Using SMC-1?

I've been looking at wet lenses a bit, and I'm quite curious about the SMC-1.   I normally shoot macro with a 105vr on a Nikon D850, and for objects less than an inch across (Wire Shrimp is a good example) I'm doing 100% crops to get something suitable for the web.

The idea of swinging a wet lens into place underwater for specific shots has a lot of appeal.   Thing is, I had two wet lenses for my RX100 II and never learned to use them.  (Partly because I didn't know how to test a lens above water and learn how to use it.)   I had a macro and a small dome for wide angle.  I never did use the dome, and the few times I tried the macro I couldn't get anything in focus.  Probably because the shooting distance was much much smaller than anticipated.

I worry the same issue could happen with an SMC-1 - so specialized I may never use it, or just ends up so specialized as to be rarely used.

Anyone have experience with this lens?    And with using a wet lens in front of either the Nikon 60mm or 105vr macro lenses.  I have both lenses, but abandoned using the 6)mm as it seemed not nearly long enough for macro, and still too long for shooting larger objects in the water.   But the combo of 60mm and SMC-1 might give that lens some much-needed versatility.

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

I never did use the dome, and the few times I tried the macro I couldn't get anything in focus. Probably because the shooting distance was much much smaller than anticipated.

I worry the same issue could happen with an SMC-1 - so specialized I may never use it, or just ends up so specialized as to be rarely used.

I don't have an SMC-1, but I do use a Weefine WFL05S (+13) with a Sony 90mm, and the working distance is very close. You may want to run this experiment: take your camera and 105mm lens, set it to manual focus and rotate the focus ring to minimum focus distance, then put it in the housing, attach the diopter, and keep moving it towards a sample target until it comes into focus - that, in effect, is your working distance.

Will that test work without water in the equation?   Or at least close enough?

It's too cold to get into some friend's pool to test here.   Did that when I got my D810 housing in December a few years back.   Almost instantly couldn't feel my fingers!  Didn't make for a great test.

Yes, it will work in air, or you can fill a kitchen sink with water and dunk the end of the port inside - no need to submerge the whole housing. Unless your diopter is very weak, to the point of not being useful with your lens, you don't need much water to play with the entire available range. Nauticam quotes the working range for SMC-1 with 105mm at 53-95mm, so in American terms, two to just under four inches from the front glass.

Barmaglot_07 wrote:

Yes, it will work in air, or you can fill a kitchen sink with water and dunk the end of the port inside - no need to submerge the whole housing. Unless your diopter is very weak, to the point of not being useful with your lens, you don't need much water to play with the entire available range. Nauticam quotes the working range for SMC-1 with 105mm at 53-95mm, so in American terms, two to just under four inches from the front glass.

Just an extension to your advise Barmaglot:

The situation in air may be similar, but is certainly not the same when the lens is immersed in water. This is because the fraction of refractive index of the medium (n=1 for air; n=1.33 for water) divided by the refractive index of the lens glass (not known in most cases; typically 1.48 - 1.76 for optical glass) is a factor to multiply with the value obtained just by lens geometry. This is the reason why all UW optics has to be calculated separately for water immersion and is not valid above water (therefore real UW optics are so rare, the Nauticam closeup lenses belong to this species). In case the index of the optical glass used is high, the error is small and results are similar, when the index is low the error becomes big (meaning that the difference between water and air depends on the peculiar lens used and cannot be predicted without knowing the refractive index of the glass (a value that I never obtained from any company))...

=> testing in air is a first step, but then testing immersed is required to approach real live...

Wolfgang

Barmaglot_07 wrote:

Yes, it will work in air, or you can fill a kitchen sink with water and dunk the end of the port inside - no need to submerge the whole housing. Unless your diopter is very weak, to the point of not being useful with your lens, you don't need much water to play with the entire available range. Nauticam quotes the working range for SMC-1 with 105mm at 53-95mm, so in American terms, two to just under four inches from the front glass.

2-4 inch working range is ... tough to work with.

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

2-4 inch working range is ... tough to work with.

It's actually quite a lot. My WFL05S gives me less than two inches.

Barmaglot_07 wrote:

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

2-4 inch working range is ... tough to work with.

It's actually quite a lot. My WFL05S gives me less than two inches.

Are you hovering with the rig or using some sort of support/stabilizer?

I'd like to try shooting Wire Shrimp, and finding them and focusing on them in that close will be a challenge.

I generally don't get 2 inches close.  I crop shamelessly!   For me, a 150mm lens would probably work best as I then fill the frame much more often.  I tried using a 1.4TC on my 105vr, and while it worked as intended, I didn't like the small loss of sharpness, or the loss in autofocus speed.  I don't think it gave me more magnification, just more distance to subject, which usually ended up as more pixels on subject.  But for Wire Shrimp I'm cropping near 100% even at minimum focus distance on the 105vr.

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

Are you hovering with the rig or using some sort of support/stabilizer?

I'm generally using the close-up lens while muck diving, so in most cases I'm able to either rest the camera on the sand, or brace my elbows against it, or use a pointer stick in my left hand as a monopod - i.e. the left hand grips the stick (which is stuck into sand) and the tray left handle together.

No muck diving where I've been.  I've used that method for shooting Jawfish in the sand though.

Mostly I'm doing wall dives, so there are a lot of opportunities for me to be hovering vertical in the water while shooting macro of something on the wall.  Definitely how I do it for Wire Shrimp.