Zen dome macro shots

After reading a post on wetpixel by Stephen Frink (see the post here) on using a small dome with macro lenses, I thought I'd give the Zen dome a try.

I used with a Nikon 60mm f2.8, on a very dark and gloomy day. For reference purposes, the water temp was 4 degrees, and I lost all sensation in my hands for most of the dive (despite dry gloves!) The port gives really nice results-sharp and it corrects the parallax that you get with conventional flat ports. I will definitely try it some more

Zen 100mm dome comparison

I'm using it for close focus wide angle (CFWA) and wide angle macro (WAM) to get round the problems of trying to light things that are very close to the dome port. I'm shooting DX with my D2Xs in a subal Housing and have been using a Tokina 10-17 for some time. I've set the dome up with a 30mm extender, which seems OK, but this may well need additional adjustment.

My first impression of the dome was quite how small it is! When compared with an 8" dome it seems really tiny! It also seems very well made and finished.

In use, for CFWA, with a Kenko 1.4x converter, you can really feel the magnification working! You can get the front of the dome so close to the subject that you really can feel the magnification "pulling" the subject in:




Practically, this means as long as you can physically get the strobes in close enough, that lighting is fairly easy! With dry gloves, the strobes want to be where my hands are! The reduction in distance between the front of the dome and the subject helps with colour and sharpness.

For more general wide angle, I took the following series of shots. These were all shot at 1/60th which may be a bit slow, and I am getting used to the set up-so please don't take them as anything like definitive! The full image looks like this:



I've then taken crops of the left hand bottom corner, and zoomed them to 100%

1/60th at f5



1/60th at f6.3



1/60th at f7.1



1/60th at f8



1/60th at f9



1/60th at f10



Corner sharpness seems to suffer at large apertures!

I'll do some more playing-please note that these aren't definitive.

New Zen 100mm Dome port

Today I was lucky enough to be using the new Zen 100mm dome port today. It is definately softer in the corners than a big dome, but it's small size lets you get real close! Thanks to Alex for all his help with this

I teamed it up with a Tokina 10-17mm lens and a Kenko 1.4 x teleconverter, and could really see the magnification's effect on the subject. Lighting is critical though-my Inon strobes when correctly placed, didn't really leave enough room for my dry gloves!

The ability to get the subject so close is a definate advantage in terms of colour in green water. The subjects are much more vibrant out of the camera than they would be with a bigger dome etc.

While I was shooting, the sun went in, and I found that as I stopped down, the corner sharpness got worse!

Water temp was a cool 4 degrees!