How to Choose a Lens for Underwater Photography
Choosing the best lenses for underwater photography can be a challenging task, and if you aren’t sure what you need or want, it can quickly become overwhelming.
There are so many options and different camera combinations out there to choose from, but we’re here to help.
Things to consider when choosing a type of lens
As an underwater photographer, it isn’t quite as simple as choosing a lens we like; we have lots to think about, including the compatibility of the lenses with your underwater camera housing, and the ports available to fit these lenses.
Slightly more experienced photographers may also consider which wet lenses are available to combine with their lenses. These lenses screw onto the outside of your lens port and can be added or removed underwater, allowing you to alter your lens’s capabilities while in the water.
With all these things to think about, the thought of a new lens can quickly snowball into hours of researching!
Many budding underwater photographers will already have experience creating images on land, and after a while, we tend to favour either wide-angle or macro photography. In underwater situations, this is also often the case!
Personally, when I first began learning underwater photography at university, I much preferred macro photography, as I thought the lighting was easier to understand and visibility isn’t always great in the UK.
But when I first bought my own camera, I sought the advice of other local photographers and bought an 8mm fisheye for two reasons.
For one, it forced me to learn how to use a wide-angle lens and to light the images properly; and two, it allowed me to capture pictures using natural light while I saved for a pair of strobes.
Choosing between macro and wide-angle lenses
Your first lens choice will be heavily influenced by your style as a photographer and what you enjoy taking photos of.
If you spend much of your time snorkeling in the shallows, or diving in clear waters with mostly megafauna, then a wide lens is probably the best choice for a first lens.
If you dive somewhere with a little more unpredictable visibility, then consider starting off with a macro or a zoom lens.
If you have the budget, starting off with two lenses is a good jumping-off point, as you’ll be able to take both wide and macro shots, and never feel like you’re missing out because of a restricting lens choice!
If you’re looking to expand your existing lens collection, we will also explore some of the more advanced options available to underwater photographers.
Wide-angle lenses
There are two types of wide-angle lenses for underwater photographers: a fisheye and a rectilinear.
Let’s look at what you can expect with both of these lenses.
Fisheye lenses for underwater photography
A fisheye will give you a super wide curved perspective similar to that of a 90’s skating video. I have an 8mm fisheye, and it is by far my favorite lens. Some popular fisheye lenses include:
- Tokina 10-17mm
- Olympus 8mm
- Lumix 8mm
- Canon 15mm
- Sigma 8mm
Having a super wide fisheye does sometimes limit what you can capture, as any subject that isn’t right on top of your camera looks like a tiny speck in the frame, but when you get an inquisitive subject right in front of your camera, this is the lens you want.
Another favorite feature of the fisheye lens is the ease of capturing Snell’s window. With such a wide field of view, any angle towards the surface will see ‘Snell’s window’ appearing in the background of your images.
You will have seen Snell’s window in many images even if you’re not sure what it is.
This is what we call the window through the water’s surface to the land above, and most fisheye lenses with their super wide field of view allow you to capture the water’s surface and often even see the sky or landscape out of the water!
Top Tip: With a fisheye lens, corner sharpness can sometimes be a problem. Some lenses and port combinations aren’t compatible and can cause unsharp corners. I’d always recommend consulting your housing or port manufacturers for their list of recommended port and lens combinations to try and avoid unsharp corners.
Read more: How to Use Fisheye Lenses in Underwater Photography
Rectilinear lenses for underwater photography
The all-rounder wide-angle is a rectilinear lens, and most wide lenses will fall into this category. These are the lenses with the large dome ports, perfect for split shots and megafauna.
Popular choices include:
For these wide-angle lenses, you don’t need to be up close and personal with your subjects for them to dominate the frame. But you also can’t take a photo of something up close if you’re aiming for that close-focus wide-angle effect.
If you want to cover all bases, I’d recommend one of each, although you can’t use them both at the same time!
There are some opportunities where you might favour a rectilinear over a fisheye for reliability.
For example, I have missed quite a few photos of sharks and other megafauna because they just didn’t get close enough to my fisheye and are lost in the frame. But when you get a subject that plays ball, you can create some truly incredible imagery with a close-focusing fisheye.
Macro lenses for underwater photography
If you’re a macro lover or are looking to add a reliable macro to your underwater photography kit bag, then there are a few things to consider.
There are levels of magnification to look at, depending on how tiny your subject of choice is. I fall into the category of photographers who like taking photos of the coral polyps and tiny critters that live in the ocean, so I have a couple of types of macro lens.
Considering your underwater photography camera system
One important thing to consider before purchasing a lens is which camera system you use. In macro terms:
- A full-frame sensor has no crop factor, so the same equivalent length as the lens itself (a 60mm macro on full frame is still a 60mm in 35mm terms);
- An APS-C crop sensor has a crop factor of 1.5 to 1.6 (a 60mm macro on APS-C crop is a 90mm equivalent on 35mm);
- Micro four-thirds systems have a crop factor of 2 (a 60mm macro on M43 is equivalent to a 120mm in 35mm).
Macro lens choices
A macro lens that can do a bit of everything is a good place to start. These lenses are 30mm up to around 60mm and can capture images of a range of subjects that generally fill the frame at a 1:1 ratio or more.
Popular choices include:
Perfect for anything from fish portraits and photographs of reef textures to smaller subjects such as nudibranchs and gobies, these lenses will work well for subjects large and small.
Once you start to find subjects that are really tiny (smaller than a few centimetres) you’re going to need a macro lens with a bit more magnification, allowing you to have a greater working distance from the subject. Tiny critters can be quite skittish!
Popular choices include:
The extra distance can be very useful for those small creatures, but you won’t be able to sit right on top of your subject as the minimum focusing distance is around 20-30 cm.
The Olympus 90mm will drop this down to 9.5 cm, but sometimes that can still be too far away from tiny macro subjects. This type of lens is great for small fish, a few cm in length, close-up textures, and those larger nudibranchs.
Read more: Top Tips to Improve Your Underwater Macro Images
Wet lenses for underwater photography
If you find yourself in the realms of really tiny critters and you can’t get enough magnification out of your existing lenses, then you’re in luck. Many underwater camera housing manufacturers make wet lenses specifically for super macro magnification.
The most popular choices are from Inon, Nauticam, AOI, and Sea&Sea.
Some of the best lenses available are the Nauticam SMC and CMC, but they take a while to master as the focal range is a few millimetres and you need excellent buoyancy to get the most out of them.
Other options are all rated in +5, +10, +12, etc. The larger the number, the more magnification they have.
If you have never used a wet lens for your macro, I would recommend starting with a weaker magnification and then upgrading as you become more comfortable and confident with the lens.
Always make sure the wet lenses are compatible with your existing lenses. These super macro lenses can be a gamechanger; not only do they let you capture images of tiny critters, but they reduce the minimum focusing distance, allowing you to get very close to your subject.
This is perfect for nudibranchs, coral polyps, and tiny critters less than a few cm in size! Wet lenses aren’t just for macro photographers! There are also many wide-angle wet lenses available.
Some premium wet lenses are available from Nauticam. Their most recent innovations include the WWL (wet wide-angle lens), WACP (wide-angle conversion port), and EMWL (extended macro wide lens).
These are expensive pieces of kit, but they’re on the list of dream equipment for most new underwater photographers and many pros!
They are all varying degrees of wide-angle converters designed for very different subject matter and photography styles.
The WWL was engineered as a corrective lens to convert a 28mm or 28mm zoom lens into a wide lens with a 130-degree field of view.
The draw of this style of wet lens is the overall image quality, corner sharpness, and knowing that it’s an all-rounder for wide-angle photography which sits right between the fisheye and rectilinear field of view.
Next on the list is the WACP, designed to offer maximum image quality with the widest field of view on a rectilinear lens. This wet lens is available for most camera systems, including a compact version.
This wide conversion lens also works with 28mm equivalent lenses, however, it will not distort the image like a fisheye and can provide approximately 3 stops of increased corner sharpness.
The last wet lens is the EMWL; this setup allows you to shoot macro and wide on the same dive! An absolute game-changer for underwater photographers who can guarantee they’ll find an incredible nudibranch when using a fisheye lens on their dive.
This is undoubtedly my dream lens, allowing you to capture images of tiny macro subjects and a wide-angle view of the background behind them. Imagine a nudibranch with a sunburst, and then a few moments later, you could be photographing huge shoals of fish!
In conclusion
Lens choices for underwater photography ultimately come down to personal preference and budget, but there are an essential few that are worth purchasing or at least planning to purchase; a good macro, fisheye or linear wide, and a wet lens or two for those more experimental images.
There are plenty of options out there to suit every type of underwater photographer, and manufacturers are constantly innovating and trying to create ever sharper lenses and unique fields of view.
The options are overwhelming, but budget is often the restricting factor. If you are ever unsure of what to purchase, it may be worth asking your local underwater photography club or camera store for their recommendations!
