Best lenses with Canon cropped sensor cameras for underwater photography and videography. This covers cameras such as 7D Mark II, 60D and 80D. We have broken it down into 3 categories - wide angle, macro and all-around medium focal lengths. This will aid you in choosing the best lenses for your preferred shooting.
WIDE ANGLE:
Tokina 10-17mm F3.5-4.5 DX Fisheye Lens
*Ultra Wide Field of View, Workhorse Lens*
The Tokina Fisheye 10-17mm DX Lens was designed to provide a 180° diagonal angle of view at a focal length of 10mm. This makes it possible to capture images with an expanded perspective - wider than the human eye can see - including creative deformation of subjects and sharp pan focus that extends throughout the entire frame. These characteristics alone would be ample reason to buy this lens, but it offers another unique advantage that's especially well-suited to underwater use: zoom capability. For less-approachable subjects, zooming will allow a signficiantly narrower field of view — as tight as 100°.
Read our Canon 8-15mm F4 Fisheye Lens Review
Canon 10-22mm F3.5-4.5 USM Lens
*Wide Field of View, Rectilinear Lens*
The Canon 10-22mm F3.5-4.5 USM Lens has the same focal length as a Tokina 10-17mm fisheye at 10mm — without the distortion or ultra-wide angle of view that a fisheye lens gives. This rectilinear zoom provides a much narrower field of view than a fisheye (63°-107°). This is ideal for subjects such as individual medium/large animals like dolphins, sharks, turtles, big reef fish, etc. It can also work well for reef scenics, but not as well as a fisheye.
Important note: All such rectilinear lenses, when used behind a dome port, have a tendency toward soft corners. The larger the sensor, the more apparent this is. Solutions include: shooting at small aperture openings, using a large-diameter port, and/or use of an internal correction lens. For any questions about this, please contact Bluewater Photo.
MACRO:
Canon 60mm EF-S Macro Lens
*Versitile, Flexible, Quick Autofocus*
Canon 100mm F2.8 Macro Lens
*Great for Macro, Supermacro, Small Shy Fish*
The Canon 100mm F2.8 Macro Lens is a great lens for capturing small fish or skittish subjects, isolating the subject, blurring the background, or shooting supermacro with a wet diopter. The lens is very sharp, with excellent color rendition and contrast at all apertures, from center to the corners. The lens requires a strong focus light.
Read our Canon 100mm F2.8 Macro Lens Review
ALL AROUND - MEDIUM FOCAL LENGTHS:
Sigma 17-70mm F2.8-4.0 Contemporary DC Macro OS Lens
*Great All Around Lens*
The Sigma 17-70mm F2.8-4 Contemporary DC Macro OS HSM Lens is a lightweight and compact lens yet still maintains excellent optical performance. It is 30% more compact than similar models. It also has a macro mode, making it even more versatile. It is as close to an all-in-one lens as exists for underwater use.