Ideal z-mount lenses for underwater use?

Right now I've got the 14-30 and 105 macro z-mount lenses for use with a Z9 in a Nauticam housing.

I'm worried that I won't like the edge sharpness of the 14-30, behind a 230mm Nauticam dome port with 50mm extension.   I have the Sea and Sea Internal Correction lens for it too, even though it wasn't specifically designed around the 14-30.  I do not have a diopter to use on it.

Next March I will take an expensive trip to Truk lagoon, which sounds like it's really going to be a wide angle venue.

So I'm wanting to know the ideal wide angle lens and port setup to use.   Maybe a list of choices sorted by price, including the really expensive stuff.

I will caveat things by saying I'll sacrifice image quality before carrying even more weight that the 230mm dome (or even bigger domes).  The 230mm defines my limits, and it may even exceed them a bit for travel.

I'm intrigued by the WACP-1 as it seems like it would give me better corners than the 230mm dome, and be significantly smaller as well.   But I'm frustrated trying to figure out what lens to put behind it?

And for that matter, can I put more than one lens behind it (or other dome)?   By that I mean two different focal range zooms, perhaps a 14-30 and a 24-70, even if the 24-70 is a bit of a compromise.

For wide I have 14-24 F2.8 and 14-30 possibilities from Nikon.   I have FTZ2 as well, just in case somehow an F-mount lens outdoes all other possibilities here.   For Truk lagoon (and subsequent big trips soon) I'm willing to invest a lot if it helps.  I don't have the 14-24 F2.8, but I could but one.  (I didn't because I rarely used my 14-24 f-mount).

kelpdiver wrote:

hey, you're jumping on a long flight now! US->HNL->GUM->TKK or US->JPN->GUM->TKK are both some long hauls. What convinced you?

In my case PHX-LAX-HNL-GUM-(overnight)-TKK.   And same in reverse later.

What convinced me?  Age, in a nutshell.   For the past 5 years, since my wife died, I've been mostly stuck.  She was a huge driver of our travel, selecting venues and going to great effort to arrange travel.   And she dove.   Now I mostly travel alone, since my girlfriend neither dives nor snorkels.   It's been a hump to get over.

Then I went to Bonaire, and everything changed.   Partly because I came into some money, so options are more open for more expensive travel, but mostly because I finally did something new, by myself.

And I realized that at age 68, I'm getting weaker, and travel is getting harder.   I've outlived my father by a year already.  I'll match my late wife next month, assuming I live that long.

It finally dawned on me that my bucket list days are NOW!   And there are a lot of places I want to see, and those places are inconvenient to get to.

So - Truk soon.  I want to do Cuba.  I want to dive the Great Barrier Reef and scatter my wife's ashes there.  I want to go on safari in Botswana.  And I cannot wait any longer for my girlfriend to retire and join me.

(And really, I have to admit traveling alone is a lot cheaper than paying for two!)

If you endure it well enough, then a lot of easier options in Asia (Anilao, Fiji, Tahiti) open up. They're all non stop flights from West coast cities.

Here's the thing.  I've come to dread and almost hate airplane travel.  Cramped, uncomfortable and usually too cold.  So to go to Truk, I'm flying business class.  My seats are in the front row.  $4200 for airfare.   Either that or wipe all the miles from my credit card.

Truk is a WA land. Though there is some macro potential, I don't think I'd waste a dive on it unless I were doing multiple dives on the same wreck and saw the subjects. When I was there, I did it with the Blue Lagoon folks, so we were doing a different wreck each dive. It's a low enough probability that I might save the space/weight and not even pack it. (maybe keep a gopro with a close up lens)

Yes, which is why I'm seriously looking at wide angle upgrades.

If you will be entering the ships (not sure how many still can be - they have been becoming unstable with their age), be prepared for narrow staircases where you have to turn your rig sideways to push it through. Your strobe arms need to be flexible. And for similar reasons, your gear should be very streamlined, avoid reliance on danglies.

Yes.   I'll only enter wrecks that are somewhat easy, or perhaps not at all.  If I can get a course in this winter, we'll see.  I have no strong desire to get into a ship where it is tight.

(Got my thrills watching 13 Lives!)

We did a lot of light deco - often 10 minutes at 15' so we could spend more time at 120. They had 50/50 hang bottles, but my computer was single nitrox only. If your operator will be doing anything similar, be sure to get a computer that is capable of multigas. The Peregrine is a $500 option with a giant color OLED display, will do the job nicely.

I have a Suunto D5.   I used to have a Cobra2, and it was so conservative that I constantly went into deco the 2nd dive of the day following the divemaster.   Typically anywhere from 1 to 12 minutes, and sometimes I'd bleed that off on the way back.

Quite used to it.  Once had to do 27 minutes deco with 500 psi left when I set the Cobra to conservative mode.

Also consider if you're willing to do the deco necessary to dive the San Francisco with its fantastic tank sitting at 160 ish. On an air profile, this was 49' dive for me, though only upper single digits at depth. Also the only dive where my camera lanyard failed me - it was a cheap plastic coil style that broke off at the connector during my deco stop. I reacted quickly to catch it 10' lower, saving it from a 200' plunge.

I'll do what the divemaster tells me I can.

Oddly, many of the experienced photographers at the Digital Shootout did not use lanyards.  They also had those rigs perfectly neutral.   They could do timer selfies.

Why are you concerned about the 14-30? That is Backscatter's recommended rectalinear WA. The 14-28s are on the merely supported list. And because the plane from Guam to TKK is a full sized plane (united), no real worries about luggage limits.

Because I shot it once in a pool so far, and the corners reminded me of the 16-35 without the IRC lens - and I had the IRC lens on it.   But it's not a great test.

Backscatter also recommends the WACP-1 and -2 for better wide angle.  I'm really a bit at a loss for what lens to use with a WACP-1 to give me the coverage of a 14-30 or 16-35, and frankly I'd like a wider zoom range.

I only suggested the 14-24 in case it was better than the 14-30 underwater.  I have the f-mount version, and it was never recommended for use behind a dome, so assume maybe the z mount is similar there.  And I do want the to zoom to 30mm or more.

Fisheyes can be used at times and offer wider coverage but rectalinears do dominate for wrecks. When you can frame some dead space, you can then crop it out later.

I generally dislike fisheyes and never used one underwater.  Did have a lot of fun with my 10.5dx back in the day.

I'm just going through the images from my first day of shooting the Z9.   I haven't gotten to the macro shots yet (1 afternoon dive), but I'm into the wide angle shots from the two morning dives enough to say I'm not worried about the 14-30 anymore.

Shooting the 14-30 at F14, 1/125th-1/200th and various ISO's,  and using the Sea and Sea Internal Correction Lens behind a 230mm dome gives satisfactory corners, and the lens is definitely sharper overall than my old 16-35vr.  I'll experiment with F8 and F10 next to see how things behave.

I'll get sample photos up later.

Early shot with 14-30 on Z9

I'm confident now that both Z-mount lenses I'm using (14-30 with S&S IRC, and 105 s macro) are sharper than my F-mount equivalents.   And mostly the Z9 equals the D850 in 3d tracking, except that the Z9 can track closer to the edge of the frame.

But there seems a very clear big miss on the Z9 - Wire Shrimp.   In classic mirrorless fashion, the Z9 refused to focus on the Wire Coral a foot away while locking onto backgrounds 5 feet away.   I'll have to try Pinpoint focus to see if that will work.

I do have the Z9 set up with AF-ON, Fn1, Fn2 and Fn3 using different focus settings, and the Nauticam housing makes those buttons easily accessible.  Should be easy to use one for Pinpoint.   The D850 would simply nail that type of shot 100% of the time.

Vertical crop from horizontal shot - 105s with Z9.

The 105S lens just seems sharper to me than the 105vr f-mount.

I have the impression that many things about the Z9 lens lend subtle improvements to sharpness that add up and become visible.  The lack of shutter has to help, the lenses help, and the focus accuracy somewhat helps.  But it also feels like the Z9 is somehow a bit sharper overall than the D850 in a way I can't put my finger on.  (Probably lenses).   It seems to hold color better at high ISO, and it seems to take a bit less post-processing.

Had an issue with the 14-30 on the first dive today.   My viewfinder switched to what looked like center-weighted metering (big circle in the middle) and the aperture went to F___.

Camera refused to take a picture.   Had to carry it along for the whole dive though.

I'd seen this briefly several times before, but it always went away when I zoomed the lens.  Not this time.  Nothing I did in the water helped.

When I noticed the F___ (or F000?) display, I figured what was going on - dirty contacts.  (Or a failed lens.)   The symptoms reminded my of the old Dead Battery Syndrome with the D300 came out.

Between dives I opened the housing, removed camera and dismounted lens.   Sure enough, the lens contacts were not bright and shiny.   I rubbed them with a towel until they were, reassembled all, and camera works fine again.

kelpdiver wrote:

the advice is tired, but the pre dive test shots do save us from dives like this.

Not sure about that.   I used the 14-30 here and there above water for a couple of weeks without seeing any issues.   Here in Roatan I got through 9-10 dives before it set in.   On previous dives I would see it happen a few times but it cleared by zooming.   I guess what was happening was those contacts steadily building up a layer of oxide or whatever it is.

with all of the options the mirrorless give us, there are many more ways to get it wrong. But at least we have the vacuum seal and pressure monitoring, so most faults are just for the dive.

I love my vacuum leak detector!   It helped the other day when I got up and noticed it flashing yellow after being pumped down the night before.   I ended removing the port o-ring and the back half o-ring and cleaning/greasing them.   Problem solved.

The housing has been very Nauticam.   It just works and mostly works well.   I've been making use of the Fn buttons (levers underwater) to try some different autofocus methods, but 3d Tracking is my bread and butter.   I did see subject detection (set to animal) pick up the head of an eel and a fish or two when close.   Interestingly, subject detect focused on a Green Morays nostrils as eyes on a dive today.   (I was more or less pushing the eel away with the camera.   He was close.)