While not the most exciting piece of underwater photography gadgetry available, devices for keeping your wide angle and macro wet lenses safe when not in use during a dive can be a major help. In this blog I’m going to cover the wet lens holders available from the brands we sell.
Lens Holders for Lattice Strobe Arms
The commonest method of stashing a wet lens on your camera rig is to fit a holder onto a lattice style strobe arm.
INON makes a range of holders which will fit on their strobe arms along with those by other brands such as Nauticam, DivePro and Deepshots. For screw thread lenses they offer single and double holders in 52mm (M52) and 67mm screw thread (M67). In either size these are £35 for a single and £53 for a double.
INON also make strobe arm lens holders for their XD bayonet mount and their earlier LD and AD bayonet systems as well. The XD holders are only available as singles for £19 while the LD holders are available as single (£28) or double (£41) and the AD holders are single only for £32.
INON lens holders are small enough even for their XD bayonet mount that one will fit on a quite short strobe arm.
For those people using either the INON UWL-S100 ZM80 Wide Conversion Lens or the UFL-M150 ZM80 Micro Fisheye Lens there are special DP holders with a deeper receptacle to allow for those lenses having a longer barrel. Single DP holders are available in 67mm (£38), LD (£47) and AD (£41) bayonet mounts.
Nauticam produce 67mm lens holders to fit their lattice arms which as with the Inon ones will also go on other brand arms of similar size. Those holders are more expensive at £65 for a single and £123 for a double. They also offer holders to fit the same style of arms for the Nauticam bayonet system, costing £72 for a single holder and £110 for a double.
Fantasea single lens holders are available for 67mm thread lenses (£56.95) and for the QRS-01 bayonet system available for their wet lenses (£99). Those holders are made to fit Ultralight brand arms but will fit most other lattice strobe arms as well.
Lens Holders for Float Arms
If you use INON float arms you will notice that they all have two metal screw holes on them. This allows you to attach a number of accessories including holders for 67mm (£22) and 52mm (£22) screw thread and XD (£15), LD (£17) and AD (£14) bayonet mount lenses. They are also available in the DP versions as mentioned above for 67mm (£35), LD (£45) and AD (£38) mounts.
All INON float arms can be fitted with two lens holders but bear in mind that if you have them as the arms closest to your strobes or video lights the extra weight and bulk of the lenses may make it difficult to position your light source.
The above holders can also be used on INON stick arms with addition of a part, the M5 Joint (£5)
INON double lens holders for lattice strobe arms come with an extra screw that allows you to use one side of them as a single holder on their float arms.
Nauticam make specific double and single lens holders for their bayonet mount system that can be fitted to their 70mm and 90mm float arms. For both diameter arms the single holders are £65 and the doubles £104. They also make a lens holder for their bayonet mounts to fit on INON float arms that costs £72.
Nauticam lens holders for their float arms attach using a ring made to fit a specific diameter. If you have other brand float arms of the diameter you could use them on those.
Cold Shoe Lens Holders
You can also mount a holder on the cold shoe of your housing if it has one. These are particular useful if you want to keep your setup small such as when doing available light photography with a wide angle wet lens but want some ability to deal with smaller subjects. It’s also helpful when using a compact or mirrorless setup with both macro and wide angle lenses as I sometimes do with a choice of two different power macro wet lenses on strobe arms and a wide angle wet lens on the cold shoe holder.
INON produce cold shoe holders for M67 (£38), M52 (£38), XD (£34) and AD (£30) mount lenses. I’m not sure why the LD mount has been left out.
One advantage of using cold shoe lens holders is that usually they are close enough to your housing port that you can have a lanyard attached between the lens and the housing without needing to unclip the lens when moving it from the port to the holder.
Nauticam don’t offer cold shoe holders, possibly because of the substantial diameter of their bayonet holders which would probably get in the way.
OTHER LENS HOLDER Positions
If putting a lens on a strobe arm or cold shoe doesn’t suit your needs there are a couple of other options.
INON’s holders for float arms can be mounted on a special attachment bracket (Lens Holder Adapter D5) which costs £21. The adapter fits onto the handle of an INON Grip Base D5 tray and can be positioned at a range of angles.
The Lens Holder Adapter D5 fits under a Direct Base III ball mount on their Grip Base D5 tray handles.
INON also make the M67 Lens Arm. (£49). This can be used to hold an M67 threaded macro lens such as the UCL-165 M67. The arm has a ball mount like a strobe arm and the idea behind it is to allow the use of macro wet lenses with camera housings that don’t have any way of attaching a lens to their port.
The INON M67 Lens Arm in a configuration as it was originally designed to be used. In theory it can also be used just as a lens holder for an M67 lens and I have heard of people using a lens on this mount instead of a magnifying glass when muck diving.
FLIP Holders
Nauticam make a number flip lens holders. These attach onto your housing port and allow you to very quickly change between using a lens or not. You do pay for the ease of use, with a single holder to fit an M67 port costing £253. There is also a double version for M67 ports so you can swap between two different powers of macro lens. That one is £413. Both these holders will fit any M67 threaded housing port but bear in mind there needs to be space for the lenses to fold out of the way. That’s why these holders don’t generally suit being used for wide angle wet lenses.
Flip adapters are definitely the fastest method of swapping from either using a macro wet les and not or in the case of the double adapter pictured changing between two different power lenses.
To cater for less common size housing ports Nauticam do offer single flip holders for M77 and M72 flat ports but these are now a made to order item and will cost considerably more than the M67 version. Get in touch if you would like us to check prices and availability on those.
If you have a Nauticam housing for a Panasonic LX100, Canon G5XII or Sony RX100 MkVI or VII there is a single flip holder to fit the rectangular port that comes as standard with those housings, for a cost of £238
There are also special flip holders for use with the Nauticam Macro to Wide Angle Lens 1 (MWL-1). These allow you to change between macro and wide angle even faster than a conventional bayonet system. Single MWL-1 flip holders are £282 and a double with a normal M67 fitting on the other side costs £405.
Thanks as always for reading this. Get in touch if you feel I’ve missed something or have any questions. We are UK dealers for INON, Nauticam and Fantasea as well as many other brands . All prices in this article include UK VAT and were correct at time of writing. To order equipment, get quotes etc contact us by emailing info@alphamarinephoto.com
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