Interceptor121

Getting the lens closer to the wet lens generally increases the field of view but it depends lens by lens the difference may be minimal In the case of the Sony 28-60mm the flat port is 45mm and the WACP-C has 25mm space inside which means you could have 20mm or 25mm extension and the lens would still not touch the glass As you get closer to the glass the field of view increases sligthly not massively I have done this test with the camera fixed and changing the distance on land we are talking about small differences to give some context my new test lens that is wider than 28mm bumps into the glass at 27mm. With 1 cm gap it does until 27mm and then vignettes. At 5mm gap it does not vignette at 26mm -> for me 5mm is the right gap On the Sony 28-60mm in all cases you get 28mm without vignette and the field of view changes very little but other things may change how much is unclear

Shooting backlit happens a lot I don't recall the WWL-1 having this problem I can see both flare as lack of contrast and ghosting with this lens which are those artefacts and they are pretty bad considering the lens has antireflection coating on both sides Flare as lack of contrast would be improved changing the mount to prevent light leakage in the housing but only reducing the extension is not generally sufficient I have a WACP-C prototype and will try with my extension which is 5mm shorter than Nauticam but I think I will see the same flaring...!

First I calculate them then I take a rectilinear lens to check them against. I use the rectilinear lens as reference The other point that rectilinear lenses give you a taller frame a 17mm lens is already as high as the water optic at 28mm With regards to if you find something you woild shoot of course but the point is if there are subjects at distance and you are zooming like mad your strobes are not reaching out and things will look colorless. At a certain point you get the same field of view and better from a rectilinear lens We are not talking super close here, 130 degrees diagonal and 100 horizontal is for subjects beyond half meter more like 0.75 to 1.5 meters like sharks etc With regards to getting close my 24-70 focuses right on the dome now the port itself may be a bit bullky but if I zoom at 70mm rectilinear i have a much smaller captiure area than this type of lens I think this kind of optics especially when paired with a 28-70 type of lens are interesting because they are versatile but the bulk is the wide end. A video user may be ok with the entire range covered by one lens shooting in ambient light but a photo users that has to fire strobes will not be in the same use case

For video where you can remove the wet lens no problem and in fact you switch to flat port A macro subject wont something you capture with that lens Normally you are looking at field of view around 20-30 degrees over a flat port Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ghosting are those shapes that are distinct in the direction of the sun Flare is the hazy lack of contrast The effect is more prominent with the aperture stopped down I would first try to shoot at f/5.6 - f/8 to see what happens those are midwater shots nothing at the edges or close distance

You can adapt the canon 8-15mm The wacp is far away from the field of view of a fisheye It is distorted but for what concerns field of view is more or less equivalent to a 14mm lens and narrower on the vertical Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Can you give me some examples please? Was it ghosting or flare and in which conditions ? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I am testing a number of lenses with the WWL-DRY or WACP prototype and my objective is to find something that gives outstanding IQ in the 28-40mm zoom range. For video I will use the WWL-1 with the Sony 28-60mm The following table gives the field of view on the 3 coordinates for the WACP like lenses While the marketing message focusses on 130 degrees those optics are fisheye like with a very stretched aspect ratio that goes from 1.9 to 1.6 as you zoom in. Looking at the horizontal axis you see that in effect the field of view is same as a 13.5mm lens while the vertical is a 17mm lens The range between 28 and 40 mm is the most important because once you hit 40mm the lens has an horizonal field of view similar to a 24mm lens. At that point a 24mm high quality rectilinear lens will generally produce better IQ behind a dome. While for video it is important to be able to do all sort of shooting with one lens and eventually to be able to remove the lens underwater (though with the WWL-1 this is easier said than done) for photos shooting for most with strobes once you are far away there is not much point having a superwide lens. I have analysed my past WWL-1 shots and pretty much all of them were in the 28-35mm range. In summary view take is that if you spent the whole dive with the lens past 40mm you probably had the wrong lens or you were too far away I would be interested to know what other people think and if anyone is really shooting photos at 50mm + with their water contact optic

This is where I got so far. At the bottom links to various rigs I use nauticam cant comment on aquatica https://interceptor121.com/2023/02/04/moving-to-full-frame-without-increasing-bulk/

Hi Phil What’s the length of the marelux adapter? Do you know how far out the 28-60mm protrudes from the housing when there is no port on the housing Looking at your photo I would think the adapter is 15mm and the lens mount may be 30mm That would mean the WACP would be 5mm closer than in the nauticam set up resulting in the field of view increase you see Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

For me the example is what happened with the Nikon 28-70mm The lens used a 30mm extension and vignetted at 28mm the lens is 87mm long so it only has 3mm space It could not use the 25mm as that is too short and it would not fit the lens You do your tests at 80 cm and cut back the extension to 29.3mm it now has 2.7mm space However later you found out it vignettes at close range It seems to me exactly as I said they use the closest available extension that ensures the 28mm If there is a gap and performance is ok they don’t design a new part unless it vignettes Field of view is more important than spacing the lens a set amount Another example is the sony 28-70mm it is 95 long it won’t fit the 40mm extension ring with the 50mm it doesn’t vignette good enough move on It is safe to assume that the lens can go from 0 to 1+ cm without significant performance difference for very small slow lenses that won’t vignette Larger aperture lenses will vignette more easily and end up with a limited zoom range At the end past 40mm these optics are not that wide at all a 24mm lens has overall more field of view vertically and same horizontally that you got some squashed edges with a water contact optic doesn’t really matter Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My understanding is that those optics are afocal so they should not change the rays in and out within reason I see on the WACP-C chart that 4 lenses have the comment slight vignetting when focus distance from port to subject is less than 10cm at 28mm Those lenses are Canon EF 28-70, Canon EF 28-80, Nikon AF 28-70 and Panasonic 24-105 If you move the lens in and out you see a marginal increase of field of view as you get the lens closer, when the lens is too far away it starts blurring the edges substantially

The opposite as you focus closer entrance and exit pupil get closer making the focal length shorter Although the exact effect varies from lens to lens and in some cases the angle of view goes up in others goes down there is a trend for a lens behind a wet lens to vignette more at close range this based on practical experience and confirmed by the nauticam port charts that have notation in few cases of vignette at close range

From what i see as focus distance decreases focal length drops It is the case of macro lenses Some 100mm lens drop to 70mm at close range This is why the lenses may vignette more at close range as the field of view increased The focal Optical bench hub has many examples like this you can see the changes as the focus position changes Bill Claff has many models for hundreds of lenses where a patent file could be found Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

When you monitor you never set resolution to auto or 4k because this increases hdmi lag and the monitor anyway only shows 1080p The default is 1080p and hdmi audio off Now since the GH5 there is a change to the video continuous autofocus with hdmi you can’t set it to recording start It is either alway on or off. This means that if the continuous autofocus is on with hdmi and the lever is not in manual the camera focuses all the time and the af lock button when set to lock just locks because the camera never stopped focussing If you set continuous autofocus to off it will never autofocus before or after and af on performs autofocus. Shutter has no effect If you had previously used the option 1 camera to focus only when recording and you pressed the af on with lock the camera would focus then lock it and when you were starting recording it wouldn’t change However with hdmi connected this option is greyed out so you need to set the lever to off or set continuous autofocus to off in video to use the previous logic 4k 1080 etc doesn’t make a difference The issue is the continuous af in video mode2 This mode is problematic topside and underwater as the camera keeps focussing even in standby and can’t be stopped So what I do if I need autofocus is to leave it set and set the manual focus leaver to MF this will stop the camera to keep focussing until I switch the lever to afs or caf This is the most effective setting as it works the same with and without hdmi connection so practically you are in manual focus to set the initial focus and if you want the camera to autofocus just move the lever Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The smaller the lens more focus breathing Which means at close range the lens is no longer 28mm but could be wider Hence the note on some lenses vignette at close range Some lenses also focus quite far and others closer I bet the lenses that focus far need some space The entrance pupil instead doesn’t move with focus but may move with zooming but all tests are at 28mm Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not sure I can align on this The lens entrance pupil is what gets the light inside the lens the lens exit pupil is what sends the lens to the sensor The diameter of the overall lens is mostly influenced by the focal length and the physical maximum aperture which is normally achieved when the lens is zoomed The diameter of the glass in front is driven by those considerations If a lens is fast like a 28-70 f2.8 the distance from the wet lens is a compromise with mechanical vignetting that happens as you move the wet lens away For the small kit lenses like the sony 28-60 or nikon 28-70 those lenses are so small and have such a tiny aperture that will vignette very far away from the lens even if the infinity field of view is still the same For those lenses that don’t really extend when zooming you have a choice if you put them close to the rear of the wet lens or further away Nauticam has told me that they go through the various extensions they have and compare results if those are good they don’t go and create a new extension ring We have had a case with the nikon 28-70mm and the wacp-c where the extension of 30mm would vignette so they had to make ad hoc a shorter one for that lens In simple term a slower lens will always be smaller of a larger lens at equal zoom range example sony 28-70 55mm filter size vs sigma 28-70 67mm filter size This means the sony 28-70 will vignette less and due to the construction (the lens is longer at 28mm) will preserve the entire zoom range This lens uses the extension ring 50 and adding the 25mm inside the WACP-C has a gap of 5mm from the front of the lens Performance is adequate full zoom range is supported -> no need for custom 45 extension Now look at sony 28-60mm this lens has an even smaller physical aperture and again the lens is built in such a way that at 28mm is 1mm less in length than it is at 60mm Nauticam goes for the shortest 30 extension the lens has a gap of 1cm performance is good no vignetting-> no custom extension to be made Same lens with wacp-1 N120 has a gap of 1.5 cm so it doesn’t get the * of best performance that goes to the shorter N100 mount with 30 extension In summary i think this is more a case or working with what they have and selecting the extensions they have and checking performance instead of starting green field for each lens So for me this doesn’t conclude at all that a gap is required to improve performance it is just a consequence of the constraints set and the way the lens is built Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

APSC crop is not better and brings the need for different lenses just for video The only real option is Canon EF-S 18-55mm with WACP-C but no wet mounts for N120

I would agree. It reads the sensor too slow and it is APSC crop. However what is surprising is that you can get a really good rig at least than the A7IV Panasonic 20-60 comes as kit lens it is very good behind a dome for general video Sigma 105mm £649 excellent for macro Use canon 28-70 for WACP-C Use Canon 8-15mm fisheye Other options in the 16-35mm space if you really want a rectilinear lens This is very good value and you get a proper camera not an A7C with high resolution EVF and LCD

The L-Mount has been slowly making progress Nauticam has a housing with the classic N120 mount that is reasonably priced https://www.nauticam.com/collections/panasonic-mirrorless-housings/products/s5ii-underwater-housing-for-panasonic-lumix-s5ii-x-camera The lens choices thanks to the efforts of Sigma, a decent selection of native lenses and the compatibility with Canon plus some WACP-1 WACP-C and WACP-2 options make this camera an excellent full frame entry point I am already invested into Sony now and I prefer a bit more megapixels for other purposes but no doubt Panasonic will bring a high resolution camera with PDAF At a bit more than A7C you can get an almost professional grade camera that can do video and still at low cost and with a low cost housing and plenty of lenses Very good news

I have been playing with the WWL-1 and with the prototype WACP, I have also received several photos from other users here of their gear WACP-C and WACP-1 and I have to admit I am rather suprised The first assumption that I had made and perhaps other people have made too was that a dry mount would mean that the rear element of the lens was closer to the adapter compared to a wet mount This has proven wrong an all accounts. Comparing the Sony 28-60mm with flat port 45 and WWL-1 shows that on average the wet mount means that the lens is closer to the wet lens despite the port we are talking about less than 5mm With the WACP-C and 30mm extension the front of the Sony 28-60mm is over 1 cm away from the rear of the optic. With the WACP-1 on N100 mount the situation is similar to the WACP-C and if you use the N120 mount with the 35mm extension the lens is actually further away 5mm. Interestigly Nauticam puts the * for best performance on the N100 mount The other assumption that I had was that the dry mount would be more effective in terms of contrast and flare because it is dry. However with the Sony 28-60mm lens and the gap between master and water lens there is possibility of bouncing light. In addition the lens is very small compared to the port so there is a lot of space to have light rays scattering around. Does this explain why the WACP-C flares more? Not sure but it is something to test The final assumption I had was that the field of view would be the same. That is also not true, although the lenses have the same 0.36x magnification the WWL-1 sits closer to the lens than the WACP-C and the WACP-1 with N120 mount further away. So it seems like the field of view of the WWL-1 I have some questions in my mind that I would like to have an aswer to 1. Why is nauticam not making a 20mm N100 extension ring so that the 28-60mm sits right on the glass? 2. Is the gap intentional or just a concidence due to the fact the wet lenses are generic not specific to a lens? 3. Should I work to get my lens closer to the back of the glass or not? Common sense say yes, this would reduce vignetting and improve contrast reducing aberrations at the edges but maybe I am missing something here? I know the answers are not in the forum but would welcome opionions from users of those lenses

The sensor has a PGA for analog gain on board that seems to have failed or the interface controlling the gain has failed I doubt this is a setting problem

Pm sent

I would say Nauticam have a typo themselves. The A7RIV is much slimmer than the A7RV so that should read A7IV So if you have an A7RV you can use an A7IV as back up camera which is interesting generally

It is stated on their website am not sure why anybody would trust a single reseller that has likely made an typo instead of the source https://www.nauticam.com/products/na-a7rv-housing-for-sony-%ce%b17r-v-camera The newer camera is 3mm thicker it will be a problem to operate with smaller housing. The buttons on the back will get stuck The other way around you can put spacers Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk