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Introduction to INON Wide Angle Lenses

Successful underwater photographers rely on wide-angle lenses for photographing almost everything that isn't a macro shot or small to mid sized fish portrait. In fact wide-angle lenses are not just used for the obvious "big" subjects like whales and shipwrecks, but for lots of underwater photographs that might not even appear to have been taken using wide-angles at all. Even highly accomplished land photographers are sometimes surprised to find out that the underwater images they are admiring have been taken through super wide - angle or fisheye lenses. They are often used for close up images as well as creative techniques including close focus wide - angle and split-level photography.

Our dependence upon wide-angle lenses is because of the effect of the water on taking photographs. Good photographs normally depend upon bright light, strong contrast, sharp focus, vivid colours and a cleanly defined image. Water absorbs light, reduces contrast, softens focus, filters colours and suspends particulates between us and our subject. In short, what ruins underwater photographs is the water. To overcome these problems we have to eliminate as much water from our pictures as we can and that means getting as close as possible to our subject. And that is exactly

What INON UWL wide - angle lenses and INON UFL fisheye lenses let us do

INON underwater wide- angle and fisheye lenses are genuine lenses, which greatly expand the field of view of your compact cameras built in lens and increase depth of field. Depending on the combination of compact digital underwater camera and INON UWL wide - angle lens or INON UFL fisheye lens your camera will "see" between twice and four times as much as it did before on it's widest lens setting. This means you only need to be between one half and one quarter as far from your subject as you did before. It is important to understand the differences between INON UWL and UFL underwater lenses and simple dome ports. Dome ports are being heavily marketed at compact camera users and a lot of divers and some retailers seem to be under the impression these act like a wide - angle lens. They don't. Dome ports simply maintain the angle of your cameras built in lens when you take it underwater. Otherwise your lens behind the flat port of a camera housing behaves like your eye behind a facemask - everything seems one third closer and 25 percent larger. All a dome unit does is prevent this. Compared to a true wide - angle lens, like an INON UWL100 or UWL105, a dome attachment will, at best, let you see about 75 degrees compared to the 100 degrees we regard as true wide angle under the water. An exception is the INON dome lens unit when it is combined with the INON UWL100-28 wide-angle lens. The INON dome lens unit actually increases the field of view by 50%. But this is a very specialised optic.

INON wide - angle and fisheye lenses can also be used in air. This makes them ideal for photographing in confined spaces like museums or cathedrals or shooting big outdoor vistas.

It's essential to match the wide-angle lens to the types of subjects you want to shoot and likely visibility. If you are using strobes, you'll also need to consider whether this can cover your wide-angle lens and whether the arm is suited to wide-angle photography.

Mark or Steve can talk you through the issues and solutions.

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