Which Port to Use For Surf Photography

Ben Pascoe

1 year ago

Which Port to Use For Surf Photography depends on the lens your using and the type of photo you’re trying to take. Make the right choice with this lesson.

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Which ports to choose

Covered in this video:

Types of lens port
1. Flat ports
2. Zoom ports
3. Dome ports
Flat ports
1. Liquid Eye flat port
2. SeaFrogs flat port
3. Aquatech flat port
Materials – why is acrylic used?
Zoom Ports
1. Controls on housings
2. Controls on ports
3. zoom gears
Dome ports
1. Why use a dome?
2. Vignetting
3. Sizes – small vs large diameter
Which port to use for which type of lens
Getting the right length port
Macro lens issues
Shooting underwater
1. Virtual images and focusing
Settings for above and below water
Shooting long lenses through dome ports (not recommended)

Resources

Surf water housing manufacturers

Many surf housing manufacturers provide reference charts to help you find a port for your lens.

Some also have instruction manuals for their ports too.

learningsurfphotography.com content

Relevant content from the learningsurfphotography.com website.

Transcript

Now I’m going to cover which lens ports to buy for your water housing, so that you can make the most of the different lenses you’re going to use with your camera. Essentially, there are two or three different types of ports.

I’d say there’s your standard flat port. I’ll show you an example of that. This is a Liquid Eye flat port for the Sony A6000. This end screws on to the water housing. You shoot through a flat piece of acrylic in this case. Here’s another one for the Sea Frogs system. This one’s got a bayonet mount, but it works in exactly the same way. You shoot through the flat acrylic. And here’s an Aqua Tech one. This one’s made of aluminium, but it has a very similar system with a screw to the Liquid Eye.

So whether it’s plastic or aluminium, and you’re shooting through usually acrylic, which has good optical properties, it’s clear. If it does scratch, it’s easy to polish that scratch out. Or in fact, it’s quite cheap to just replace the whole front element. That’s another thing that most of these ports will allow you to do. Liquid Eye have a little grub screw in the side, so you unscrew that, you can screw off this outer part, and then drop in a new clear acrylic element. And there’s an o-ring in there, which keeps it sealed. So you can normally replace these. Sometimes you won’t be able to do it yourself. Sometimes you have to send them off. But if you get a scratch, not a big problem.

So that’s a flat port. There’s also a zoom port, which, depending on the type of housing you’ve got, some housings, like this Liquid Eye, have zoom controls on the side. So I can use that flat port with this zoom control and the Sony 16-50mm lens in this case, to zoom from 16 to 50mm when I’m inside the housing. Other systems, like the Sea Frogs, have the same sort of thing, but you do require extra bits, like this. This is a gear ring, which slips over your lens. And then that mates inside with a little cog. And then you change the zoom through there.

But there are some ports and some housing systems which use a zoom control, but it’s built into the port itself. And I’ll show you an example. There’s an Aqua Tech one, from one of their older systems, where you can control the zoom. It uses the same sort of gear rings, very similar to that. But you control the zoom from the port itself.

So that’s number two, zoom ports. Then you’ve got number three, which is dome ports, which are a little bit different. They are, as you’d imagine, domed. They also use acrylic most of the time. You can get glass domes, but they tend to be for dive housings. And they’re very, very expensive. And you wouldn’t want to be waving them around in front of surfers, I don’t think, because there’s much more chance of it smashing into a million pieces.

This is an example of an Aqua Tech dome, a big one. Let’s show you this Liquid Eye dome, which is on the other end of the scale in terms of size. But as you can see, very similar in terms of what it’s actually made up of. It’s just a different scale. So I think this is an 8 inch dome, and this is a 4 inch dome. That normally refers to the diameter of the dome. So if you see 4 inch, 6 inch, 8 inch, those are the common diameters that you’ll see for dome ports.

Occasionally, there will be really, really big domes. I’ll put a couple of example pictures up. And the reason you want to use a really big dome is for over/under shots. That’s pretty much the only reason. But smaller domes generally will do the same sort of job.

What it does is it allows you to shoot with a wide-angle lens, like this 7.5mm fisheye. So this has an angle of view, I think, of about 180 degrees. As you can imagine, that is, see, diagonally, it sees 180 degrees. Everything in front of you, essentially, the camera will see with this lens. So if you tried to shoot that through a flat port, then you’re going to get vignetting, which is dark corners, because it’s just not going to be able to see everything.

So the reason you choose a dome port is to avoid that vignetting. And also, it helps with the focus. Because when you’re shooting through a flat port, the water acts as a magnifying glass. So it changes the focal length of your lens. And it means that you can’t focus as close as you normally would. Whereas with a dome port, it corrects for that. And it means that you can focus as close as you normally would with the lens. So that’s why you choose a dome port.

Dome ports are for really wide-angle lenses, especially fisheyes. And flat ports are for pretty much anything beyond that. I mean, this one, for instance, is compatible with a 10-18mm lens. That’s on an APS-C sensor. So watch my video about equivalents to find out. Essentially, that makes it a 15mm rectilinear lens. Again, I’ll explain that in the lens details. Basically, it’s not got the distortion of a fisheye. It’s not as wide as a fisheye. But you can go from about 15mm up. You can shoot through a flat port. And you won’t have any problems.

15mm is quite wide. And you can get 15mm or 16mm fisheyes, which you wouldn’t be able to shoot through a flat port. But if you’ve got a rectilinear lens, a non-distorted lens, effectively, that means, then anything from, let’s say, 20mm up, you want to be shooting through a flat port. The only time you’d want to shoot one of those lenses through a dome port is if you really want to do an over/under. In that case, I recommend getting a fisheye instead. Because fisheyes give you that cool distortion. And they have much wider field of view. They’ll be much easier to shoot. I’ve got a whole video on that coming up later.

So there are your three main types: your flat port, your zoom port, and your dome port. And essentially, you just pick one that fits your lens inside. And that allows you to shoot without cropping in the corners.

The distance between the front of your lens and the lens port is not super important. You don’t want it to be massive. You don’t want to shoot through a really long port with a really short lens. But mostly because you’re going to get the sides of the lens port in the shot. So I haven’t had any bad experiences shooting with slightly longer lens ports and slightly shorter lenses. But you might start getting reflections. You might start getting focus issues. If the close focus distance of your lens is not beyond the lens port, then you can focus on the lens port. And I’ve had that problem when I’ve been shooting with macro lenses.

Macro lenses are designed specifically to focus very, very close. And I’ve shot, for instance, the Sony 30mm f/3.5 macro lens in this port, which works fine with the Sony 10-18mm f/4. But with the 30mm, there are examples that I’ve shot where you can see it’s focused on the actual front of the lens port, rather than beyond it. So you might run into problems like that if you have a particularly long port on a shorter lens. But generally speaking, if you can shoot through it without seeing any dark corners, then you should be fine. Good to go.

Dome ports, as I said, they normally do come in different sizes. If you’re shooting above water, then you want the smallest one possible that’s going to work with your lens. That’s a good rule of thumb. So this one’s designed for, like, the Samyang 8mm fisheye. Or the Sony 16mm with the fisheye adapter. And small, compact fisheyes for small, compact cameras. And then this one, as I said, this one is for an old full-frame film camera. It was a 15mm fisheye. So as you can see, again, quite small. Designed for above-the-water work.

If you want to shoot below water, there’s a strange property of dome ports, which means that you’re not actually focusing the distance away that you are from an object underwater. You’re actually focusing on a virtual image of that object, which is quite a lot closer. Essentially, the water around the outside of the dome creates another lens that you’re shooting through. And that lens effectively means your focus distance is much shorter. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that’s what you need to know.

So what it means is, if you want to shoot underwater, you’ve got to pull your focus all the way back in. So for instance, this Meike 6.5mm circular fisheye, I have to set this one, if I’m shooting above water, I set the manual focus to about 1 meter. And I set my aperture to f/8, if it’s nice and sunny. And that will get pretty much everything above water, from about a meter out, in focus. And you really want it to be that close.

F/8 is a good aperture setting if it’s nice and sunny. And that will get pretty much everything above water, from about a meter out, in focus. And you really want it to be that close, because you don’t set it to infinity. Because with a fisheye, you need to be so close to things to make them seem big in the frame. And that’s part of the aim. The thing that you want people to concentrate on needs to be big in the frame. Generally speaking, unless you’re going for a particular type of composition. But a good rule of thumb is, make the subject of the image fill the frame. So in order to do that, you need to be very, very close to something with a fisheye lens.

So I’d set that to about a meter, f/8, for above water. If I was going to shoot underwater, and I have done, and I do like the results from this lens underwater, I’d set this to, again, about f/8, as long as there’s enough light. Maybe f/4, if it’s pretty murky water. I probably wouldn’t be shooting underwater in that murky water. But then you want to set the focus to, in this case, I think it’s 0.1. I can just set the focus inside of 0.1 meter. So 10 centimeters. What’s that? About 3, 3 and a half inches. So that’s what I set it to. And shoot through this dome port, for instance. And I get in-focus shots underwater with that really close focus distance.

I have to spin it all the way up to a meter, which doesn’t sound like a lot. But that’s the other end of the scale on this focus scale for a fisheye. To shoot over water. And there’s lots more to consider if you want to shoot over and under.

First things first, you need a bigger dome as you can manage. So that’s why you see these ridiculously oversized domes occasionally. But the results they get, you get a really crisp line of water across the shot. Which you won’t get if the water’s closer to the lens. These type of ports, I’ve had really good luck with shooting over-unders. That’s what they’re designed for. They are a bit bulky for shooting shore breaks and barrels. Which is often where you want to shoot with a fisheye. That’s the type of lens that necessitates a dome port.

So generally speaking, above water, grab yourself the smallest dome that will fit your lens inside. Over/under, get the biggest dome you can get, basically. And make sure that it’s compatible with the lens you want to use. I would suggest the widest lens possible. And then get a port that works with that. That’s as big as possible. And if you’re shooting underwater, big ports are good. But you don’t necessarily need them as big as this. You could probably, like I say, I can shoot with a 4-inch port underwater, okay. You just have to make sure you set your focus up properly.

So again, underwater, I’d go for maybe a happy medium. A 6-inch port is quite a popular one. I know Aqua Tech do a 6-inch. I think most housings will offer a 6-inch. For that middle ground. Underwater, mostly. 4-inch, over water. And a bigger, 8-inch plus, for over/under.

So those are the different reasons for using different types of dome port. I’m going to go into the techniques of keeping them free from water drops in the next video. But that should get you sorted. And it should get you the right port for your lenses.

And if you do wonder, like, I don’t know if I’m going to need, maybe I haven’t got a lens at the moment that’s going to use a dome port. But I do might want one in the future. Go back through your Instagram bookmarks. See if you can see any there over/under. Check your fisheye shots. And see if they feature over and underwater at the same time. If they do, they’ll be shooting with a big port. If it’s just above water, then you just need a small port.

So one other thing. I’ve explained why you don’t want to shoot with a fisheye or a wide-angle and a flat port. But what about the other way around? Would you shoot with a 50mm lens through a dome port, for instance? And obviously, it would fit. Not obviously, but if it does fit, would you do it? Well, you can. And sometimes, it can give you some interesting results. But generally speaking, you don’t need to. Because a 50mm lens, or anything longer than that, you can shoot through a flat port. And you won’t have any problems with vignetting or focus. And it will be much easier to keep clean. And much cheaper to buy. So unless you’re going for a specific effect, or you just want to experiment, I wouldn’t recommend shooting with a long lens through a dome port. But you can do it. And it might give you some cool results. So feel free to try it out. But don’t expect it to be the best option for that type of lens.

A 50mm lens through a dome port, for instance. And obviously, it would fit. Not obviously, but if it does fit, would you do it? Well, you can. And some people get good results doing that. Personally, I’ve had issues with autofocus lenses through a dome port. Not so much with the wide ones, because wide-angle lenses tend to be better at focusing. Because there’s a bit more depth of field. But longer lenses, let’s say 35mm plus, I do tend to have problems. It struggles to focus for me. Because of the different techniques you use.

Long story short, you shoot through a flat port with the port being completely dry, ideally. And you shoot through a dome port with the port being completely wet. And I think it’s because of the properties of the port. Because it’s domed and it’s got water on it. I find autofocus struggles for me. I’ve got quite a few shots I’ve shot with a 50mm through a dome port. And nothing in the shot is in focus.

So I would avoid it if you possibly can. Get yourself a flat port. Flat ports are easy to manage when you’re in the water, I find. So it’s a bit less hassle in general. So if you’re just shooting with a 50mm, or 35mm, or whatever it happens to be, anything that isn’t a fisheye or really wide-angle, just get a flat port. And I think you’ll save yourself some hassle.

So yeah, the dome port, I wouldn’t go for it if it’s going to be your only port. And you’re going to be shooting with those longer lenses.

That’s it for ports for now. I’m going to talk to you in a moment about how to keep them free from water drops. That can ruin your shot.

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