15 hours ago, TimG said:

Sure. I can only compare what I'm seeing now on M43 (essentially the OM 60mm and the Panasonic 8mm FE) with what I have used on Nikon APS-C or FF: the Nikkor 60mm, 105mm, 16-35mm, DX 12-24mm, DX 10-24mm, DX 10.5, Sigma 15mm and Tokina 10-17mm Other than arguably the Sigma, Tokina and Nikkor DX 10.5 are all hugely bigger. I couldn't believe the size of the Panasonic 8mm when I opened the box. I've seen bigger cotton reels. The OM 60mm is minuscule compared to the Nikkor 105mm.

But totally accept your point that it depends on which and whose lenses. I was assuming (yeah, dangerous I know) that if you're thinking of a Nikon Z5 chances are you're going to use (some) Nikkor lenses. I thought it worth bearing those lens sizes in mind. On pre-M43 travel I could not fit Nikkor lenses with the housing, strobes etc into my Pelican 1510 roller box. It now looks as though everything will fit in: housing, strobes, ports, lenses.....

I think that I will probably end up with a variety of lenses, and given my old habits of pushing the boundaries of macro I suspect there will be a few that aren't normally in the collections of underwater photographers...

16 hours ago, Architeuthis said:

In my view (from someone who was owning Olympus MFT and is now using Sony FF), the difference in size and weight exists, but depends to a great extend on the type of lenses (there are differences between the FF mount systems; I cannot comment on APS-C systems, I never owned one and have zero overview there (also acryl ports or ports from other companies with comparable parameters will work, of course)):

#1.: Fisheye w/wo zoom capability: Zen DP100 for MFT vs Nauticam140 (or similar) for FF.

=> MFT wins (Tokina 10-17mm fisheye with Metabones 0.7x speedbooster and Zen DP100; similar to Zuiko 8mm, that, however, has no zoom out capability)). I, personally was using the, optically superb, Canon 8-15mm with Nauticam 140 - almost no difference in size and weight then.

#2.: WA wet lenses: work more or less on both MFT and FF (at present, Sony FF seems to have no WWL-C compatible lens and is the exception (WWL-C was developed for compact cameras; I am not sure about IQ on FF)).

=> No difference in practice.

#3.: rectilinear WA: ZenDP170(or Nauticam180) vs Nauticam230 for FF.

there are, however, exceptional lenses like Tamron 17-28mm that work very well behind DP170 (I have one, but almost never use it, since i use adapted canon 8-15mm fisheye with 2x Sony TC). In this case no difference to MFT. I do not know, whether this lens is available in Nikon Z, but Google does.

=> MFT wins (but not miles ahead); no difference compared with Tamron 17-28mm on FF.

#4.: Intermediate focal range for fish portrait (normally seldom used): I am/was using Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 pro for MFT as well as Sony 20-70mm f/4 G behind Zen DP170. Both delivered excellent IQ. Now replaced by MFO-3 that also delivers very good IQ and is not flexible, but portability when travelling is so much better.

=> No difference

#5.: Macro: here comes the really big difference: Macro rig with Zuiko 60mm or Panasonic 45mm extension (one can use the 45mm Nauticam port for both, 60mm needs an additional 20mm extension) is such a tiny and smart rig compared to the Nauticam rigs with Sony 90mm or, now, 100mm GM macrolens.

In my MFT days the WA rigs (type #1, #3, #4) used to be the biggest and heaviest, while now the situation is reversed. The macro rig is the biggest and most monstrous rig I assemble with my Sony A7R5 (I use #1, #2 (WACP-C), #3 (I do not own a 230mm dome), #4).

=> Only type where MFT is a clear winner in my eyes (when focus is totally correct and no motion blurr, one gets excellent IQ in both systems (FF offers more postprocessing power, but this makes little difference in practice).

Cheers @Architeuthis - a lot of good info there!

15 hours ago, Davide DB said:

OM-1 MK2 + PL 45mm F2.8 macro (90mm FF equiv.)

Nikon Z5II + Nikkor 105mm F2.8 macro

OM-1 MK2 + Olympus 60mm F2.8 macro (120mm FF equiv.)

Nikon Z5II + Nikkor 105mm F2.8 macro

Play your game:

https://camerasize.com/compact/#918.930,946.991,ha,t

That is a very interesting comparison tool to have!

15 hours ago, Christian K said:

What’s very specific for the z5ii is the ability to use the z24-50 and the wwl-c. It is a very petite set-up that kind of throw the conventional wisdoms on FF out the window inme. The wwl-c was developed for 24 mm focal lengths according to Nauticam, not necessarily compact cameras and not for any sensortype. The wwl 1 for 28. IQ should be the same if set up correctly. But I haven’t used Sony or Canon and not the wwl 1. I suggest asking @MatthewSullivan if he can see any IQ variations between the two wwl:s, as I believe he has used both of them. It will be a little more expensive. It will be some more weight and bulk (lenses as TimG point out, how many will you need for a trip?) of course. But surprisingly little for the basic set-up, and the z5ii brings some heavy weight abilities into a lightweight fight. Worth considering inmo. YMMV.

I am expecting to be selective with packing - will I take a 105mm macro and port to the Red Sea? Probably not. Will I take a big fisheye and dome port to Tulamben or Amed? Probably not.

15 hours ago, John Liddiard said:

When I moved to M4/3 I could fit nearly everything for the camera system into a carry on and my hold baggage shrank by a bag.

• Camera system less vulnerable to baggage bashing.

• Camera system no longer susceptible to pilfering in dodgy airports.

• I save on hold baggage fees. First flight with M4/3 system I saved £70 each way. I have given up counting, but given enough dive trips it will pay for itself.

I guess when flying from UK/Europe it is a consideration as you have the low cost carriers etc like EasyJet, unfortunately in Australia we aren't that lucky, but I am fortunate that I have decent membersip levels with Qantas (OneWorld) and Emirates so the minimum checked baggage allowance I get is 56kg, +10kg carryon. For most routes however my checked baggage allowance is 69kg and sometimes up to 96kg.

If you went Sony FF, like an A7Cii, you have access to using Nikonos manual lenses.

Which are simultaneously the most frustrating and rewarding lenses I've got. They are also tiny.

14 hours ago, Nemrod said:

Yes, HSS and occasionally some triggers may allow you to trick the camera to a higher sync speed. My UWT trigger allows me to get to 1/200 though the native sync is 1/160. But, it is fussy.

There is simply no way I will ever purchase another high dollars underwater rig that does not have at least 1/250 sync speed. Unlike land photography, nearly every shot we make underwater is with strobes. And really, I would like headroom to 1/500 without resorting to HSS. Anything Matt and Alex say about compensating for 1/160 or 1/200 sync limit can be applied to a camera with a 1/250 sync speed for even better results.

For macro shooters, okay, not a problem perhaps but for wide angle, that darn sun seems to hang out right where I want to take a shot.

For the next few years the only place I am likely to be shooting wide angle in bright sunshine is the Red Sea, but that is going to be archaeological photography at 62 metres - should be OK. If everyone in the general region would kindly stop lobbing missiles at each other that would help enormously - I've given up on plans for the Red Sea this year - flying Melbourne-Singapore-London Heathrow-Cairo just to get to the Red Sea is too much for me.

14 hours ago, Christian K said:

As a comparison with z24-50 and IDK about olympus but a 9-18!? Would that be what you’d use with wet optics?

I've really got to get my head around wet optics - that and digital seems to be two massive changes that I need to get used to after 30 years on the sidelines - note I said Sidelines not the Sin Bin!

11 hours ago, ACHiPo said:

By the way one consideration on housing is if there is any thought to adding a monitor as I think only aluminum housings accommodate the HDMI needed.

OK that's interesting - likely housing choices will be Nauticam or the red one (whose name completely escapes me), but I will certainly be checking that it has the facilities for HDMI output to a monitor.

8 hours ago, JohnD said:

I was talking to another diver/photographer friend a few weeks ago before we were to meet on Grand Cayman, and I mentioned that I was going to bring a MFT setup as a reduced size and weight experiment. He asked me what strobes I was using and I told him I planned on bringing the Retra Maxis. He laughed and I realized that two strobes that were each about the size of the housing and weighing over 1kg each did sort of undermine my small and light concept.

Yes there is that aspect I suppose!

8 hours ago, Dave_Hicks said:

Top to Bottom: Backscatter Atom, Backscatter HF-1, Retra Maxi.

The Maxi is the biggest, but also the by far the lightest in the water - nearly neutrally buoyant.

The Retra's better buoyancy characteristics probably mean that they take up less space in luggage overall than HF-1's + floats

2 hours ago, CCRphoto said:

For the next few years the only place I am likely to be shooting wide angle in bright sunshine is the Red Sea, but that is going to be archaeological photography at 62 metres - should be OK. If everyone in the general region would kindly stop lobbing missiles at each other that would help enormously - I've given up on plans for the Red Sea this year - flying Melbourne-Singapore-London Heathrow-Cairo just to get to the Red Sea is too much for me.

Ah, scientific documentation is a major goal...

Then it very well might be that the choice of lenses is further narrowed - e.g. I am not sure that 180° fisheye is the right lens for this purpose. The Subal PPO with an excellent 16-35mm WA lens MAY BE the king here (but I do know nothing about UW archeology and optimum lens types)...

=> Better ask these UW archeologists which lenses are useful...

7 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

I used the Z240s a lot till I got Retra pures, but tests on here showed the tiny cheap INON S220 have similar output to the Z240 and I'm sure would be quite enough particularly for macro on m43.

I used the Z-220 a long time ago (from 2008 to around 2010) and back then it was a good strobe for the price.

However, what drove me to sell it after about three years was the fact that it was virtually impossible to snoot with the strobe because the focus light and flash tube weren't on the same optical axis.

For me(!) that would always be one of the main reasons for buying a strobe – along with, of course, a few other features.

4 hours ago, Architeuthis said:

Ah, scientific documentation is a major goal...

Then it very well might be that the choice of lenses is further narrowed - e.g. I am not sure that 180° fisheye is the right lens for this purpose. The Subal PPO with an excellent 16-35mm WA lens MAY BE the king here (but I do know nothing about UW archeology and optimum lens types)...

=> Better ask these UW archeologists which lenses are useful...

A not super-wide rectlinier lens is best - everything has been there for 2000 years so I can get as close as I want - I'm certainly not going to scare the subject away.

So M43 is still the most compact. A 12-35mm requires a 6"/150mm dome for stellar results.

Even a 8-18mm requires a 180mm dome while in FF a 230mm is required for best results.

21 hours ago, Christian K said:

8 hours ago, CCRphoto said:

For the next few years the only place I am likely to be shooting wide angle in bright sunshine is the Red Sea, but that is going to be archaeological photography at 62 metres - should be OK. If everyone in the general region would kindly stop lobbing missiles at each other that would help enormously - I've given up on plans for the Red Sea this year - flying Melbourne-Singapore-London Heathrow-Cairo just to get to the Red Sea is too much for me.

OK, that is interesting. I assume that this means you need wide and not macro, and do not want fisheye-like distortion. If that is correct and size and weight matter, I would definitively look hard at micro four thirds because the small lenses permit smaller dome ports for rectilinear wide angle.

There are a number of zoom lenses from Panasonic and Olympus that can be used as wide as 7-12mm range on the wide end (14-24mm in full frame speak) and all work in a 170-180mm dome, which large-ish but not unreasonable to travel with. You might even be able to use some in a 140mm dome if you can tolerate the loss of image quality. I never tried that combination.

That same 170-180 port size could also work with some of the APS-C lenses form other camera brands. I am most familiar with Nikon and OM, so I don't have specific suggestions.

A little camera and a little housing just makes more room for what is really important, powerful strobes 🤣.

The Maxi is smaller than the HF-1 with floats. And, since the Maxi is neutral, you may be able to use only a single float arm instead of dual float arms on each side.

On another note, the Inon S220 strobes are essentially the same power as the older Z240. They are very close. And they are tiny, tiny.

Edited Thursday at 02:57 PM2 days by Nemrod

2 hours ago, JohnD said:

OK, that is interesting. I assume that this means you need wide and not macro, and do not want fisheye-like distortion. If that is correct and size and weight matter, I would definitively look hard at micro four thirds because the small lenses permit smaller dome ports for rectilinear wide angle.

There are a number of zoom lenses from Panasonic and Olympus that can be used as wide as 7-12mm range on the wide end (14-24mm in full frame speak) and all work in a 170-180mm dome, which large-ish but not unreasonable to travel with. You might even be able to use some in a 140mm dome if you can tolerate the loss of image quality. I never tried that combination.

That same 170-180 port size could also work with some of the APS-C lenses form other camera brands. I am most familiar with Nikon and OM, so I don't have specific suggestions.

Pretty much - avoid distortion, generally don't need a really wide rectlinier lens for archaeological work (unless you find an underwater city or something like that!). It looks like I can use the Nikkor 24-50 with a 180mm dome port or some quite short flat ports.

2 hours ago, Nemrod said:

A little camera and a little housing just makes more room for what is really important, powerful strobes 🤣.

The Maxi is smaller than the HF-1 with floats. And, since the Maxi is neutral, you may be able to use only a single float arm instead of dual float arms on each side.

On another note, the Inon S220 strobes are essentially the same power as the older Z240. They are very close. And they are tiny, tiny.

I'm pretty sold on the Maxis - they are locked in on my spreadsheets!

12 hours ago, CCRphoto said:

The Retra's better buoyancy characteristics probably mean that they take up less space in luggage overall than HF-1's + floats

5 hours ago, Nemrod said:

A little camera and a little housing just makes more room for what is really important, powerful strobes 🤣.

The Maxi is smaller than the HF-1 with floats. And, since the Maxi is neutral, you may be able to use only a single float arm instead of dual float arms on each side.

On another note, the Inon S220 strobes are essentially the same power as the older Z240. They are very close. And they are tiny, tiny.

I agree that Retra really did a good job making the Maxi neutrally buoyant and it's a big advantage of their design. However, adding floats to the HF-1 does level the playing field a bit.

Below is a set of photos with the Maxi strobe vs the HF-1 with my float design. As you can see, they are not wildly different. The HF-1 is about 12mm wider at the maximum, but shorter overall. With a float installed buoyancy of the two strobes is about the same.

There might be an opportunity to make the HF-1 floats a bit taller and less wide with the same buoyancy.

Edited Thursday at 08:13 PM1 day by Dave_Hicks

11 hours ago, CCRphoto said:

Pretty much - avoid distortion, generally don't need a really wide rectlinier lens for archaeological work (unless you find an underwater city or something like that!). It looks like I can use the Nikkor 24-50 with a 180mm dome port or some quite short flat ports.

In m43 terms, the 12-40 and 12-45 lenses sound ideal, they are very sharp and will work in either a 140mm dome or Isotta's 6"dome. I've used the 12-40 quite a lot around Sydney and it produces nice images. Image from Oak Park Cronulla a few years back, 12-40 at f8.

11 hours ago, Dave_Hicks said:

I agree that Retra really did a good job making the Maxi neutrally buoyant and it's a big advantage of their design. However, adding floats to the HF-1 does level the playing field a bit.

Below is a set of photos with the Maxi strobe vs the HF-1 with my float design. As you can see, they are not wildly different. The HF-1 is about 12mm wider at the maximum, but shorter overall. With a float installed buoyancy of the two strobes is about the same.

There might be an opportunity to make the HF-1 floats a bit taller and less wide with the same buoyancy.

Interesting!

It looks like you have 3D printing all squared away too!

Dave, do you find with the floats on the HF-1 strobes you can dispense with one of the float arms? Just curious.

The HF-1 were on my short list and the Atoms until I realized that they have no TTL with Canon or Sony (or Nikon etc.). I bet UW Technics will eventually reverse engineer a program for his triggers for the Backscatter protocols.

Correct me if wrong but I do not think the HSS works but with OM Systems and with their proprietary Sony trigger?

Edited yesterday at 02:08 PM1 day by Nemrod

2 hours ago, Nemrod said:

Dave, do you find with the floats on the HF-1 strobes you can dispense with one of the float arms? Just curious.

When i first tried the Retra Maxis my rig was too buoyant. I didn't remove any float arms as their length is more about strobe positioning. But I did remove two Jumbo Stix float blocks to get things rebalanced.

I then made the HF-1 and Atom floats because without those extra Stix floats the rig was too negative by far. Putting the floatation on the strobe enabled me to quickly move between Maxi, HF-1, and Atom strobes without the difficulty of moving Stix blocks around.

10 hours ago, Dave_Hicks said:

When i first tried the Retra Maxis my rig was too buoyant. I didn't remove any float arms as their length is more about strobe positioning. But I did remove two Jumbo Stix float blocks to get things rebalanced.

I then made the HF-1 and Atom floats because without those extra Stix floats the rig was too negative by far. Putting the floatation on the strobe enabled me to quickly move between Maxi, HF-1, and Atom strobes without the difficulty of moving Stix blocks around.

When you next have your camera rig with the Maxis assembled could you please post a photo?

54 minutes ago, CCRphoto said:

When you next have your camera rig with the Maxis assembled could you please post a photo?

I dove last night for Six Gill sharks. The camera is still set up with my 8-15+1.4tc configuration.

Edited 11 hours ago11 hr by Dave_Hicks