Seafrogs / Meikon wet wide angle lens advice

[Ahmed Yahya]

Hi
has anyone tried the wet wide angle lens from seafrogs / meikon ? they offer 4" & 6" versions of it.


Wide Angle Wet Correctional Dome Port Lens Version II (67mm Round Adapter)

Wide Angle Wet Correctional Dome Port Lens ⌀ 6" (67mm Round Adapter)

 

[Barmaglot]

Note that this is not, strictly speaking, a lens - it's an add-on dome that has an acrylic hemisphere in front, flat glass plate in the back, and air inside - no actual lens elements. It restores your lenses field of view underwater as if you were shooting through a dry dome, except you can take it off underwater when you want to use longer focal lengths and don't need the wide field of view. Don't know about other lenses, but Sony 16-50mm on my A6300 wouldn't focus with it past 30-35mm FL or so (the older 4" version; I haven't tried the newer 6" one). 16mm (widest end) worked without issues. I was using it on the older fixed-port A6xxx housing, mounted via a magnetic adapter and tethered with a lanyard; it's buoyant, so when shooting smaller subjects, I just let it float above the camera. If you want a wider field of view than 24mm-equivalent (84 degrees diagonal) then you need either a true wet wide lens (Nauticam WWL-1, Inon UWL-H100, Weefine WFL-01) or an ultrawide/fisheye lens plus a dry dome port.

 

[Ahmed Yahya]

Note that this is not, strictly speaking, a lens - it's an add-on dome that has an acrylic hemisphere in front, flat glass plate in the back, and air inside - no actual lens elements. It restores your lenses field of view underwater as if you were shooting through a dry dome, except you can take it off underwater when you want to use longer focal lengths and don't need the wide field of view. Don't know about other lenses, but Sony 16-50mm on my A6300 wouldn't focus with it past 30-35mm FL or so (the older 4" version; I haven't tried the newer 6" one). 16mm (widest end) worked without issues. I was using it on the older fixed-port A6xxx housing, mounted via a magnetic adapter and tethered with a lanyard; it's buoyant, so when shooting smaller subjects, I just let it float above the camera. If you want a wider field of view than 24mm-equivalent (84 degrees diagonal) then you need either a true wet wide lens (Nauticam WWL-1, Inon UWL-H100, Weefine WFL-01) or an ultrawide/fisheye lens plus a dry dome port.

Thanks. How was the lens performance ? sharpness ? CA ?

 

[Barmaglot]

Reasonable, I suppose? Here is an album from my trip to the Similans last year, shot using A6300 with 16-50mm lens in the fixed-port housing, mostly with the wet dome attached, Archon D36V continuous LED lights rather than strobes. Keep in mind that I was very new at this - still am - so a better photographer would get much better results with the same gear.