67mm Close-up / Macro Wet lenses
Following is information and some photos taken with our 67mm Close-Up Macro Wet Lenses. These lenses attach to the outside of your camera housing via a 67mm thread (standard lens attachment camera thread).
We also have adaptors for some housings that don't have 67mm thread on the front port.... Contact Us for more details.
+3.5 Strength (Left) and +6 Strength (Right)
We have two strengths of Wet Lenses available: +3.5 and +6.... and the question we most often get asked is " Which lens best suits my camera". Well there isn't an easy answer. The reason we produce two lenses is because one lens does not cover the entire spectrum of macro underwater photography. Following are the differences:
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- The +3.5 Wet lens is the easiest to use, it has a greater flexibility in the distance you can be away from your photo subject and still achieve focus. When fitted to many of the current range of compact camera's
(like the Canon G11/G12 or S95/S100) it will be useable at almost the
full range of the camera's zoom without cropping the corners of your
photos. The greatest magnification will be achieved with the camera's
zoom set to the longest focal length (fully zoomed-in showing the
narrowest field of view). Typically the focus distance (from the lens to
the subject) should be between 15cms - 30cms, but this varies with the amount of zoom and the camera model (It is best to test your own
camera/housing combinations to find the optimium distance/s for your
set-up). It also works very well fitted to the front of a dSLR housing fitted with a macro lens on the camera (best used with 80-100mm prime lenses for the greatest benefit).
- The +6 Wet lens is a little harder to use, as it has a narrower field of view, greater magnification and less flexibility in the distance you need to be from your photo subject to achieve focus. However due to its greater magnification, you can take photos of much smaller subjects and fill the frame of the photo with them. It does have less depth of field (the amount of the photo in focus), but this is a consequence of greater magnification. When fitted to many of the current range of compact camera's (like the Canon G11/G12 or S95/S100) it will only be useable from approximately half way through the zoom range of your camera without cropping the corners of your photos at the wider lens zoom settings. However, when the camera's zoom is set to the longest focal length (fully zoomed-in showing the narrowest field of view). You will achieve strong magnification and tiny subjects will fill your frame. Typically the focus distance (from the lens to the subject) should be between 5cms - 15cms, but this varies with the amount of zoom and the camera model (It is best to test your own camera/housing combinations to find the optimium distance/s for your set-up). It also works very well fitted to the front of a dSLR housing fitted with a macro lens on the camera (best used with 60-100mm prime lenses for the greatest benefit).
- You can double stack these lenses - ie. screw one lens to the camera housing and then screw another wet lens on the front. But please note, the +3.5 lens has a 67mm thread on both faces (a male thread on the rear and a female thread on the front), but the +6 lens only has a thread on the rear. This is to restrict the use of two +6 lenses being double stacked. The distortion caused by two stacked +6 wet lenses is (in our opinion) too great and deteriorates the image quality. However it is perfectly fine to fit a +3.5 on the camera port and then add a +6 on the front of the +3.5 (achieving a +9.5 magnification). This is optically the best way to achieve maximum magnification. You can also stack two +3.5 lenses to achieve a magnification of +7. This combination works very well with a housed dSLR along with a prime macro lens on the camera.
Two of our Wet Macro Lenses stacked together.
The +6 is on the left (front) and the +3.5 on the right (to screw into the housing front port or 67mm adaptor)
Below are a few images taken using the +3.5 and +6 Macro Wet Lenses. Click on any image to see a larger view.
If you have any questions, then please Contact Us for more information.
If you have any questions, then please Contact Us for more information.
Photo 1: With No Wet lens fitted, photo taken as close as the camera lens would focus (approximately 10cms from the nudibranchs)
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Photo 2: With +6 Wet lens fitted at approximately 8 cms from the nudibranchs.
(This is a close-up of their sex organs).
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Photo 3: With no Wet Lens fitted.
This photo was taken as close as possible with the camera's standard lens (10cms from the lens to the crab).
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Photo 4: With +3.5 Wet Lens fitted. This photo was taken at the same distance as Photo 1 (10cms), but with the +3.5 Wet macro lens fitted.
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Photo 5: With +6 wet macro lens fitted. This photo was taken at around 6cms from the lens to the crab.
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