A few weeks ago had a chance to put the Nauticam D90 through a proper test out in the Similan Islands for 4 days. This was my first proper trip after having jumped into the DSLR UWP world.
Shooting all in manual with some macro in STTL to try it out. Wide are all Tokina 10-17 with Zen 200mm dome, Macro are all Nikon 105VR. 2x Inon Z240's (which of course when the mantas were there were acting up on me, Inons and their tricky settings, preflash nob always getting stuck up or down!)
Anyways, overall the housing was amazing. Prior to this trip I had only had two dives in So Cal on it just to get a bit used to it underwater. Very easy to access all the controls, ergonomics are great. It is very stable underwater. With the heavy 105 and ports, with 2x8" ULCS float arms and 2x5" ULCS arms with Stix floats it was certainly rather negative, not sink like a rock, but if you let go, you were gonna chase it down for sure! I had the 105 in AF most of the time, and other than the typical focus searching that is common with this lens it worked quite well. I also had the focus ring installed and found it very useful, I need some more time with the lens UW to see what becomes my preferred method - I have a focus light but didn't bother trying it out yet. I had a mixed result with the Inons STTL, often I felt like I was getting overexposed shots so dropped my flash EV a bit, but then other times with those settings I felt things were getting too underexposed. I was using center weighted metering for macro most of the time when shooting STTL. The 105 in general was great, but it would have been nice on many occasions to have a 60mm - I found shooting fish and lighting them properly a challenge on the 105mm but got some okay fish shots with it.
This was the first time shooting wide angle, but overall found it really really fun! My results were not perfect and of course when the mantas showed up I was having strobe issues, and enjoying myself with the amazing animals too much to bother spending enough time to fix everything! I found I ended up getting nice exposures for the bg but was underlighting my fg often. It was also a bit of a shock just how wide the 10-17 is and how close you need and can get to subjects!
I played around with video very briefly, and the housing is a pro at handling the pretty limited video on the D90, I am sure the Nauticam 7D would be pretty killer though.
So I attached a few sample images from the trip. Overall a fun first jump into the DSLR world, the Nauticam is great and I am really looking forward to more and more and more practice with the setup!
Attached Images
Edited by bkkchriss4, 27 February 2010 - 03:23 PM.
