I was on my way to Grand Bahama last month with a small crew and lots of large cases & bags. We had decided it made a great deal more sense to drive from Miami International to Ft. Lauderdale and catch the ferry over to the Island, than fight with American Airlines over how much cargo space we could commander on their turboprop.
Ft. Lauderdale happens to be the home port of Reef Photo & Video, so I stopped in to visit the store and finally shake hands with Ryan Canon.

After the ebullient greetings and hugs (O.K., perhaps no hugging), I poked around until my eyes settled on the Zen Dome Port. My first reaction upon picking it up was that it was one heavy mother!
The Zen Dome Port is manufactured with optical quality, multi glare-coated glass. One of my disappointments with my Sea & Sea dome is I sometimes get lens reflections in my sun-ball shots. I was told this was due to the nature of acrylic and the anti-reflective coating employed by S&S.

The casing is all anodized aluminum as are the sun shades. There is no plastic on the port. The housing is cleverly made in two pieces with the bayonet mounting system separate so the dome can interchange with various housing manufacturers mounting styles.

B & H syndrome set in, so I bought one. Ryan doesn’t have an overhead trolley system for orders yet (a B & H trademark) but I’m going to see if I can find something used from a dry cleaner to tide him over.

I’m shooting with a Nikon D3 encased in a Sea & Sea housing, 2 YS250 strobes, an Inon 90 degree viewfinder. Adding the Zen Dome over the top of my 17-35 Nikkor made this one heavy piece of kit to lug from hotel room to boat. Fortunately, that is where the pain ends.

The first thing I noticed while swimming down to our first location was that the housing didn’t want to brutally up-end itself as it does with the lighter S&S dome. In fact, I let the housing float free momentarily to confirm what I was feeling and saw, much to my astonishment that it remained floating upright, just as I had left it. I know this feature has zip to do with optical quality but I truly believe after 3 weeks with this dome it has everything to do with underwater quality of life and hopefully the images benefit as a result.

Optical quality is excellent. I know many people will argue there is little to no difference between acrylic and glass for underwater shooting, and I am not about to enter that fray. What I can report is I did notice greater corner sharpness at my usual f/11 with the 17-35 and overall crispness was excellent. Out of over 4500 shots I kept from that shoot, many taken into the sun, only one shows a slight hint of a lens casing reflection. This is a vast improvement over the acrylic dome.

Click to view attachment
1/125 @ f/11 ISO200 natural light

Click to view attachment
1/200 @ f/13 ISO200 strobes

There are chromatic aberrations noticeable in the blue channel at all zoom settings, but are quickly fixed in RAW conversion. I do not know how much of this can be attributed to the dome, but it is consistent with other dome ports I have used. So no surprise there. The red channel was spot-on, no adjustments needed which is a departure from the acrylic port.

Am I going to make the Zen dome port a staple for my wide angle shooting? Absolutely. It is an extremely well made piece of gear whose benefits far outweigh the extra cost of glass over acrylic. Would I recommend you get one? If you do a good deal of wide angle shooting and have found that housing stability becomes an issue, this piece of kit will certainly fix that issue. Will it give you sharper images over a less expensive acrylic port? Yes it will... (ready the port guns, fire when ready).

Hi,
Wow... & Thanks for sharing your experiance.

I am glad to see it works as advertised & look forward to use my Zen port in few days.

Sam

Hi Matthew,
thanks for sharing your positive experience with the dome. As far as I understand you you did not use a additional diopter / close up lense with your 17-35 Nikkor?

I would like to see some result of a Canon 16-35 USM II behind this dome it has the same close focus distance.

Thanks again,
Matthias

Nope. No diopter used. I have a B&W +2.0 but didn't require it.

Hi guys,

any idea if Zen (or anyone for that matter) will come up with a dome that is not excellent but just plain good or average? Subal already makes an excellent dome which is in the same price range as the Zen product. What I would like is a medium priced FE dome in acrylic, preferably light and compact, that I can use with my Subal housing.

For now I am looking into two ways of fixing my problem.

Plan A is to knock out the glass of an old DP-54 B compact dome I have lying about, and glue in an off-the-shelf acrylic dome. This would result in a 100 mm custom made dome in the 'Mark Webster' way. (See http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showt...96&hl=dome).

Plan B is to collect technical drawings of the Subal and (for instance) Hugyfot port threads and ask a specilised company to machine an adapter ring. I found a company nearby and asked for a quotation, however, no reply yet. If you're interested, let me know. It is probably more cost effective to have ten rings made instead of one.

I'll keep you posted,

--Rob

Rob,

I think you best bet would be the Sea and Sea NX Fisheye dome which is acrylic and excellent. I bet you can get a subal/seacam port converter from Backscatter.

Cheers
James

Thanks for the writeup Matthew!



I emailed this thread to one customer who I know has had good success with 16-35 II, and hopefully he'll contribute here. 16-35 II looks very good. 16-35 still has some issues, but I don't think those are fixable. 17-40 is still softer than I'd like, too, but i think we can sort those out with a custom extension ring.

Rob, I have a lot of interest in small lens specific domes. A dome matched to a fisheye lens can be in many cases smaller than the port mount it goes in to, which is especially useful for close focus wa shooting. I have a small spheric dome for Tokina's 10-17 that produces glorious results and is just over 90mm in diameter, but it can't be adapted to our universal mount. That issue, combined with the port being uncoated and acrylic makes it a tough fit with the Zen label. I haven't ruled out building this, but demand is quite low, so it isn't a priority.



I don't think this is what Rob is after from a size perspective. Sea & Sea's compact dome is fine with fisheyes if you dremel off the shade, but...



I'm assuming you mean Sea & Sea... NX mount is larger in diameter than the Subal /3 mount this combination will vignette in any configuration because of the step up required. Sea & Sea Housing to Subal port is ok, but not the other way around.

What about a Seacam wideport? I have one that has a 4" diameter (chord length) which I can even use w/ my FF fisheye lens.

Cheers
James

Thanks for the replies James, Ryan.

In fact, closeup wide angle (with a Tokina 10-17) is what I'm after. On my last dive a week ago, viz was about 3 metres. I have the 6" DP SWB Subal port; cutting back the shades maybe a plan C.

I know that Hugyfot and Seacam (if I'm not mistaken) make port adapters that allow the use of 'alien' ports on their housings. As far as I know, Subal doesn't.

Any recommendations will be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
--Rob

Hi,
Sample picture of Zen dome port with Nikon D700/16mm in Nexus housing. Reef photo supply
Nexus M5 version of Zenport. Considering bad visibility, I was very happy with result.

Sam

Hello Ryan,

Without seeing the adapter ring and how it attaches, is maybe the reason I don't understand why the Subal housing to Sea & Sea port combination will vignette. If it is just like a spacer woundn't it be better to have the port with the larger diametre?

Thanks
Mary

Hi Mary,

the thing is that currently there is no way you can attach a Sea&Sea port (or any third party port except the Zen dome) to a Subal housing. There are no adapter rings available, which is why I am trying to figure out another way. I'll be focussing on my plan A, the custom made 100mm FE port.

Best regards,
--Rob