Question Sony a6000 18105f4 Wet Diopter

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dkjens0705

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Location
Canoga Park, CA and Phuket, Thailand
# of dives
2500 - 4999
I've been using the Sony a6000 with the 1650 kit lens in a Meicam housing for the past four years, taking macro shots using wet diopters and video lights. I've bought a TG6 and a Sea Frogs housing and been shooting some macro, just missing the full manual option. I've also upgraded my a6000 housing to a Sea Frogs Salted Line housing. I got the Sony 18105 f4 lens and the port for same because I had hopes of good macro photos with this lens and wet diopters. Now that I've got it all put together dry I find the focusing range next to zero, meaning the autofocus doesn't focus except for at pretty much one distance, no range, just one distance. Has anybody attempted this and run into the same problem or what can I change and make this work. I would at least like the focusing range to be about 2" or 10cm.
 
Two inches is 5 centimeters, 10cm is 4".

That aside, you're running into a common problem with diopters, and you can now see why the 18-105mm lens is not a popular choice for underwater photography. There is no real way around it - you can carry multiple diopters of different strengths in order to achieve different focus distances (and stack them as needed, in different combinations), or you can get a proper macro lens. I'm using a Sony A6300 in a SeaFrogs Salted Line housing, and I have three different macro setups - Sony 30mm f/3.5, Canon 60mm f/2.8 EF-S with a Metabones IV adapter, and a Sony 90mm f/2.8 G. All three have different strengths and weaknesses.

I see that you're listing Phuket as your location - I happen to be in Phuket myself right now; if you want, we can meet and you can see for yourself how different macro lenses function in practice.

Edit: Keep in mind that dry and wet focusing with diopters is different, because water changes optical properties of a lens. Make sure you do your macro tests in a kitchen sink, bucket, pool, etc, not dry. Also, if you look at Nauticam port charts (one of the most comprehensive sources for this type of info), you can see them listing working distance of 46-74mm and maximum magnification of 0.9X for Sony 16-50mm with CMC-1, and 69-121mm (0.7X) for CMC-2, so these two together cover a range from 46mm to 121mm - just about three inches. Nauticam doesn't disclose the strength of these, but looking online, I see them estimated at +15 for CMC-1 and +10 for CMC-2. I personally use a Weefine WFL05S, which is rated at +12.5, but I've only ever used it with the 90mm lens for supermacro shots, stuff like this:

A6308053.jpg
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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