Advice on housing for Sony a6300 for brand newbie

[GivernyKate 1]

Hi there,

I am looking for advice on what housing to get for my Sony a6300. This will be my first underwater housing and I am overwhelmed with the options.

The main type of photos I live to take above the surface are tight shots of wildlife and macro, so housing which could accommodate a macro lens would be preferred.

Thank you for your help

[Lewis88 13]

Seafrogs salted line.

[Barmaglot 250]

I'm quite happy with my SeaFrogs Salted Line housing. I generally use it with 8" dome and Sony 10-18mm lens for wide-angle and long macro port with Sony 90mm FE lens for macro, adding Weefine WFL05S diopter for supermacro. Note, however, that in both of these cases manual focus is not available, and while 10-18mm focuses near-instantly and almost always accurately, 90mm tends to hunt, and you need to hold the camera absolutely still while it does its thing. The 90mm is also quite expensive. Less expensive alternatives for macro include the Sony 30mm f/3.5 Macro (fits the basic port) and the kit 16-50mm PZ in a short macro port with a diopter in front of it.

[ChrisRoss 150]

I would suggest not assuming the camera you have is the one you should house.  there are lots of pluses and minuses with UW photography.  A lot of people use the Sony cameras UW and are happy but as an overall system they can leave something to be desired.  For example the 90mm macro is reported to hunt and working distance arguably too long, the 30mm macro is probably too short and the working distance too small - depending on what you want to shoot.  The Sony APS_C cameras don't have a manual strobe option which can be an issue and a native fisheye option is not available for wide angle.

Underwater macro lenses can easily be too long as backing up to shoot bigger subjects is not ideal as you can have too much water between you and your subject.  Whether that is big problem will depend a lot on what you want to shoot and where you are diving.  For example if you were diving in temperate waters and wanting to shoot very small nudis and other life, the 90mm could be a good solution, but if you were shooting tight shots of larger critters and wanting to be able to swap to fish portraits the 90mm could be annoying.  Temperate waters tend to have floaties causing backscatter, so backing off means more potential backscatter in the frame and also the lens might decide to focus on the floaties instead of the backscatter.

Loads of different housings to choose from - some like the Sea Frogs and it will do the job but it's not necessarily well optimised for wide angle shooting.  Aluminium housings have the most adaptability to the widest range of lenses and have options like 45° viewfinders which can make a big difference for macro shooting.