Angled relay for Nauticam EMWL

Staff · Issue 138, May/Jun 2024 · pp. 24–29

Products mentioned: Nauticam EMWL, Nauticam angled relay lens, Nauticam straight 150mm relay, Nauticam 45° viewfinder, Nauticam 40° 0.8:1 viewfinder, EMWL 100° objective lens, EMWL 160° objective lens, E-Oceans floats, Nikon D810, Nikon Z9, Nikon F 105mm lens, Modified Nikon Z 105mm lens

I am a big fan of the Nauticam EMWL underwater “bug-eye” system, for it enables the most extreme, eye- catching sort of CFWA (Close-Focus Wide-Angle) imagery. A fisheye lens – mounted behind a mini-dome – has long been the go-to setup for CFWA, but the EMWL offers higher magnification ratios and the ability to get much closer to critters, due to its pointy & tiny front optics. In short, the EMWL produces the unique perspective you’d have if you & your fisheye setup shrank by 5 times! This is why you hear EMWL users say they are “re-discovering” their favorite dive sites, when using that system. A couple of years after the EMWL came out, Nauticam announced an accessory which picked my curiosity: an angled relay lens, which can be used as a replacement for the original straight 150mm/6in relay. At first I couldn’t quite grasp the reasoning behind this new product: in two years of shooting …