S.U.P.E.R. Part 18: Saga Dive Magic Ball Lens

Published 9 years agoon March 6, 2017

In our ongoing series S.U.P.E.R. (Scubaverse’s Underwater Photography Equipment Reviews), Scubaverse.com’s underwater photography editors Nick and Caroline Robertson Brown review new underwater photography equipment, general diving equipment, and some older favourites too.

For the eighteenth instalment of S.U.P.E.R., Nick and Caroline take a look at the Magic Ball Lens from Saga Dive.

Want to add a bit of fun to your underwater photography? The Saga Dive Magic Ball lens allows you to create novel & artistic images in any underwater environment. The lens has a bubble at the front, locked in an airtight compartment, a zoom to allow focus, and a 67mm thread at the other end. It is designed to be used with a 60mm lens on an SLR housing. When attached, it creates images that have an in-focus wide angle bubble, with an inverted bokeh’d macro surrounding area. Whilst hard to describe – just looking at images created using this lens will give you the idea.

Saga Dive are known for their quality products and we were impressed with a number of their products when we visited their stand at DEMA.

This Magic Ball lens is no exception. We have now taken it to Fiji, Egypt, Capernwray and a pool, and it is robust, easy to use and a great deal of fun. If you feel like trying something a little different, then this is something we recommend trying out. Whilst we used it on Caroline’s D7100 SLR with 60mm lens, it can be used with diopters, and with compact cameras too. With Nick’s full frame SLR camera, the lens gave more of a polo-mint shape, which we also liked.

The lens is incredibly easy to use, just screw it on and shoot. We found shooting from the hip the best option with this lens, or using live view, as using the viewfinder on an inverted image can be a little disorientating. It can bring a photography dive to life. On one dive in Fiji, having put on a macro lens, we found huge beautiful sea fans all over the dive, so we screwed on this lens and had a blast.

This lens might not be something that you would use every day, but it is a lovely thing to have in your camera bag to add a little creativity and run to your portfolio.

For more information on Saga Dive products visit sagadive.com

Here’s an exclusive Scubaverse interview with Saga Dive at DEMA 2016:

For more from Nick and Caroline, visit www.frogfishphotography.com.

Nick and Caroline Robertson-Brown

Nick and Caroline (Frogfish Photography) are a married couple of conservation driven underwater photo-journalists and authors. Both have honours degrees from Manchester University, in Environmental Biology and Biology respectively, with Nick being a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, a former high school science teacher with a DipEd in Teaching Studies. Caroline has an MSc in Animal Behaviour specializing in Caribbean Ecology. They are multiple award-winning photographers and along with 4 published books, feature regularly in the diving, wildlife and international press They are the Underwater Photography and Deputy Editors at Scubaverse and Dive Travel Adventures. Winners of the Caribbean Tourism Organization Photo-journalist of the Year for a feature on Shark Diving in The Bahamas, and they have been placed in every year they have entered. Nick and Caroline regularly use their free time to visit schools, both in the UK and on their travels, to discuss the important issues of marine conservation, sharks and plastic pollution. They are ambassadors for Sharks4Kids and founders of SeaStraw. They are Dive Ambassadors for The Islands of The Bahamas and are supported by Mares, Paralenz, Nauticam and Olympus. To find out more visit www.frogfishphotography.com