The Laguna Beach area was crystal‑clear, with 50 feet of visibility and that kelp‑forest glow that makes the Pacific feel like stained glass. That’s when Alpha Collective member Stan Moniz decided to take Sony’s 100mm f/2.8 Macro G Master somewhere most macro glass never goes: underwater.
“It’s like a creative workhorse,” he says. “A two‑for – an amazing telephoto on top of a macro.”
Stan then says he loaded his 100mm f/2.8 Macro G Master and Alpha 9 III into an Aquatech Edgewater housing and walked into the water. “It’s so darn light, and it’s got that G Master, snappy focus.” He usually shoots wide under the surface, but this time he’d been seeing flashes of color and motion he couldn’t shake – nudibranchs the size of a fingernail, quick silver schools, the glassy lip of a fickle wave after a storm. The 100mm f/2.8 Macro G Master opened a different door.
Another quick flash was of a leopard shark cruising the sand line. “They’re skittish,” Stan says, “but with the 100mm you’re less invasive. On the Alpha 9 III, I even set the autofocus to Bird Eye AF and it was picking up the shark’s eye.” The frame captured the shark’s freckled texture and cool gray muscle, lit from above and tack‑sharp. “The sharpness is insane,” he says. “Night and day from the old stuff. I’m not seeing chromatic aberration – even wide open.”
Then came the tiny dancers – no, not Elton John’s, the sea‑slug kind. “I’ve been diving for years and never really got into macro,” he admitted. “These Spanish shawls – people call them Spanish dancers – are literally the size of your pinky fingernail. With macro they literally look like they’re dancing, feeding in the current.” In his files, the background falls away into what Stan kept coming back to: “The bokeh is so different – very spherical and creamy. It isolates the subject from the background so well it’s almost three‑dimensional… almost AI, but it’s real.”
When he drifted into the kelp he stopped thinking like a wide‑angle shooter. “I’ve never seen the texture like that before,” he says. “Kelp is the habitat here – it supports fish and marine life and biodiversity. Capturing the essence and detail of each leaf, not just the wide scene, felt special.”
Even the chaos of schooling fish took on shape. “The compression is wild,” he says of a frame layered with anchovies and a glass‑calm surface that looked like a mirror. “The water on top doesn’t look real, and the bokeh on the fish in the background – blurred and moving differently – just looks really cool.”
Topside, the same 100mm f/2.8 Macro G Master pulled double duty when a wind‑swell wave started feathering at one of Stan’s secret spots after a passing storm. “For the wave stuff, I ran continuous 120 frames per second on the Alpha 9 III, small focus area, tracking the lip,” he says. “It’s so dope – this thing behaves like an amazing telephoto lens on top of a macro.” On another day he clipped on a 2x teleconverter, just to see how far he could push the close‑ups: “Extreme close. Even some moon shots. It’s fun.”
Stan’s been loyal to Sony’s beloved 90mm f/2.8 Macro G lens for years, but what he saw out of the 100mm f/2.8 Macro G Master felt different. He talked about the modern rendering, the clean edges, the way the lens seemed to make subjects feel “greater than life‑size” rather than just life‑size. “It’s not your traditional 1:1,” he says. “That’s part of why it looks so three‑dimensional.”
What stuck with him wasn’t only the files, but how the lens changed his behavior underwater. “I try to do different things,” he says. “No one typically shoots with a 100mm underwater. They’re going to do macro, but not actually… this. With the 100mm f/2.8 Macro G Master you can stay back for skittish animals or press in for the insane details. It opens doors.” He’s already planning to mount a small tripod to his housing and bring lights for what he called “really spacey” macro video. “This was my first time really doing macro underwater and I’m in love with it.”
Before we wrapped, he circled back to the simplest takeaway. “If you’re hesitant to pick this up, just get it,” he says. “You’ll find out why. In my opinion, it’s probably the best lens Sony’s put out in a long time. The craft, the engineering – they really did it justice.” He paused, then added the line that sums up his week in clear water with a lens that kept saying yes: “It’s not a traditional macro – and that’s what I love about it.”
See more of Stan Moniz’s work on his Alpha Universe Profile and on Instagram @stanmoniz.
Shop Stan’s Underwater Setup at Vistek: