Wet Lenses for Nikon P&S

[ScubaSteve]

I see tons of information here and other places about the different lens manufacturers but I have a questions for all you photographers out there. I am completely "amateurish" when it comes to photography. I have a Nikon Coolpix P5000 camera, with the Ikelite housing and the TTL controlled DS-125 strobe. With this, I got the only lens that appeared to be available which is the W-20 wide angle lens. I want more but can find no more that actually say they are compatible with this housing. The W-20 is a 67mm thread.

Can I just go somewhere else and get any 67mm lens as long as it is wet? I am looking for maybe something for macro shots and maybe something with additional zoom in it. Your help in explaing the "lens" basics will be appreciated by both me and whomever I buy the extra lens from (if they are available).

 

[randini]

Yep. Any 67mm (aka M67) thread'll work. Check out the Inons they havce a wide anlge, a fisheye for the wide angle and stackable macro lenses. Never used them myself, but there are plenty of satisfied users on the boards.

 

[ScubaSteve]

Thanks for your reply. That is kind of what I expected to hear. I now have more questions specific to Inon lenses and the Ikelite housings. I sent Inon an email and their response back was as follows:

However we do not have any experience to test them with any of Ikelite housing, so we can not assure you 100% compatibility even you can physically attach these close-up lenses on your housing.

Now this concerns me a little. Does anybody have any experience with how functionally compatible Inon lenses are with Ikelite housings? Is there any reason why a Macro lens from Inon would not work on an Ikelite housing? Being a newbie, I can only tread caustiously because I know no better.

 

[Nemrod]

Thanks for your reply. That is kind of what I expected to hear. I now have more questions specific to Inon lenses and the Ikelite housings. I sent Inon an email and their response back was as follows:



Now this concerns me a little. Does anybody have any experience with how functionally compatible Inon lenses are with Ikelite housings? Is there any reason why a Macro lens from Inon would not work on an Ikelite housing? Being a newbie, I can only tread caustiously because I know no better.

I went through this without conclusion and decided for the time being I would go with a different choice. Your question asks will Inon lenses work with Ikelite 67MM threads, yes, they will thread on perfectly. The next question you did not ask is will the lenses work with camera xyz? There comes the experiment at your expense.

The conclusion I came to is that 1)Any camera with greater than a 4X zoom ratio will run into diffuculties with wet mount lenses, especially wide angle lenses. 2) The larger the primary lens diameter is of the camera xyz the greater the challenge and the less likelyhood the wet mount lenses will work (without vignetting, blurred fringes and color aberations).

If you go to the Inon website and go to wet mount lenses and then peruse the selection you will come to this:

INON America - Product Catalog

This lens can be used as it is "widely reported" that it will work.

View recent threads here and wetpixel and a few other camera threads concerning the Canon G9 and wide angle lenses and report of soft focus, vignetting and blurred fringes, this applies to any high zoom ratio and long-er port combination IMO as not being optimal.

The problem, your port must allow the wet mount lens to sit as close as possible to the primary lens objective. Ikelite partially solved this problem with the G9 by providing an optioanl short port. The lower primary zoom ratio of the P5000 may allow the port to be shorter to begin with assuming Ikelite did not just stick a generic length port on there as they did with my Ikelite houisng for the 570IS which is much longer than necessary and therefore not optimal.

I believe the P5000/5100 will work with either the Inon AD lenses in the Fantasea housing if Inon made an adapter or in the Ike housing with the Type II screw on. But, Inon does not support either Fantasea or Ikelite directly, so, it sort of leaves it up to you. Ikelite as well, does not test the Inon or non Ike brand equipements and even actively ignores them, too bad. Frankly, I think the ball is in the court of Fantasea and Ikelite to configure their housings to effectively utilize the Inon/Epoque etc lenses by providing suitable, specific ports and geometries that are funtional rather than their current generic approach.

N

 

[ScubaSteve]

Thanks a lot Nemrod. I will likely say forget the concerns at some point soon and purchase an Inon lens to "see if it works ok". If I do this, I will definitely post the results so that at least the next person to go through this (of course it has to be with this camera and housing) will have a subjective conclusion.

 

[Gilldiver]

I have the Ion wide angle lens on a Ike housing running a Canon A620. At full wide open on the camera there is some minor vignetting in the corners. You can live with it and just crop later or telephoto the lens slightly so that there is none at all in the frame.

One thing to remember is that you use a wide angle lens so that you can get closer to a large object. With all underwater photography you want to do whatever you can to remove as much water between the lens and the subject. You have a great strobe (one I want to get myself) but even at full power it will not light up a subject much beyond 5 feet, so get close.

If you are doing wide angle of wrecks and such deeper then about 50 feet, think about setting the camera to Black and White or converting later. No strobe will light a wreck and I feel that the infinite shades of grey are much better then the blues you get trying to do color on large objects when deep.

Now for close up marco – all I can say is More Light, more light