Fantasea Wide Angle With Fuji F31 fd

[Eli]

I made an adapter to use the Fantasea FWAL-02 wide angle with the subcompact Fuji housings. The FWAL-02 fixes two problems I have with the Fuji F31 fd, namely soft image sharpness at the edges underwater (not topside), and the lack of a wide angle. I made the adapter by hacksawing off the 37 mm threads from a 37-46 mm step up ring, sanding the back flat, and drilling holes to match the existing holes in the Fuji housing. The manufacture of the adapter, and some sample images are shown below. The Fuji and the Fantasea make an excellent combo. Edge sharpness is improved. An external strobe was used.

 

[JackConnick]

Nice! It's a very good lens, glad you could make it work.
Jack

 

[jkling17]

Hey Eli - are you the Eli of "Eli and Fran" fame? This is Jeff K!

 

[Eli]

No I had never heard of Fran & Eli before today, but I found their website, and they instruct at my local dive shop. Small world.

I really like your gallery and Im impressed at what youve done with your Fuji F30 without flash and using custom white balance.

 

[jkling17]

LOL. Wow - well that is a small world. You are pretty close to the Spain Inn (Piscataway, NJ) - the club meets there 2nd Tue of every month around 7pm. It's a great crowd - please come by sometime. Each month there's a presentation - typically video. speakers are sometimes club members and sometimes some pretty famous industry folks or dive boat captains from NJ. Perhaps you'll meet Eli and Fran too? In any case - you'll have a good time (and eat well).

Thanks for your kind words on my pics. I hope to do much better this year, with my Inon Wide Angle. I would like to think that I have now made most of my really bad mistakes. What you've done with that lens is very impressive - I'm not handy in that way so I bought my add-on, and can't wait to see what results I'll get! It's also useful on land as a super wide-angle - nearly a fisheye - pretty cool! August is finally getting closer ... ah, Roatan!

 

[Deefstes]

I'm impressed, both with your craftsmanship and your results. What do you do with the camera's flash if you're using this setup and an external strobe? Do you mask it out or diffuse it or anything?

I have exactly the same underwater housing and would seriously look into doing something like this as well.

 

[Eli]

Thanks for the compliment. I use the camera flash to trigger the external flash. I have a Sea & Sea YS-90DX external flash. I use the Sea & Sea fiberoptic cable and velcro system to trigger the external flash. The velcro blocks out the internal flash. For macros, I just use the internal flash with the velcro removed.

Here is a photo of my setup when I used an older Canon Camera

CanonS40 Homemade Bracket photo - Eli Finkelstein photos at pbase.com