RetroBlader
Guest
I'm by no means an expert -- in fact, I'm in the process of trying to decide on my first serious UW photography setup. I'm a serious amateur photographer on land (2 DSLRs, 8 lenses including 3 Ls), but UW photography is a whole different ballgame. I've bought a book, read numerous web articles, and went over more forum postings than I could count, and I'm only BEGINNING to understand how everything fit together.
Unlike SLR/DSLR lenses which are designed from Day 1 to fit a specific mount and to be mounted right in front of the sensor (with no more optics in between), "wet lenses" are VERY different:
- they are almost always mounted in front of another lens (the camera's built-in lens)
- depending on the mounting hardware, the distance between the wet lens and the camera's built-in lens can vary a lot. This can drastically affect the image quality. Just think back at when you hold a magnifier in front of your eye -- you can move the magnifier closer or farther and still produce an image, but at some point, the image starts to become distorted.
- land photography at most involves 2 manufacturers (e.g. having a Sigma lens mounted to a Canon DSLR), and even then, Sigma would have already thought carefully about the mounting to Canon cameras BEFORE it releases the product
- mounting wet lenses often involve multiple manufacturers, and each component was NOT designed with a final assembly in mind. E.g. in Nemrod's setup, his camera is a Canon S90, designed mainly for land use. His Inon UFE-165AD lens was designed (and sold) before the S90 was even conceptualized by Canon. Then came the housing, made by yet another manufacturer called Fisheye (FIX). But to fit all the pieces together, 2 more pieces of hardware (one 67mm-to-AD adaptor and one DIY adaptor allowing the FIX port to be attached to the 67mm end of the first adaptor). He chose this particular setup because it allows the Inon wet lens to be mounted as close to the FIX housing as possible -- optimizing image quality in the process.
There are others who also use a S90 and Inon UFE-165AD, but because they bought the Canon housing instead, different hardware pieces are needed (e.g. an INON AD base) to allow everything to fit together. They still fit, but the optical performance will not be as good, since the distance between the wet lens and the front of the camera lens is much larger than in Nemrod's setup.
I am not even going to start talking about vignetting (which necessitates either zooming in or cropping later) and how that can change the angle of view of the wet lenses.
In short, if you don't have the patience to do your homework, and have money to burn, just buy whatever combo stores put together for you. On the other hand, if you want the best performance (or spend the least amount of money, or to tailor your setup to your shooting style), be ready to do some reading and figuring out how to build your own underwater Frankenstein.
Good luck either way.
