Need recommendations for housing, strobes and lens setup for Nikon D7000

[ozzydamo]

Hi Ozzydamo! Thanks man you are funny! Yes, I love the sea creatures and never meant an insult to them by calling them big animals. Thats why I chose photography over spear fishing since I'd rather capture their beauty then to kill them. Underwater Photography is the most EXPENSIVE part of scuba next to tech diving unfortunately for me along with the costs of travel and what not. Well its like pay now or pay later. I don't want to pay 4k for a complete lesser setup then to outgrow it in few years. Might as well invest in DSLR and can use the lens when I upgrade the camera body (hopefully!). I think that I can keep my strobes and arms and just need the lens along with DSLR and housing (most expensive part!). I am looking at Nauticam, Aquatica and Subal housings for the D7000.

Love your style Ben!

I would look at this carefully - Wetpixel D7000 housing review :: Wetpixel.com

The YS-D1's look to be the best price point to performance currently they will do you for wide angle also(buy one for macro firstly and learn how to use it first- that's what I am doing).

Lenses I have picked are- 60mm nikkor macro 105mm nikkor macro(I would get the latest models-Nikon AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor f/2.8G IF-ED Lenses as they can't be left in manual by mistake and ruin your dive) and I am about to buy the tokina 11-16mm rectilinear lens and big dome.

I went the AD7000 Aquatica, because of its performance in use and the after sales service is excellent.

 

[deeper thoughts]

good stuff

 

[Chuck Tribolet]

The Tokina 10-17 seems to be MUCH more popular underwater than the 11-16. I know lots of folks with the 10-17 and nobody with the 11-16.

I'd hold off on the 105 until you have used the 60. Adm Linda and I each have both, and never use the 105 underwater. I'm pretty Adm.
Linda has the AF-S versions, and I'm pretty sure they have M/AF switches. And you should have an assembly checklist, so that's just
an item on the checklist.

 

[PatW]

Something I left out, a focus light. On my latest diving excursion, I discovered the joys of a focus light. I have the Sola 800 which is not that pricey. The nice thing is that it has three levels of white light and three levels of red light. Most critters do not respond to red light. The other REAL nice thing is that its batteries are internal so to charge them, all I do is plug in a charger. I don't have to muck with O rings and all that stuff.

At first, I thought that a focus light would be a sometime thing for night dives. But I have found that it comes in handy for low light situations like peering under ledges at fish and things in the gloom. It is also surprisingly useful in macro situations. Often a little creature is tucked away into a relatively inaccessible spot. It is hard to tell if my strobes will light it up. In those situations, I can light up the critter with my focus light on max and that and the strobes usually does the trick.

So now, I operate with the focus light on the housing for all my dives (but it is not as useful with the Tokina 10-17 as it is for macro but still).

In defense of the Sigma 17-70, I will say that for reef fish, it works pretty well. Most reef fish do not let one get close enough with the Tokina 10-17 to work well. Very large fish and tolerant fish are different. For small fish, the Nikon 60 macro is better. I don't have the Nikon 105 macro, but I would think that it would be very good for small fish like damsel fish, small butterfly fish and others.