Indonesia trip with S95 + Recsea + Fisheye UWL04 + macro Dyron UCL67II + Inon D2000

[Thalassa Dive]

Ripseven!! Hope you're there... i'm also buying my kit from Plongimage and Hubert says that he can only send me the Dryon Fisheye 16mm - he says it is the same as the Fix Fisheye UWL-04. Which one did you actually purchase from him?

I understand that the FIX has 130 FOV. Does anyone know what the performance of the Dryon is like? Vignetting, FOV etc. Dryon reports the following specs:

* Depth rated: 60 meters
* Material: Aluminum - Polycarbonate
* Warranty: 2 years

Fisheyes 16mm for Fisheye & Recsea housings for S90/S95
16mm underwater with the 28mm, zoomable 7 times

Coef: 0.42x
Angular coverage: 145°
Weight: 660 grs (160 grs underwater)
Size: 157 x 92.1mm

Cheers!

 

[Midget]

Wow!! Great job! Makes me wish I was going back to Indonesia in May instead of to Belize.

 

[ozziworld]

Ripseven,

Very nice album. On the clown/anemone shots and the moray from the 100 photos album, you had the wide angle lens on? I noticed you are zooming in as well.

How close was the subject to the lens?

I have never tried getting that close on the my Inon UFL165.

Also, noticed you were shooting shutter speeds upward of 1/500 with the flash ON. Does your strobe expose reliable at very high shutter speeds? I have only used up to 1/500 with my Inon s2000 strobe.

 

[ripseven]

Very nice album. On the clown/anemone shots and the moray from the 100 photos album, you had the wide angle lens on? I noticed you are zooming in as well.

Yes wide angle with zooming

How close was the subject to the lens?

It depends. For the moray : 40 cm, for the clown : the closer I can approach in order to avoid the clown "attacking" the camera (from 30 cm to 1.50 m)

I have never tried getting that close on the my Inon UFL165.

On some wide angle pics, my lens is almost touching the subject (nudibranch for example)

Also, noticed you were shooting shutter speeds upward of 1/500 with the flash ON. Does your strobe expose reliable at very high shutter speeds? I have only used up to 1/500 with my Inon s2000 strobe.

good question ! As I am a beginner with this configuration, I can't really answer it ...
Some of my pics are 1/1000 and the strobe did work well.
I never had any issue with my strobe exposure.
My configuration is full manual : I put the small plug into my strobe to deactivate TTL mode.

 

[ozziworld]

Thank you Ripseven, I tried the faster shutter speeds on my S90 and Inon strobe earlier and it worked great all the way to 1/1000.

I think that gives us better flexibility with getting good sun burst shots too.

I will also try getting in closer with the wide angle. I really like the effect you were able to achieve.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Durwin99]

Ripseven, I love your photos, but I wanted to ask why you selected the Fisheye UWL04 lens for the RecSea housing over perhaps the Inon options? I don't have any direct experience of this kind of thing, so its hard for me to judge whether I would prefer a 100 or 150 degree lens (Inon) or the 130 degree of the Fisheye lens... I really hadn't considered the UWL04 on a RecSea housing, though I think its the best option for a FIX S95 housing because the threads match. I'm about to buy an entire UW kit for an S95 but I still don't know what !! And which adaptor did you need for the UWL04 lens?
Thank you very much for any answers!
-Durwin

 

[ripseven]

Ripseven, I love your photos, but I wanted to ask why you selected the Fisheye UWL04 lens for the RecSea housing over perhaps the Inon options? I don't have any direct experience of this kind of thing, so its hard for me to judge whether I would prefer a 100 or 150 degree lens (Inon) or the 130 degree of the Fisheye lens... I really hadn't considered the UWL04 on a RecSea housing, though I think its the best option for a FIX S95 housing because the threads match. I'm about to buy an entire UW kit for an S95 but I still don't know what !! And which adaptor did you need for the UWL04 lens?
Thank you very much for any answers!
-Durwin

Actually, I read some reviews about the different UW lenses (especially the Nemrod ones) and the UWL04 had always goods reviews (with no vignetting at all with the Fix housing), and when I discussed about it with my vendor, he confirmed that it was very good with the recsea housing, so I bought it...
;-)

But, I'm not an expert about UW lenses compared to Nemrod.
I only had one in my life : the UWL04 and I enjoy it very much.

 

[Durwin99]

Yeah, I've just spent 2 hours browsing some posts on here and looking back at Nemrod's Wide Angle Lens shootout - its funny, until now I've found it quite hard to take all this information in, but now that I've gone down to the smallest detail about how each housing option all fits together - housing, lenses, adapters, base, arms, clamps, strobe etc etc - for each of the housings I've looked at (RecSea, FIX & Canon) - and I've done a table of pros vs cons for each! - I now understand these historical posts a lot better now. I think Nemrod's shootout suggests this UWL04 is more like a 150 degree lens than its rated 130deg - at least, its as wide as the Inon UFL165.

Can I presume that if you *don't* want the fish-eye effect, you can zoom in with the camera to get a more normal wide-angle or am I being stupid?!
-Durwin

 

[ripseven]

Can I presume that if you *don't* want the fish-eye effect, you can zoom in with the camera to get a more normal wide-angle or am I being stupid?!
-Durwin

Actually, even with no zooming, in wide angle scenery shoots you don't really feel the fisheye effect : my ambiance pics were taken with no zooming at all.
But if you take the same pics on the ground, you'll have a strong fisheye effect.

As I am not an expert, it's all I can say

 

[Durwin99]

A thought occurs to me - where do you store your Fisheye UWL-04 lens underwater when its not on the front of the housing? I was thinking I could get this lens on a FIX S95 housing (no adaptor needed) but when I change to macro (UCL-165M67 with adaptor) I can't think where I would store the large Fisheye lens - my local dealer suggested in a pouch hanging from my BCD but that sounds like a potential snag hazard?! Until now I was reckoning on the Inon Lens Mounts fixed onto an arm, but these are only availble for the 67mm thread or AD bayonet. Am I worrying too much about this issue?

This is so complicated!
-Durwin