rks
Contributor
I just put together a new rig: a Sony a6500 in a Nauticam housing, with a 16-50mm kit lens. Dual Sea&Sea YS-D2 strobes. In addition I Have the CMC-2 Diopter and a WWL wet wide angle lens. I’m also using Nauticams Auxiliary battery pack in the housing.
Negatives: No way to manually set the camera’s strobe power to super low, or even manual, best you can do is to set a -3 stop on TTL, this means you still fire a fair amount of power out of the camera strobe. Flash sync is 1/160 which seems slow for a mirror less camera, limits ability to do into the sun shots when doing mixed light work.
Positives: In body stabilization is killer, super fast autofocus, back button focus with the Nauticam housing works very very well. The auxiliary battery means you can do 3 dives on the camera without removing it from the housing. The housing has excellent ergonomics although it does randomly seem. To push the up button (Display) which means sometimes your data shifts. The camera also will not let you set custom white balance from a sampled target while using any of the recalled settings. High ISO is super clean, I shot the entire first day at 640 without noticing in the images until I checked the camera the next morning, this gives great flexibility.
The WWL really is too large to put on the arm when not in use, but you can definitely hand it to a dive buddy if you need to take it off for a quick macro shot underwater which give great flexibility. The nauticam port for use with the 16-50 puts the zoom/focus gear on the barrel instead of tying into the more conveniently located knob on the housing’s left side. As rigged the housing makes for a pretty good range underwater, although shots at the extreme end of the diopter have a very close focus distance meaning it’s tough to get to some subjects. I now understand the need for a 100 or 90mm macro lens!
Overall I’m quite happy with the results I’m getting out of the rig, and it’s very nice to shoot with. I have two sets of the larger Stix floats on my ULCS arms and while not buoyant the housing feels good to the hands. More floats can be fitted but it makes it hard to aim the housing down as it continuously up rights itself underwater.
Negatives: No way to manually set the camera’s strobe power to super low, or even manual, best you can do is to set a -3 stop on TTL, this means you still fire a fair amount of power out of the camera strobe. Flash sync is 1/160 which seems slow for a mirror less camera, limits ability to do into the sun shots when doing mixed light work.
Positives: In body stabilization is killer, super fast autofocus, back button focus with the Nauticam housing works very very well. The auxiliary battery means you can do 3 dives on the camera without removing it from the housing. The housing has excellent ergonomics although it does randomly seem. To push the up button (Display) which means sometimes your data shifts. The camera also will not let you set custom white balance from a sampled target while using any of the recalled settings. High ISO is super clean, I shot the entire first day at 640 without noticing in the images until I checked the camera the next morning, this gives great flexibility.
The WWL really is too large to put on the arm when not in use, but you can definitely hand it to a dive buddy if you need to take it off for a quick macro shot underwater which give great flexibility. The nauticam port for use with the 16-50 puts the zoom/focus gear on the barrel instead of tying into the more conveniently located knob on the housing’s left side. As rigged the housing makes for a pretty good range underwater, although shots at the extreme end of the diopter have a very close focus distance meaning it’s tough to get to some subjects. I now understand the need for a 100 or 90mm macro lens!
Overall I’m quite happy with the results I’m getting out of the rig, and it’s very nice to shoot with. I have two sets of the larger Stix floats on my ULCS arms and while not buoyant the housing feels good to the hands. More floats can be fitted but it makes it hard to aim the housing down as it continuously up rights itself underwater.