/noise filter took care of it.  I'll try that pointing outward suggestion.

I struggled a bit with the sacred pixel dilemma, whether to modify picture content or not.  I figured the camera itself and the sliders in post processing modify pixels pretty extensively; and that led to progressive elimination of  sensor spots, reflecting particulates, parts of dive fins, divers, and fish   I saved some otherwise good shots with PS Edit>Fill>Content Aware.  It's pretty amazing, to eliminate a fin or half of another diver with that tool.  My number of dive trips per year and dive time are too limited to wait for the perfect composition.  If I did, I would come back with very little and it would be hard for me to justify the cost of all the equipment.