waterboy

Hi all. I am currently using the 5d mk IV and thinking of moving to a Sony a7iii. I have lots of good canon glass (8-15 / 16-35) and want to use them. Will the metabones V work ok in terms of video and photo autofocus (and hopefully tracking)? It is a deal breaker for me as I do a lot of video work and shoot natural light at f11. Thank you very much. Erez

Great read Tom, Now I just need to place a cold towel on my head to cool down my brains after all this information I will keep experimenting and will update this thread. Thank you very much. Erez

Thank you very much Chris. The lens sits in line with the port opening so no vignettes at all at 15mm. didn't try to remove the shade as it requires removing many screws.. As for the pupil placement - ​The data sheets claim the 180 port has a 110mm radius of curvature and the 230mm port has 120mm so they may not be exactly the same.. Will shoot a reef and see how the corners look.

Hey all. I was wandering what will be the problem using the 8-15mm lens (at 15mm) behind the Nauticam 180mm wide angle port. I am using the Canon 5D mk iv with the 16-35mm mkiii with a 80mm extension and the 180mm port with good results. I tried using the 8-15 behind the same port without any extensions and was pleasantly surprised. I was told that the 1800 port is basically a cat-off of the 230mm port which is the recommended port for both the 16-35 and for the 8-15. If this is the case - what may prevent the 180 from performing as well as the 230mm? Attaching a photo taken with this setup. turtle photo edited by booting exposure, Freedivers not touched. Happy to provide Raw files. I wonder if it will even work at 8mm with the port shade removed... Thank you for your input. Erez

Hey. I have ended up getting the panasonic 8mm. I have used it behind the 3.5inch port for a while and am now using it behind the 4.33inch port. I love this combo! Mainly using it for FREEDIVING shots but have just returned from tonga and found that when the whales were close enough the combo performed extremely well. My other combo- oly 9-18 behind the 4inch wide port did not perform as nicely and I have found that I needed to stop down to f10 for good sharpness across the frame. This makes me boost ISO to over 640 which in turn degrades quality... With the 8mm I can shoot at f7.1 and get awesome sharpness. I will upload some samples next week. Cheers, Erez

Hi All, I am contemplating on getting a Fisheye lens for my E-M5 setup. I mainly shoot available light and always while FreeDiving. Most of the time I shoot either Whales and other large marine life or other freedivers. I know the Panasonic 8mm is a great lens but the Samyang received great reviews in terms of image quality and sharpness. Will the fact that the lens is manual focus limit me too much? (Providing I can use the Zoom mechanism of the housing to Focus the lens). I can preset the aperture to F5.6-8 and only play with speed and iso... Will the lens be sharp behind the 4.33 dome? I know it was designed for the Panasonic but the two lenses are very similar in terms or size (Pana is 61X52 and the Rokinon is 60X48.3). Is the fact that the Pana has AF enough to justify the cost? Samyang- 260$, Panasonic-750$ Thank you very much, Erez

I actually only have this one lens so I couldn't test any other option until I returned from tonga and swapped lenses.

Had a look at the focus points and the focus distance - Focus was good and focus distance was .45 so within the workable focus range. The more I look at the photos the more I can see how soft and faulty was my old lens. I have one set of images that I shot at 11mm and on F11 and they are by far the best ones (even though they needed cropping and lots of work). I know the WB is not the best.. I have downloaded LR4 and can't seem to notice a huge difference in processing over Aperture.. I will have to jump into the pool and conduct some tests... I am getting really tempted to get the 12-50mm after seeing Alex's last few shots. Either this lens or the 60mm... cheers, Erez

Fantastic shots Alex. Will the 12-50 fit inside the 4 inch wide angle port (the one for the 9-18mm? Will it have any impact on image quality? Thanks

Nicolas, My issue was that i wanted to keep the speed at around 160-250 in order not to have to boost ISO. Now that i realise I can increase iso i will try with faster speeds. Saying that, we had a guy on the group with the 5D MK3 with the 17mmL and he was using F4.5 and 1/100 and he got good results... This is what frustrate me... Being a m43 setup I thought i will have greater DOF @F5.6 that he would have on a FF@F4.5. Bob, the issue with the whales is that you cant really get too close unless they let you... and when they do - they might suddenly be so close that they will will not fit in the frame even at 9mm. humpbacks are 12m long so there will be at least part of the shot that has more than 1 meter away... I will try and experiment with different apertures and iso next time i am in the water. I am now positive that my first lens was a lemon - looking at some test shots i took with it and with the replacement I clearly see a major difference in sharpness. would the Panasonic 8mm fisheye be supirior to the 9-18mm in terms of performance? Has anyone tried the Samyang 7.5mm? Will the fact the samyang is full manual be a major limiting factor here? Thanks, Erez

Thanks, I will download LR and give it a shot... No one seems to answer my question about F stops... Cheers, Erez

Thanks for the replies. I shot most of the whales from around 4-6m. Some shots were from a bit further - up to 12m away for the ones with a few whales. I use Aperture to edit my work and the thing that surprised me most was the difference between the files from the E-M5 and the G-12 out of the camera - the G12 looked much sharper and with more contrast. When I edited the shots I had to add a lot of contrast and definition (I think its the parallel to clarity with LR). The only way for me to add a filter will be to add it to the front of the lens, but as i mainly shoot whales from the surface I didnt think I really needed that.. guess I was wrong.I played with the white balance in editing and it does help - but produces noise. When I increase exposure I get lots of noise in those images.. Next time I will shoot overexposed and then darken the images. Will shooting brighter with high ISO produce less noise when darkening in post? My other question was about F-stop. Should I shoot on F8-11 (and increase ISO) or stay around F5.6? Will getting a larger port (like the 7-14 6inch) help with corner sharpness more than increasing F-stop? I was surprised by the shallow DOF (a Freedivers head is in focus but his shoulders are already blurred). so many questions, so much to learn.. Thanks

Hi All, I have recently bought the EM-5 and the Nauticam housing. I love the combo (I was using the G-12 for U/W before and the 5D Mk2 for land). I shoot mainly natural light and always while FreeDiving. I have bought the 9-18mm lens and the Nauticam 4inch port for it as a long awaited upgrade. I have spent a month in Tonga and during that month shot hundreds of Whale and Freediving photos - all of them were not usable due to being super soft and not contrasty. Most were shot on F5.6 on base ISO @1/160 and above. After about two weeks I was told by Nauticam to use F8 and above but I know that past F5.6 on M43 you get diffraction and loose IQ... I tried anyway and the results were not much better. Corners were a bit better but center sharpness was not great any-more. After the trip I have contacted the shop that sold me the lens and have received a new one. This new lens seems much better but still - images are not really sharp or contrasty. DOF seems very shallow and only a tiny portion of the frame is actually in focus. I shoot RAW (on the G12 as well) and the images actually look much better ooc from the G12 with a cheap Airdome... I also tried shooting with a strobe and although it is slightly better - its not good (not for a 4K setup). Anything that is not 100% in the middle of the frame is not sharp. Zooming to 11mm results in slightly better sharpness but defeats the point of having a wide angle lens. I am happy to post high Rez versions but just to show the general idea - the closer shot was on 9mm with the whale around 3m away in clear water. What am I doing wrong? I was Told to use a larger dome (to get better edge sharpness), told to buy a fisheye, told to buy the 7-14mm..... As most of my work involves shooting Freedivers I wanted the zoom lens to allow a bit of flexibility.. I have seen some amazing shots with the EM-5. I love the camera but am very frustrated at the moment.. Thank you very much, Erez

Hey. The top dawg mini will not fit neither the hc96 nor the hc3. I cant find any link to Seatools ! Cant find it on google as well. Could you please direct me to their website. Thanks

Thanks guys. Like Drew mentioned - the mg505 is SD only. The thing is that "upgrading" to the sony hc3 means that i must buy a more expensive and heavy housing - around the 1550$. The whole pack will be around AU3400$ (2500$)- almost double of what i wanted to spend. As i wrote - the camera will be used mostly for filming students and making DVD's' , so i will anyway have to downsample the footage or shoot in SD. And i will film while freediving. Will i be disappointed from the picture quality of the HDD camera ? I know from still photography that you usually advance from one set to another, the question is only how long will it take me to say - this is not enough for my needs... and you end up spending more than you planned after all. What about the Sony HC96 with an Ikelite housing? It sums up to around AU2100$. Any suggestions? i really appreciate the help.