Wide angle for Maui: Rectilinear or fisheye?

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Shortsonfire79

Registered
Messages
20
Reaction score
5
Location
Monterey, Ca
# of dives
100 - 199
I'm doing a week in Maui. At home in Monterey I usually shoot macro because rarely is vis more than 10'. I want to focus on wide angle and try some over/under shots.

My widest lens is (FF equiv) 24mm f/5.6. I'm planning to rent one (or two) lenses for my upcoming trip:

FF equiv: 16mm f/3.6 fisheye and/or 14-28mm f/5.6 rectilinear.

For reference I'm shooting M43 with the Olympus EM5ii. I have the 12-40mm f/2.8 (FF equiv 24-80mm f/5.6) and 60mm f/2.8 macro (12mm f/5.6). I've never really shot ultrawide or fisheye. My non-diver friends think if I had to choose one lens I should get the fisheye because I can defish in post process with decent results.
 
You definitely have more choices if you go with the fisheye.
Coral Garden Rainbow Reef South West Kona resized.jpg
 
I like the 12-40mm with my M5ii for fish portraits. Here are some shots from Kona, which is similar to Maui underwater. The shots have all been post-processed in Lightroom, with possibly a little PS. Mostly it's just cropping and color pop.

I use a dome... maybe 170mm(?). I have tried the 60mm macro in my dome but the autofocus was slow. A buddy told me that the macro lens would focus faster in a smaller flat port, but I don't have one.

At 12mm the lens is pretty good for landscapes.

Big Island 2019
 
You definitely have more choices if you go with the fisheye.View attachment 530140

Is this a corrected fisheye? I don't think I've seen an edit like this before. The yellow fish on the left seem really compressed, but the leftmost diver seems pretty normal.

I like the 12-40mm with my M5ii for fish portraits. Here are some shots from Kona, which is similar to Maui underwater. The shots have all been post-processed in Lightroom, with possibly a little PS. Mostly it's just cropping and color pop.

I use a dome... maybe 170mm(?). I have tried the 60mm macro in my dome but the autofocus was slow. A buddy told me that the macro lens would focus faster in a smaller flat port, but I don't have one.

At 12mm the lens is pretty good for landscapes.

Big Island 2019

Sick shots! I use a small dome with the 12-40mm and a flat port with the 60mm and have had great results. 40mm was pretty good for close shots in Maui before but I really liked 25mm and wider out there. I'll be bringing the macro but don't intend to use it unless we find a good, reefy beach.

12mm in dome, LR edits but mostly just "auto lighting" and color correction.

48325406832_66b29566f5_k.jpg

46748869671_f07616e4d9_k.jpg

48325736386_dd6c504766_k.jpg
 
Sorry, I didn't realize that you'd been out there before. You already know what to expect. I don't take very many landscape shots, so I just use the 12mm end of my 12-40mm for the reef. I also don't run into any big critters out there, but every year I see people posting pictures of whale sharks at Molokini. ...maybe, someday, I'll get to see one there...

I do mostly fish portraits, so most of my shots are closer to 40mm. Even at that, I often zoom and crop my pictures. I'll need to try my 60mm with a flat port someday.
 
Your choice really depends on what domes you have, you weren't specific on that. The fisheye in particular needs the right dome to not vignette. Also you seem to be talking about the Oly 7-14 f2.8 lens as a rental, that has some specific requirements on which dome it will fit in. The fisheye would work best with really big stuff and getting in close on reef scenics with colourful schooling fish, I've found the 12-40 easiest to deal with on fish shots and smaller schools of fish against the reef. I've never had the need to de-fish the fisheye for UW work you just keep subjects away from the edges.
 
Is this a corrected fisheye? I don't think I've seen an edit like this before. The yellow fish on the left seem really compressed, but the leftmost diver seems pretty normal.

It's not corrected for aspect/perspective/'distortion'. That's how an 180 degree horizontal shot renders from a full fisheye; the FF equivalence of my lens is 8mm so it supports 'full fisheye' vertical and horizontal 180 degree FOV. The top and bottom are just cropped. Both LR and PS support using just part of the image and correcting if you don't want it to render like that. In my setup you can zoom before the shot to take less than the full fisheye up to the limits of the individual lens/dome.

My setup is a Canon G15 with an Ikelite housing with a Dyron 8mm fisheye screwed into the housing replacing the 'normal' flat port.
 
I'm doing a week in Maui. At home in Monterey I usually shoot macro because rarely is vis more than 10'. I want to focus on wide angle and try some over/under shots.

My widest lens is (FF equiv) 24mm f/5.6. I'm planning to rent one (or two) lenses for my upcoming trip:

FF equiv: 16mm f/3.6 fisheye and/or 14-28mm f/5.6 rectilinear.

For reference I'm shooting M43 with the Olympus EM5ii. I have the 12-40mm f/2.8 (FF equiv 24-80mm f/5.6) and 60mm f/2.8 macro (12mm f/5.6). I've never really shot ultrawide or fisheye. My non-diver friends think if I had to choose one lens I should get the fisheye because I can defish in post process with decent results.
I am assuming that the fisheye you are looking at is the Panasonic 8mm f3.5. If you have access to a dome port for this lens, it is a great lens for underwater. Here are a few of the shots I have taken with that lens.

Aquacat 2013-10.jpg

Shot in the Bahamas

TCI-13.jpg

Close up of a Fire Worm shot in TCI

TCI-68.jpg

Grouper shot in TCI

TCI-105.jpg

Over/under Pic in TCI

A couple things to keep in mind if you use a fisheye lens underwater: because of the extremely wide FOV, you will need to keep a few things in mind, you will need a suitable dome port. If you are renting/borrowing the lens, make sure you pick up the right port at the same time (I used a 4 inch Zen Underwater port on an Olympus housing.). You will need to adjust your strobes much wider than what you do for macro. They will be so wide, that given your macro experience, they will look too wide. They aren't. As long as they can still light the subject, the wider you can set the strobes the better your shot will likely be. (Of course, everything does have limits.)

This lens has been around for a while, so most major photo editing software is likely to have a profile for it. This can very quickly get rid of (or at least minimize) the extreme distortion that a fisheye can give. It can also be minimized by placing straight lines such as the top of the wall as close to the center of the image as possible.

One final thought ... Have a great trip.
 
Your choice really depends on what domes you have, you weren't specific on that. The fisheye in particular needs the right dome to not vignette. Also you seem to be talking about the Oly 7-14 f2.8 lens as a rental, that has some specific requirements on which dome it will fit in. The fisheye would work best with really big stuff and getting in close on reef scenics with colourful schooling fish, I've found the 12-40 easiest to deal with on fish shots and smaller schools of fish against the reef. I've never had the need to de-fish the fisheye for UW work you just keep subjects away from the edges.

Yeah I'm expecting some vignetting with both lenses. The Meikon dome I have doesn't list as compatible for either lens but both lenses are smaller than the 12-40mm at the 40mm end so they would fit in the housing at least. After thinking about it for a few days I don't know if I'd gain much by having the 7-14mm f/2.8 since I was able to get pretty good fov at 12mm.

I'm ok with vignetting like this.

Meikon Review:
2. Olympus 8mm f/1.8. Works but with vignetting in all four corners of the frame and covering a small area of the left and right sides of the frame. However, vignetting disappears altogether if you defish the images in postprocessing. I did so using DXO Optics Pro 11 and was able to achieve an ultrawide aspect ratio of 3.2:1 with no vignetting. I suspect that vignetting can also be eliminated by using the “V3” dry mount dome port from Meikon. The V3 has only 36mm of extension as opposed to 60mm for the “V4”, but I do not have a “V3” port to test with.

I am assuming that the fisheye you are looking at is the Panasonic 8mm f3.5. If you have access to a dome port for this lens, it is a great lens for underwater. Here are a few of the shots I have taken with that lens.

A couple things to keep in mind if you use a fisheye lens underwater: because of the extremely wide FOV, you will need to keep a few things in mind, you will need a suitable dome port. If you are renting/borrowing the lens, make sure you pick up the right port at the same time (I used a 4 inch Zen Underwater port on an Olympus housing.). You will need to adjust your strobes much wider than what you do for macro. They will be so wide, that given your macro experience, they will look too wide. They aren't. As long as they can still light the subject, the wider you can set the strobes the better your shot will likely be. (Of course, everything does have limits.)

This lens has been around for a while, so most major photo editing software is likely to have a profile for it. This can very quickly get rid of (or at least minimize) the extreme distortion that a fisheye can give. It can also be minimized by placing straight lines such as the top of the wall as close to the center of the image as possible.

One final thought ... Have a great trip.

Great shots and thanks for the tips about keeping lines in the center. I'm actually looking at the Oly 8mm f/1.4 but it's the same concept. I've done some wide angle (12mm) with my current video lights and they didn't really paint the subjects well if they were big/far away. I think it'll take the first dive to really figure out light positioning once I get there.
 
I like the 12-40mm with my M5ii for fish portraits. Here are some shots from Kona, which is similar to Maui underwater. The shots have all been post-processed in Lightroom, with possibly a little PS. Mostly it's just cropping and color pop.

I use a dome... maybe 170mm(?). I have tried the 60mm macro in my dome but the autofocus was slow. A buddy told me that the macro lens would focus faster in a smaller flat port, but I don't have one.

At 12mm the lens is pretty good for landscapes.

Big Island 2019
Did you use an extension with your 60mm macro behind dome port?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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