Question Seafrogs Sony A6500 + 6'' Optical dome + Tokina 10-17

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kalani80

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Location
paris
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Hello everybody,

I shoot only wide angle and I'm searching for a setup which would not be very expensive (I dive a couple of times per year) and can work great in the following situations :
1. Diving with 2 strobes
2. Snorkeling
3. Over under shots
What do you think about the following combo ?
  • Sony A6500
  • Seafrogs housing
  • 6'' optical glass dome port
  • Tokina 10-17 fisheye with sigma MC11
  • 2 sea and sea Ys110a strobes (strobes that I have for the moment)
  • Dual handles
Concerning the compatibility between the tokina 10-17 and the 6'' optical glass dome port, it is not very clear on seafrogs website. So, do you have a real life experience with this setup?

For over-under shots, 6'' would be a little bit small but it should works ok when the sea is calm, right?
Note : I don't really need a zoom ring because I mainly stay at the widest.

My main camera on land is a Sony A7III. So , I also think about a setup with the canon 8-15mm but I will also have to add a flash trigger ans so on...
Maybe would you recommend another completely different setup?
Thank you for your help
 
I haven't tried it myself, but several posters here and elsewhere have indicated that it works, more or less. There is a zoom gear design that you can print, linked here: Tokina 10-17 vs Sony 10-18 vs AOI 09P

As a point of caution, I've seen multiple complaints that autofocus with this lens and A6000/6300/6500 cameras is unreliable. It is supposed to be better on newer bodies (6100/6400/6600).

Also, the 6-inch dome is a kind of 'neither fish nor fowl' for this lens - it's too big for proper CFWA, but not really big enough to easily shoot splits. The nice thing about fisheye lenses is the ability to get really close to a subject and have it full the foreground, while retaining a nice amount of scenery around them, but this pretty much requires a small dome - see here for an example: The advantages of fisheye zooms!

I personally shoot wide-angle with my A6300 using a 16-50mm kit lens, SeaFrogs housing with short macro port and AOI UWL-09F wet lens. Before that I used a 10-18mm lens and an 8-inch acrylic dome. At some point, I think, I'm going to break down and buy a Tokina 10-17mm then print an extension for the 4-inch dome that I've had for several years now - that would be a great CFWA combo.
 
Hello Barmaglot,

Thank you for your answer.
So it seems that the setup I listed before is not optimal.
For the moment, I have my 12 years old Sony Nex5n in a Nauticam housing with 2 configurations :
1. 16mm + fisheye converter with a 4,33'' dome -> Very compact. It is my go to setup.
2. Sony 10-18mm with a 7'' dome -> I used it a couple of time but the buoyancy is a little bit annoying and it takes more space. So it is better to use this setup for split shots.

So, I don't know how to upgrade my setup without having to sell a leg ;-)
Is there a better fisheye lens that would work with my current camera and domes?
Even if I find a used Sony a6500 Nauticam housing, I will have to :
1. Stick with the lens /dome I have -> I'm not sure that the quality will be much better
2. Change also the lens and the dome -> out of my budget

So, i am a little bit lost...

What would you recommend?
 
I would say 3 things :
Sharpness : 16mm with fisheye converter is not very sharp

Focusing distance : I had a few times where I was closer than the minimum focus distance

Number of images per second in order to not miss the shot
 
Number of images per second in order to not miss the shot
From this I'm inferring that you're shooting natural light, no strobes - correct? In that case, the biggest upgrade you can get for image quality, bar none, is to get a good pair of strobes. With natural light, I'm guessing you're shooting the 16mm/f2.8 at fairly open apertures, right? Stopping down to f/11 or thereabouts will boost its sharpness a great deal, and strobes will easily let you do that.

Past that, things get expensive. You can put a Tokina 10-17mm on your existing setup - all you need is a proper extension and zoom gear - but a NEX-5N is going to struggle with autofocus on an adapted lens. An a6400 (or a6100/6600/6700) will focus fine, but you will need a new housing, and an NA-A6400 will not come cheap, even used. SeaFrogs... I like them as much as the next guy, more than most probably - I've been using a SeaFrogs housing for the past six years, and I just ordered a new one for my a6700 - but coming from a Nauticam housing, even an old one, it will certainly feel like a major step back in ergonomics for you.

Another option is 16-50mm kit lens plus Nauticam WWL-C/WWL-1 or another wet lens such as AOI UWL-09. This will let you focus right down to the glass, along with a fisheye-like field of view, but you will need a suitable N85 flat port. You can see samples of such a setup (a6300 + 16-50mm + UWL-09F) in my Instagram.
 
Thank you again for your help Barmaglot.
I have a 6 years old daughter so during my last trips, I used my camera for snorkeling so with natural light.
But when diving, I already have a pair of (quite old) strobes : sea and seas Ys-110a .
For the apertures, I just checked my photos and during my last trip, it was mainly between 4,5 and 8 and Iso 100.

I use the old fisheye converter : Sony VCL-ECF1 but I read that there is a ECF2 : is it better?
Or is there another fisheye lens with a better sharpness in Sony E mount?

I agree with you : Tokina 10-17 with a Sony Nex 5n will not work well . So it is not an option to consider.

Wet lenses : They are very heavy and the FOV seems narrower than the Sony fisheye converter. And for splits, it seems to be very complex :)

Another option: A seafrogs housing with a Sony A7III (my main camera) ? I read the port charts and it seems that the dome ports are mainly made for rectilinear wide angle lenses (Sony 16-35 or sigma 17-28) and not fisheye . So :
- Option 1 : Sony A7III + metabones + Canon 8-15 : that would be the perfect setup : very wide FOV, very good Sharpness, better dynamic range, better burst image etc... BUT Is there a seafrogs dome port compatible with this setup? The 6'' glass dome port? And it seems that when used with strobes and optical fiber cables, TTL doesn't work : is that right?
- Option 2: Sony A7III + Sony 16-35 F4 + 6" glass dome port : better sharpness (even if 6" dome is a little bit small for this kind of lens), better Burts images etc... but narrower field of view and less compact than my actual setup
 
I use the old fisheye converter : Sony VCL-ECF1 but I read that there is a ECF2 : is it better?
IIRC one of those is silver and the other black; the optics are the same.

Or is there another fisheye lens with a better sharpness in Sony E mount?
Alas, not a native autofocusing one, no. It's either a marginal quality lens with a converter (16mm f/2.8 + VCL-ECF on crop, 28mm f/2.0 + SEL057FEC on full frame), or an adapted lens such as Tokina 10-17mm, Canon/Nikon 8-15mm, or Sigma 15mm. There's a recent leak about a Sigma 15mm f/1.4 fisheye coming out in FF E-mount in about a week, but again, that's FF - and with an f/1.4 aperture, it's bound to be large and expensive.

Wet lenses : They are very heavy and the FOV seems narrower than the Sony fisheye converter. And for splits, it seems to be very complex :)
It's not as wide, but I find it to be wide enough. Weight... I guess it's a matter of personal preference, but I find it manageable.

- Option 1 : Sony A7III + metabones + Canon 8-15 : that would be the perfect setup : very wide FOV, very good Sharpness, better dynamic range, better burst image etc... BUT Is there a seafrogs dome port compatible with this setup? The 6'' glass dome port? And it seems that when used with strobes and optical fiber cables, TTL doesn't work : is that right?
It should work; the dome is a little large for CFWA, but it's not too big. You will have to play around to find the proper extension though, as SeaFrogs doesn't maintain a proper port chart, unlike most other housing manufacturers. Until recently they didn't even have extensions for their ports, but a couple months ago they finally started making them, so you can customize the port extension length for your lens.

If you want to take advantage of the zoom capability of Canon 8-15mm, you will also have to come up with your own zoom gear. Note that on its own, this lens basically has two settings - circular fisheye at 8mm and 180 degree diagonal at 15mm; anything in between just gets you some vignetting. It is, however, popular with a 1.4x teleconverter (on the Canon side of the adapter mount, not Sony), which gives you a useful zoom range of about 11-15mm, i.e. you get the 180 degree diagonal at 11mm, but you can narrow it down somewhat if you want to. A 2x teleconverter would, in theory, make the entire zoom range useful, but in practice it produces unacceptable image degradation.

If you don't want the zoom/circular fisheye capability, then Sigma 15mm in EF mount is a cheaper option.

TTL capability depends on what trigger you use. Using TRT Electronics s-TURTLE system should get you TTL even with your existing strobes, although I don't know how accurate it would be. UW-Technics is another option, but you'd need to replace the strobes, as they don't have a profile for YS-100a. If you use a manual-only trigger, such as the SeaFrogs one, or a TRT manual trigger, or the AOI one, then you will have to run the strobes in manual mode. Likewise if you use wired triggering straight off the hot shoe.

- Option 2: Sony A7III + Sony 16-35 F4 + 6" glass dome port : better sharpness (even if 6" dome is a little bit small for this kind of lens), better Burts images etc... but narrower field of view and less compact than my actual setup
I would go for 8" dome rather than 6" for this lens, and I wouldn't call it a bad setup per se, but it gives you a different kind of shot. It might be better for wrecks, for example, keeping straight lines straight, or possibly for video, where you don't want the fisheye distortion for subjects moving across the frame, but for still images of wildlife, fisheye is generally better.
 
Thank you again Barmaglot for all the informations ;-)

I think that I have a headache now o_O

I agree with you : I prefer fisheye lenses over rectilinear wide angle.

So, if we take the problem from the lenses point of view :
  • To use a canon 8-15 with a Sony full frame body -> No seafrogs option (even with a Canon body), Nauticam is the way to go for top quality but very expensive. Maybe something the 2 like an Ikelite (even if I hate the square shape of those housings) ?
  • To use a Tokina 10-17 with a Sony APSC body -> Same problem as above (even with a canon body) : No seafrogs option, Nauticam is the way to go for top quality but very expensive. Maybe something the 2 like an Ikelite (even if I hate the square shape of those housings) ?
  • Other fisheye option : Sony 28mm + fisheye converter: not a very good quality considering the price to invest (even with seafrogs)
 
I wouldn't say "no SeaFrogs option" for fisheye; you just have to 3D print a gear. A design already exists for Tokina 10-17mm with A6xxx Salted Line housing, and creating/adapting something for the 8-15mm shouldn't be too difficult.

Technically, SeaFrogs do have a natively supported fisheye option - Nikon Z6/Z6II/Z7/Z7II are supported with FTZ adapter and Nikon 8-15mm fisheye: https://www.aditech-uw.com/downloads/sf-z7-system-21.jpg

You could also look for a Fantasea housing for A6100/A6400 and use that with a Tokina 10-17mm; this also has native support.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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