Nikkor UW on Sony Mirrorless the write up

[Interceptor121 842]

Yesterday I ran some tests at the pool with my A1 and Nikkor UW15. It took me some time to get used to the manual focus and aperture. I found that the focus peaking function of the camera did not do a great job at getting critical focus and I probably did not leverage other features as i should have

I had a hard time with the handling as the lens is designed for nikonos housing that are much smaller than my nauticam A1 so I could not easily see the focus distance and aperture. I also got the impression that the distance scale is not very accurate or maybe I was just getting fooled by the underwater distance

As the focus peaking was not accurate I ended up keeping the focus and aperture set and then framing which was not ideal and opposite to what you do with autofocus

If someone has any tips on using this lens I would appreciate

Here some test shots 

When I managed to focus the lens is actually very sharp

 

[Alex_Mustard 0]

Really valuable info. So many people tell you how great it is, but then never actually use it. Using this lens has been possible for a long time, but everyone seems to give up on it - I think for the handling issues that you explain. 
I think treating it as a predominantly fixed focus, fixed aperture lens is the way to go. That is how we used it on the Nik V, just leave the focus fixed and then try and shoot from that distance, keeping it reasonably stopped down f/8-f/11 to give enough depth of field. I am surprised Focus peaking didn’t help (maybe try adjusting the colour and sensitivity to make that easier to use). 
But I think you will miss lots of shots, by choosing to use this over something else. Certainly for stills. I think the fixed focus and FOV are probably better suited for video.
I think it is most manageable for shooting scenes, but then it is not really wide enough for scenes. The 90deg FOV isn’t great. And I think for more open aperture shooting to make use of the water corrected optics, nailing focus gets tough. perhaps it does have a role for pelagic snorkelling. Where you want a small lens and subjects will all be more than 2m away, so focus is easy. 
I asked Nauticam if it was worth bringing my 15mm to Cayman to try it with the A7RV and they simply said ‘No’. I didn’t ask why, but maybe it relates to the difficulty of using it. 
That said, when I go to full frame mirrorless, I Will definitely get the adaptor for mine (although possibly secondhand as there are probably a few around!)

Alex 

[Interceptor121 842]

2 minutes ago, Alex_Mustard said:

Really valuable info. So many people tell you how great it is, but then never actually use it. Using this lens has been possible for a long time, but everyone seems to give up on it - I think for the handling issues that you explain. 
I think treating it as a predominantly fixed focus, fixed aperture lens is the way to go. That is how we used it on the Nik V, just leave the focus fixed and then try and shoot from that distance, keeping it reasonably stopped down f/8-f/11 to give enough depth of field. I am surprised Focus peaking didn’t help (maybe try adjusting the colour and sensitivity to make that easier to use). 
But I think you will miss lots of shots, by choosing to use this over something else. Certainly for stills. I think the fixed focus and FOV are probably better suited for video.
I think it is most manageable for shooting scenes, but then it is not really wide enough for scenes. The 90deg FOV isn’t great. And I think for more open aperture shooting to make use of the water corrected optics, nailing focus gets tough. perhaps it does have a role for pelagic snorkelling. Where you want a small lens and subjects will all be more than 2m away, so focus is easy. 
I asked Nauticam if it was worth bringing my 15mm to Cayman to try it with the A7RV and they simply said ‘No’. I didn’t ask why, but maybe it relates to the difficulty of using it. 
That said, when I go to full frame mirrorless, I Will definitely get the adaptor for mine (although possibly secondhand as there are probably a few around!)

Alex 

I have purchased this lens for video actually where I shoot predominantly manual and 4K does not show the critical focus as much

However as I got this from Japan and I have a return window I needed to test in the pool after ensuring the lens is water tight

In my opinion the lens is extremely sharp and looking at 200% it really has minimum amount of chromatic aberrations which is really suprising.

I am not sure though if a good rectilinear lens at 20mm will not be equally sharp when stopped down. My video use case for sharks is to use f/5.6 and focus at 3 meters so relatively simple. For photos I do not see how the average photographers (and by this I am not saying that I am better in fact the opposite) could master the ergonomics on this lens

If this lens can provide me 2 stops benefit on WWL-1 or rectilinear in a dome at 20mm for pelagic I will take it

I also did not spend an absurd amount of money for the lens itself although as you note the adapter is not cheap

Looking at other lenses in this range 20mm and longer I see zero use case I cannot imagine how you can work out the focus with the handling on a larger housing

For what concerns peaking I tried medium and high I did not try low. I also did not use magnification. Normally this kicks in when you rotate the focus ring as this is a manual lens with no contact the camera does not know when you are turning the focus however on my Panasonic camera that has far superior ergonomics you can simply call the magnification with a button but I have not yet found a way on my more expensive A1

For what I am concerned this lens is not usable for photography in 2023. The field of view is limited and you end up standing quite a bit back which only works when the water is crystal clear so I would agree with Nauticam suggestion for you but on the other hand if you have the lens and you are familiar with it why not try?

[Alex_Mustard 0]

1 minute ago, Interceptor121 said:

For what concerns peaking I tried medium and high I did not try low. I also did not use magnification. Normally this kicks in when you rotate the focus ring as this is a manual lens with no contact the camera does not know when you are turning the focus however on my Panasonic camera that has far superior ergonomics you can simply call the magnification with a button but I have not yet found a way on my more expensive A1

For what I am concerned this lens is not usable for photography in 2023. The field of view is limited and you end up standing quite a bit back which only works when the water is crystal clear so I would agree with Nauticam suggestion for you but on the other hand if you have the lens and you are familiar with it why not try?

My familiarity with this lens is from 25 years ago! One tip, that might or might not help is that we would always mount the Nikonos lenses upside down - as it brought the levers for focus and aperture into more convenient positions. No idea if this would help on the housing. 

I don’t have a Sony camera here to check , but I think you can zoom in the viewfinder the same way you zoom in when reviewing (pressing the button on the top right on the back - AEL?).

Alex

[Interceptor121 842]

40 minutes ago, Alex_Mustard said:

My familiarity with this lens is from 25 years ago! One tip, that might or might not help is that we would always mount the Nikonos lenses upside down - as it brought the levers for focus and aperture into more convenient positions. No idea if this would help on the housing. 

I don’t have a Sony camera here to check , but I think you can zoom in the viewfinder the same way you zoom in when reviewing (pressing the button on the top right on the back - AEL?).

Alex

The nauticam adapter is quite smart you can put the lens upside down if you wish I have no idea what was up or down but I set so that the levers are below the middle of the lens and the display on top right so I could see it

What I meant for critical focus is to magnify the display before you shoot. When you use a native or adapted lens with a focus ring this calls a screen magnified that helps evaluating focus on a 1x or 4.2x magnified area

However this control cannot be triggered for manual lenses or at least I have not found a way

I am going to do a short write up of the user experience with this lens so who has it or is considering it can be informed before buying more parts

As I said for video this will be amazing in lower light

[Interceptor121 842]

 I completed my short article please find the link here

 

https://interceptor121.com/2023/02/19/nikkor-uw15-on-sony-mirrorless-for-photography-worth-it/

Apologies but the limitations of a forum makes it impossible to introduce all the content here but happy to discuss otherwise

[LarryHallas 45]

13 hours ago, Interceptor121 said:

 I completed my short article please find the link here

 

https://interceptor121.com/2023/02/19/nikkor-uw15-on-sony-mirrorless-for-photography-worth-it/

Apologies but the limitations of a forum makes it impossible to introduce all the content here but happy to discuss otherwise

Thanks for the article. The 15mm was an incredible underwater optic! Do you think it is better thank the Nikon 8-15mm Fisheye with the 140mm Glass Fisheye Dome Port? How does it compare to the WACP? 

[Interceptor121 842]

2 hours ago, LarryHallas said:

Thanks for the article. The 15mm was an incredible underwater optic! Do you think it is better thank the Nikon 8-15mm Fisheye with the 140mm Glass Fisheye Dome Port? How does it compare to the WACP? 

I do not have the Nikon 8-15mm nor the WACP. I shoot a Canon 8-15mm on a Sony A1 and I have the WWL-1

The Nikkor UW15 is a rectilinear lens while the Nikon 8-15mm and the water contact optics are subject to severe barrel distortion so it is not possible to draw a direct comparison between those optics

A better comparison would be a 20mm prime behind a dome port or a rectilinear zoom at 20mm behind a dome port

[Klipspringer 0]

Thanks - really useful article. 

How do you connect the Nikkor lens to the Sony camera body? 

Did you consider the Nikkor UW 13mm? They look harder to get hold of.

Cheers

[Interceptor121 842]

33 minutes ago, Klipspringer said:

Thanks - really useful article. 

How do you connect the Nikkor lens to the Sony camera body? 

Did you consider the Nikkor UW 13mm? They look harder to get hold of.

Cheers

The article explains it and there are pictures

the lenses compatible are 15 20 and 85 no others are officially supported

Nikkor 13 is autofocus so it won't work only manual lenses are supported

Edited February 20 by Interceptor121

[Klipspringer 0]

Your article doesn't explain what adapter you used to mount a Nikkor UW lens to a Sony a1. I can see how you mount the Nikkor lens to the Nauticam housing (Nauticam Nikkor adapter), but then what happens between the Nikkor lens and the a1?

I meant the Nikonos UW 13mm f/2.8 - the old uw one.

Thanks.

[Alex_Mustard 0]

53 minutes ago, Klipspringer said:

Did you consider the Nikkor UW 13mm? They look harder to get hold of.

Cheers

Isaac is working on a solution for that lens: 

 

[Barmaglot 262]

8 minutes ago, Klipspringer said:

Your article doesn't explain what adapter you used to mount a Nikkor UW lens to a Sony a1. I can see how you mount the Nikkor lens to the Nauticam housing (Nauticam Nikkor adapter), but then what happens between the Nikkor lens and the a1?

There is nothing between the lens and the camera. It's a purely manual-operated lens, so there are no electronics to connect. The housing is light-tight, so there is no stray light leakage. All you need is to hold the lens in the proper position in front of the sensor, replicating its position in front of the film on the original Nikonos cameras, and the housing port adapter accomplishes that.

[Klipspringer 0]

Brilliant, thanks.

[Interceptor121 842]

16 minutes ago, Klipspringer said:

Your article doesn't explain what adapter you used to mount a Nikkor UW lens to a Sony a1. I can see how you mount the Nikkor lens to the Nauticam housing (Nauticam Nikkor adapter), but then what happens between the Nikkor lens and the a1?

I meant the Nikonos UW 13mm f/2.8 - the old uw one.

Thanks.

Those are manual lenses with no exif control. As you can see from the images the focus and aperture rely on a scale on the side of the lens

The camera is unware of aperture or focus position as it happens on full manual lenses

The lens itself does not physically connect to the lens mount of the camera it just lies on it through a rubber gasket

 

Edited February 20 by Interceptor121

[Interceptor121 842]

There is a very good article from Borut Forlan about converting it to DSLR

this was designed as a submersible lens while the conversion puts inside a housing by splitting it

At the end as the dome is quite small it performs like a fisheye in a dome

Personally I do not see how that would be better than a Canon 8-15mm that also supports very small domes and has all the functionality you need

[Isaac Szabo 98]

I have a copy of this lens but have not used it beyond a basic test at home due to the undesirable FOV for my purposes. But my experience was similar when using the Nikonos Sea & Sea 12mm fisheye. Focus peaking with my setup was not precise enough for my standards. I had to use magnified manual focus. As Alex says, on Sony cameras it is usually set to one of the rear thumb buttons by default (on my A7R II it is C3), but you can also set it to other custom buttons. Magnified manual focus can work fine for static subjects, but I found it impractical in general since many subjects are moving and even with static subjects it really slows you down. But I could see these MF lenses being more practical for video where MF is much more common. 

As a side note, the Sea & Sea 12mm seemed pretty good optically. Probably not as good as the Nikonos 13mm, but it has a smaller form factor so it still intrigues me. I may return to it at some point and turn it into an AF lens. 

[Alex_Mustard 0]

We could do with merging the two Nikonos 15mm threads. If a moderator could help with that? I used to know how to do it, but can’t find any controls to do it now.

[Isaac Szabo 98]

10 hours ago, Alex_Mustard said:

Isaac is working on a solution for that lens: 

 

I already have a fully functional prototype for my custom housing. Now I'm just working on producing the port to fit Nauticam housings so I can offer the conversion to others.

 

10 hours ago, Interceptor121 said:

Personally I do not see how that would be better than a Canon 8-15mm that also supports very small domes and has all the functionality you need

Better image quality while maintaining a small form factor (the 13mm front element is slightly smaller than a 4" dome). Probably the most significant difference is at large apertures, which isn't important to everyone. Certainly an 8-15mm fisheye is good enough for many people.

[Interceptor121 842]

55 minutes ago, Isaac Szabo said:

I have a copy of this lens but have not used it beyond a basic test at home due to the undesirable FOV for my purposes. But my experience was similar when using the Nikonos Sea & Sea 12mm fisheye. Focus peaking with my setup was not precise enough for my standards. I had to use magnified manual focus. As Alex says, on Sony cameras it is usually set to one of the rear thumb buttons by default (on my A7R II it is C3), but you can also set it to other custom buttons. Magnified manual focus can work fine for static subjects, but I found it impractical in general since many subjects are moving and even with static subjects it really slows you down. But I could see these MF lenses being more practical for video where MF is much more common. 

As a side note, the Sea & Sea 12mm seemed pretty good optically. Probably not as good as the Nikonos 13mm, but it has a smaller form factor so it still intrigues me. I may return to it at some point and turn it into an AF lens. 

Thank you I am not yet practical with the Sony menu

I think focus magnifier may be a better tool on this camera than peaking because the latter is not that great. However the resolution seems to drop when magnified a feature not unique to Sony

Other than video and studio/set type of shots I cannot see many people going to use this Nikkor manual lens but as my use case for it IS video I think the 20mm field of view will work just fine in certain but not all situations

 

[TimG 62]

1 hour ago, Alex_Mustard said:

We could do with merging the two Nikonos 15mm threads. If a moderator could help with that? I used to know how to do it, but can’t find any controls to do it now.

Age kicking in, Alex?

Done......

[Alex_Mustard 0]

17 hours ago, TimG said:

Age kicking in, Alex?

Done......

Something is. I still don’t see any moderation controls. It is possible that I don’t actually have any practical moderation permissions on my log in. 

19 hours ago, Isaac Szabo said:

 Focus peaking with my setup was not precise enough for my standards. I had to use magnified manual focus.

Since both you and @Interceptor121 comment on peaking being hard to use. I wonder if this is because the lens is stopped down already - making peaking less effective. It might be worth setting it to f/2.8 to check if peaking works better. If it does, you could then dial in the focus at the start of the dive, then shut the lens down and trust it is in focus. 

[Interceptor121 842]

13 minutes ago, Alex_Mustard said:

Something is. I still don’t see any moderation controls. It is possible that I don’t actually have any practical moderation permissions on my log in. 

Since both you and @Interceptor121 comment on peaking being hard to use. I wonder if this is because the lens is stopped down already - making peaking less effective. It might be worth setting it to f/2.8 to check if peaking works better. If it does, you could then dial in the focus at the start of the dive, then shut the lens down and trust it is in focus. 

I took shots between f/2.8 and f/11 maybe one at f/16 broadly I was at f/5.6

Peaking is problematic on the Sony because in order to work properly it needs the live view effect to be set to on

However if you set it to on the entire exposure reflects the settings dialed in the camera which means you may not be able to see a thing

With a native lens if you set live view on and close down the aperture peaking reflects the additional focus range however the nikkor is manual so the lens is physically stopped down to whatever you set and therefore peaking should reflect the aperture and work better when you are closed down so I am not sure what was going on there

It could simply be that when the ambient light is really low as it is the case of the pool I use for training contrast detection becomes less effective and peaking suffers

I did get the yellow coloring but even when it was like that the shots were not in perfect focus

Now that I know how to use the focus magnifier with the manual lens I can give it another go however I have other 5 use cases before I return to the Nikkor so it may take a while

[Isaac Szabo 98]

5 hours ago, Alex_Mustard said:

Since both you and @Interceptor121 comment on peaking being hard to use. I wonder if this is because the lens is stopped down already - making peaking less effective. It might be worth setting it to f/2.8 to check if peaking works better. If it does, you could then dial in the focus at the start of the dive, then shut the lens down and trust it is in focus. 

With my A7R II peaking works a little better with the aperture wide open, but it is still very imprecise/unreliable. The problem (at least with the A7R II) is that the camera is basing the peaking on the downscaled image being displayed on the LCD/EVF instead of the full resolution image from the sensor. And when an image is downscaled much more appears to be in focus than is actually in focus when the image is viewed at 100% at full resolution. So the peaking implementation has a fundamental flaw that makes it very imprecise. This is especially problematic with wide angle lenses since out of focus areas only blur slightly and are still lit up by the peaking on the downscaled image. It’s not quite as bad with macro lenses since out of focus areas blur much more dramatically. Obviously the right way to implement peaking would be to base it on the full resolution image from the sensor, but I’m not sure whether or not there are other camera models that do it that way.

 

5 hours ago, Interceptor121 said:

Peaking is problematic on the Sony because in order to work properly it needs the live view effect to be set to on

That is not the case on my Sony.

Edited February 21 by Isaac Szabo

[Interceptor121 842]

That is not the case on my Sony.

Try setting live view on and off

You will see that with it on the depth of field reflects in the frame

With it off it doesn’t

Focus needs to be on standard or the lens stays open

The a1 has 3 megapixel evf it would be adequate to nail focus however it wasn’t

I need to try with live view on but then i need light…

Peaking is implemented through the video pipeline it has nothing to do with the sensor read but the display

So evf peaking is better than lcd

For wide angle even low resolution is fine the camera doesn’t focus at higher resolution anyway when using autofocus

It will only readout at full resolution when exposing the frame so that you t can up the frame rate to absurd values to make AF fast

The A1 may he an exception to this rule as it reads 200 fps

 

 

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