Lumix LX10 & Kraken Compact wide lens 67mm

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Marty, I'm following your project here. I'll be building my own LX10 rig in 2023 and have been pondering some of these options as well. I've been leaning toward the AOI UWL-09 wet lens, but I didn't know about the Kraken. I certainly like the price better.
 
It's cheap because it's a wet dome, not a true lens, similar to the Backscatter Air Lens and Meikon wet domes. It restores the in-air field of view if your camera, but nothing beyond that. Keep in mind that on LX10 you also need to zoom in a fair bit to avoid vignetting with wet lenses, although if you shoot 4k video, the mandatory crop will take care of that for you.
 
Barmaglo,
Is the UWL-H100 28M67 Wide Conversion Lens a wet lens as well? So it must be because it's a dome??

 
Okay, basic primer - when light passes through a water/glass/air boundary at an angle, it refracts - i.e. the rays' path gets bent. When you're shooting a wide-angle lens underwater through a flat port, the image shrinks and suffers from pincushion distortion. Here is a fairly extreme example with a 10mm lens on APS-C (15mm-equivalent) shooting pool tiles through a flat port:

1670639388673.png


For comparison, here is the same image taken with the same settings, from the same spot, but through a dome port:

1670639459366.png


The reason dome ports create this effect is that when you place your lens at the geometric center of the dome's sphere, every ray of light that reaches the lens crosses the dome's water/glass/air boundary at exactly the right angle, in which case it does not suffer from refraction. That's the theory anyway - in practice, you can't attain this absolutely perfect positioning, but you can get close enough as to make no matter.

Now, with a compact camera that has a 24mm-equivalent lens (at its widest setting), shooting through a flat port, you will get something like this (taken in a different pool session from the above photos, so not directly comparable):

1670639801197.png


As you can see, there is moderate distortion, easily visible if you've got straight lines in your photo. Now, if you put on a dome, wet or dry (I was using a dry dome), you will get something like this:

1670639885673.png


As you can see, the lines are now straight, and field of view is expanded considerably. However, if you equip a true wet lens - Fantasea UWL-09F, in my case - you get a massively expanded field of view, albeit at the cost of fisheye-like barrel distortion:

1670640070248.png


Now, about Inon UWL-H100 - this is actually a modular lens, the base unit has a flat front element, and gives you a 179-degree diagonal angle of view in air, but only 100.8 degree diagonal angle of view underwater - this is precisely because of the refraction issues that I have outlined above. To expand the underwater angle of view, Inon sells you the optional Dome Lens Unit, which fits on the front, and expands your angle of view underwater to 144.8 degrees - note that it has no effect in air.

One big caveat regarding the Panasonic LX10 specifically: the lens on this camera moves forward and back a lot as it zooms, which causes it to sit fairly deep inside the port when set to its widest setting. This causes significant vignetting with wet wide lenses, see this thread for samples: The results are in... I finally got into the pool to test these lenses KRL-01 vs UWL-09 Pro

I don't own this camera and never used it, but from what I've seen online, you generally need to zoom it to about 35mm to avoid vignetting. With Inon UWL-H100, this can pose an additional issue: this lens is not designed as a zoom-through lens, i.e. it is designed to work with a 28mm-equivalent FL lens behind it - nothing more, nothing less. If you try to zoom in, your camera might not be able to focus. This is not something that I have had an opportunity to test, but Inon's compatibility chart does not feature the LX10 at all, so I'd be very wary of that combination.

Note that if you're shooting 4K video on the LX10, it imposes a significant crop, making your widest setting the equivalent of 36mm, and getting rid of this vignetting. 1080P crops you to about 30mm equivalent, so you will still need a touch of zoom.
 
Great explanation!

From what I've read the cheap Kraken wide-angle dome port is zoom-through. So a question, does that add any additional flexibility?
 
I don't own this camera and never used it, but from what I've seen online, you generally need to zoom it to about 35mm to avoid vignetting. With Inon UWL-H100, this can pose an additional issue: this lens is not designed as a zoom-through lens, i.e. it is designed to work with a 28mm-equivalent FL lens behind it - nothing more, nothing less. If you try to zoom in, your camera might not be able to focus. This is not something that I have had an opportunity to test, but Inon's compatibility chart does not feature the LX10 at all, so I'd be very wary of that combination.

I own both, and use it with the UWL-H100, and there is no focus issue when zooming in with the lens.

I normally use the UCL-165 for macro, but zooming in fully with the UWL-H100 creates an interesting macro-wide fov.

As mentioned, there is no need to zoom in when shooting in 4K because of the 36mm crop, but you do need to zoom in one step (step-zoom function) in 1080p to avoid vignetting.

It's actually a great combo, which I warmly recommend - main downside is the weight of the lens, combined with an already brick-like compact housing,

I think the LX10 (LX9 in Japan) was not out when the UWL-H100 compatibility chart was established, and Inon are usually not great at updating their documentation material...
 
I own both, and use it with the UWL-H100, and there is no focus issue when zooming in with the lens.

I normally use the UCL-165 for macro, but zooming in fully with the UWL-H100 creates an interesting macro-wide fov.

As mentioned, there is no need to zoom in when shooting in 4K because of the 36mm crop, but you do need to zoom in one step (step-zoom function) in 1080p to avoid vignetting.

It's actually a great combo, which I warmly recommend - main downside is the weight of the lens, combined with an already brick-like compact housing,

I think the LX10 (LX9 in Japan) was not out when the UWL-H100 compatibility chart was established, and Inon are usually not great at updating their documentation material...
oppo,

Two questions:
1. Do you see any problem zooming through your lens???
2. You have the UWL-H100 28M67 Wide-angle lens type 2 correct?


I may just get it since you have actual experience with it.
Merry Christmas,
Marty
 
oppo,

Two questions:
1. Do you see any problem zooming through your lens???
2. You have the UWL-H100 28M67 Wide-angle lens type 2 correct?


I may just get it since you have actual experience with it.
Merry Christmas,
Marty
Hi,
As mentioned, there is no (focus) problem zooming through the UWL-H100 with the LX10 (attached to a Nauticam housing) and yes it's the type 2, which I screw directly to the Nauticam NALX10 67mm flat port

cheers

b
 
Hi,
As mentioned, there is no (focus) problem zooming through the UWL-H100 with the LX10 (attached to a Nauticam housing) and yes it's the type 2, which I screw directly to the Nauticam NALX10 67mm flat port

cheers

b
Just wanted to triple-check before I get the UWL-H100.

Thanks:thumb:! - Merry Christmas
 

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