Close up lens - how to manual focus to minimum focus distance underwater

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

stepfen

Contributor
Messages
1,040
Reaction score
889
Location
Greece
# of dives
200 - 499
Hello,

I have a Sony a5100 camera with a Meikon housing, a single strobe (S&S YS-02) and a led video light to help with focusing.

I just bought an INON UCL-165 close up lens and I am doing my first trials (topside for now) to get closer look at things.

I've noticed that, as expected due to the very shallow depth of field, the autofocus of the camera is struggling. My camera has quite fast autofocus but quite often it fails all together. Situation will improve once I get used to the new working distances but I am also looking for alternatives.

In a previous trip a fellow diver who was using the same lens (and inspired me by letting me try it with my camera) was actually using manual focus, set to the minimum distance (he was using a compact Canon camera of some kind and I don't know how he was actually doing it) and he was just moving the whole rig back and forth until he got the desired focus.

I am thinking to try this method out. I can set the camera to manual focus through the menus, but the problem is that once the camera is in the housing I can't alter the focus itself because focus is changed with a slide button on the lens that I physically don't have access to.

How do I set the camera to focus on the minimum focus distance underwater? I can do it topside by taking the camera out of the housing, but if the camera goes to sleep mode due to inactivity (eg while I am gearing up), I am afraid that the focus setting will be lost. Anyway it's not practical to have to open the case before each dive to just adjust the focus or keep the camera on all the time.

Any neat ways of doing that?

Of course any related tips and tricks (other than change my housing or my rig all together to a DSLR one :S ) are also very welcome.
The reason I didn't post this in the Sony's dedicated section is that I am also looking for more general tips on the topic.

Thanks in advance
 
I don't know about the A5100, but on my A6300, the manual focus distance setting is retained through power down/power up cycle. Try it, it might work. You can also look into configuring your camera for back-button focus, then locking focus and rocking the camera back and forth to fine tune your focus point. Enable focus peaking to help you identify the focus plane on the screen.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

Back
Top Bottom