Issue with Ikelite Customer Support

[lupiphoto]

Hello,
I am contacting you all a little bit out of dispair.
Recently I bought a whole new stepup with Ikelite and bought their compact dome for my sony 16-35mm, along with extension, as advertised on their port guide.
The results I get from it are not good, and I think its beacause the lens is nearly touching the glass when at 16mm. It looks like I am shooting with a cheap camera/lens.
I approached them, sent photos of the set up, multiple test shots. They replied saying I should shoot with high iso and closed f.stops, which I would not be happy with. But still tried that, sent over the samples, even then the photos are poor. Then they started taking longer and longer to reply. At some point they suggested I get the full 8" dome and perhaps the retailer would make an exchange. And then they just stopped replying. Ghosting me.
I've sent two more emails, but not a word for 22 days.
I don't know what to do... I am so disappointed.
The seller in France is also not replying.
Do you have any suggestions on what I could do next?
I would appreciate your help.
Thank you in advance.
Lucia

 

[Barmaglot]

What aperture settings are you using?

 

[tursiops]

So you buy a dome that requires smaller apertures -- clearly stated in the Ikelite literature on the dome -- and then complain that you don't want to use smaller apertures?

You ask what you can do next. I suggest using smaller apertures.

 

[lupiphoto]

What aperture settings are you using?

I have a whole lot of shots at different apertures. This one was on f.4. Mind you that was a straigh underwater wall I was shooting head on, so there is no physical difference in focal distance between the center and edges.

 

[tursiops]

I have a whole lot of shots at different apertures. This one was on f.4. Mind you that was a straigh underwater wall I was shooting head on, so there is no physical difference in focal distance between the center and edges.

It is not only the distance that is critical, it is the angle of the light rays coming through the various components...water, glass, air, glass, air.

 

[lupiphoto]

So you buy a dome that requires smaller apertures -- clearly stated in the Ikelite literature on the dome -- and then complain that you don't want to use smaller apertures?

You ask what you can do next. I suggest using smaller apertures.

Hi there, thanks for your reply.
Yes, I do complain. Not just at the performance of the dome but also the client support.
And I quote from Ikelite's website:
"...unless you're doing reef surveys, you may not even notice a difference in edge sharpness".
This lens should not be on their list for the compact dome, it's clear in dome port physics and underwater optics literature why. If you feel like spending some time, there are two very good articles:

Understanding Flat Port and Dome Port Theory

One of the key features of underwater photography is the dome port. Despite it's ubiquity, it's effects are largely misunderstood or at the very least, poorly explained. In this post I'm going to talk about why we use dome ports, how they work and what's the best way to use them. Most...

oceanity.com.au

Methods to determine the appropriate dome port for a wide angle lens in an underwater housing

Warning this is an extremely technical article that I have written on request. If you are not familiar with optics, geometry, housings do not attempt to perform a calculation by yourself and rely o…

interceptor121.com

I spent a long time testing this set up and it's just not right. There was no real science applied to the testing of this combo.
You can't simply push a lens forward until there is no vignetting, the optics are wrong.
Of course I couldn't have know or tested the gear before hand. And now I sit with an unsuitable gear.
I have to state I don't use strobe lighting, natural light only, so yes I don't want to use small apertures. I never had to with the previous ikelite setup I had with the full 8" dome, and I dont want to do so now, after spending well over 4000 dollars on photographic gear.

I think you might feel the same in my shoes.

 

[tursiops]

I think you might feel the same in my shoes.

Perhaps. But if I were in Ikelite's shoes, I would probably stop responding to you too. What do you expect them to do?

 

[lupiphoto]

Uau, I am going to be frank here, I hope you don't need to work with clients for a living.

I have much better treatment from companies that I have spent far less money with, then Ikelite.
It's about beeing professional and caring for the client that is investing a small fortune in their gear. They should care if they are meeting the expectations and standards set by their marketing and product guides.

What they should do is review this lens combo again, properly this time, remove this dome from their list of recommended ports because it's actually bellow standards. And allow me to exchange the item for the larger dome that will, hopefully, have had some proper optical testing done to guaranty an acceptable optical performance.
I would gladly pay the difference.

But the door has been shut. Oh, if I was some influencer, this would have been a different story...

 

[tursiops]

Uau, I am going to be frank here, I hope you don't need to work with clients for a living.

I have much better treatment from companies that I have spent far less money with, then Ikelite.
It's about beeing professional and caring for the client that is investing a small fortune in their gear. They should care if they are meeting the expectations and standards set by their marketing and product guides.

What they should do is review this lens combo again, properly this time, remove this dome from their list of recommended ports because it's actually bellow standards. And allow me to exchange the item for the larger dome that will, hopefully, have had some proper optical testing done to guaranty an acceptable optical performance.
I would gladly pay the difference.

But the door has been shut. Oh, if I was some influencer, this would have been a different story...

Influencers often think they have influence. Most don't.

 

[Barmaglot]

I have a whole lot of shots at different apertures. This one was on f.4. Mind you that was a straigh underwater wall I was shooting head on, so there is no physical difference in focal distance between the center and edges.

You're running into a fundamental physics issue. A dome port in water acts as a lens element, presenting the lens behind it with a curved virtual image. Google 'dome port theory' and you'll find a bunch of articles with detailed explanations, but the gist of it is, even if you're shooting a straight wall head-on, it becomes a dome with the curvature proportional to your dome port's radius, so the corners are significantly closer to your camera than the center.

Depth of field is inversely proportional to magnification, so large sensor cameras - and your is, I infer from the lens, full-frame - have a thinner depth of field at an equivalent aperture setting than a smaller sensor camera would.

Depth of field is also inversely proportional to the aperture, so closing down the aperture will bring more of the image into sharper focus. I shoot an APS-C camera (Sony a6300) and I typically use f/8 to f/11; with a full-frame camera, you should probably be targeting f/13-f/16 as a baseline, especially with a small dome.

Yes, this means raising the ISO and/or slowing down the shutter speed to compensate, as well as raising strobe power - this is the reason why large-sensor cameras need big powerful strobes for wide-angle shots, whereas small-sensor compacts can get away with smaller ones.

You can also get a larger dome to counteract this effect - while Ikelite doesn't sell any domes larger than 8 inches, you can get the much larger Zen DP230 in an Ikelite mount. You don't mention which specific dome you have, but from the photos in your post and Ikelite's offer to get the 'full dome', I infer that you're using the 75344 compact dome - Ikelite's recommended setup for better edge sharpess is indeed 75340 8-inch dome, and this can indeed help, although shooting rectilinear wide full-frame at f/4 is a pipe dream regardless of dome size.

Finally, you can switch to a fisheye lens; either Canon 8-15mm f/4L or a Sigma 15mm, using a Metabones or MC-11 adapter. This will give you a much wider field of view and greater depth of field, at the cost of barrel distortion. Most underwater photographers prefer fisheyes over rectilinear ultrawide lenses, unless shooting manmade objects with straight lines such as wrecks - see this thread for some examples why: The advantages of fisheye zooms!

Note that the Canon 8-15mm, by itself, has basically two settings - a circular fisheye (i.e. a round image covering a hemisphere surrounded by black) at 8mm, and a 180 degree diagonal fisheye at 15mm - intermediate positions just give you varying degrees of vignetting. If you don't want the circular fisheye look, you can mount it on a teleconverter to get some more reach. A 1.4x teleconverter will give you 180 degree fisheye at 11mm, whereas a 2x teleconverter will give you the full zoom range. However, if you opt of the 2x option, make sure to get the latest Kenko Teleplus HD Pro version, as older ones produce significant image quality degradation.

If you really want to shoot at wide apertures underwater, then your only real solution is a Nikonos RS 13mm adaptation by Isaac Szabo - see this article for full details: Review of the Nikonos 13mm Conversion for Sony Mirrorless It is currently only available in Nauticam and SeaFrogs mounts, but I'm sure Isaac could develop an Ikelite adapter if needed. It is, however, a very limited availability item, with two samples up on ebay as I'm writing this - one for $3400 and another for $3900, plus the $1000 conversion fee and the $200-ish Sony 50mm donor lens. It used to be cheaper, in the $1200-1500 range, but the availability of a viable conversion method for modern mirrorless cameras (there were older conversions, but they only worked for Nikon DSLRs) has spiked demand, and thus prices, since this lens was only produced from 1992 to 1996, there are maybe a few hundred in circulation, and no more will ever be made.