Just some footage from the dark Oslofjord/Norway. Nothing spectacular or impressive, but was testing my new Nikon ZR with a Nikkor Z 17-28mm in a SeaFrogs aluminium housing. Happy with the setup.

Today I was struggling with the balance of the camera, since I made it neutral in the nearest harbor, where there was a lot of more fresh water than where we had the dive. So the housing was too positive. Also the balance was not too good, since the dome port was too light compared to the rest of the rig.

I was not too familiar with the focus controls, so I had some out of focus shots - and some shots with questionable autofocus...

Took it in 4K/50fps in R3DLog (Red Raw). The files got humongous. But who cares with todays memory card prices.. 🤪

This was just a quick and dirty edit, but I was impressed of how much I could adjust the footage. A great step up from the Panasonic GH4.

Since it is autumn, the dives in the future will probably be more macro dives, so looking forward to test it with the 105mm. If anyone has tested the 105mm, do you have any recommendations for a diopter for it? I am only shooting video.

On 10/19/2026 at 3:00 AM, Thomas Pettersen said:

Took it in 4K/50fps in R3DLog (Red Raw). The files got humongous. But who cares with todays memory card prices.. 🤪

Since it is autumn, the dives in the future will probably be more macro dives, so looking forward to test it with the 105mm. If anyone has tested the 105mm, do you have any recommendations for a diopter for it? I am only shooting video.

Thanks for sharing! Really interested to hear your long-term impressions of the Seafrogs aluminium housing.

Who cares, seriously? I guess we don't share the same footage storage concerns 🤣
I found some nice subjects last week, spent a little time with them on a dive, and came back with 100 GB of footage from that dive, and that's with the A7SIII's most compressed HEVC codec!
I archive everything I shoot, so at that rate, with usually 3 to 4 diving days per week, ouch...

Otherwise shoot video only as well, using the Sony 100mm macro on the A7SIII, with the MFO3, MFO1 and a +10 diopter for smaller subjects, mounted on a triple flip. It's great because you can go from medium shots to super macro.

The Marelux 60mm is also very nice, and I'm looking forward to adding the Marelux 24mm converter in the future for even wider shots (I don't really do wide-angle, so I'm happy to stick with the 100mm).

Just make sure to turn off lens stabilisation when using the 60mm converters, as camera stabilisation gets confused by change in focal length.

cheers,
ben

Edited October 20Oct 20 by bghazzal

It was a quite hughe lift in the technical quality from the camera you used a few weeks ago. Next time we'll struggle together with 100 mm macro and manual focus.

Edited October 20Oct 20 by Rune Edvin Haldorsen

7 hours ago, bghazzal said:

Who cares, seriously? I guess we don't share the same footage storage concerns 🤣
I found some nice subjects last week, spent a little time with them on a dive, and came back with 100 GB of footage from that dive, and that's with the A7SIII's most compressed HEVC codec!
I archive everything I shoot, so at that rate, with usually 3 to 4 diving days per week, ouch...

Ooo. that hurts. Btw, I saw an adapter for the CFExpress-card, so I can use a standard 2230 SSD disk as memory card. That will help a lot.

https://www.amazon.com/NFHK-Type-B-CFexpress-Adapter-Expansion/dp/B0FDWGGY5T

But with that amount of data, you need to have a lot of external storage anyway...

7 hours ago, bghazzal said:

Otherwise shoot video only as well, using the Sony 100mm macro on the A7SIII, with the MFO3, MFO1 and a +10 diopter for smaller subjects, mounted on a triple flip. It's great because you can go from medium shots to super macro.

The Marelux 60mm is also very nice, and I'm looking forward to adding the Marelux 24mm converter in the future for even wider shots (I don't really do wide-angle, so I'm happy to stick with the 100mm).

Just make sure to turn off lens stabilisation when using the 60mm converters, as camera stabilisation gets confused by change in focal length.

Great! It is smart to have different magnifications/angles on the footage. Make it more interresting to look at, and possible to create a small story. Had a sneak peek at your YouTube-channel and I really like the clips you had there.

Think I'll try the lens first without a diopter first, and feel what I need.

Thanks for your feedback,

cheers

Thomas

6 hours ago, Rune Edvin Haldorsen said:

It was a quite hughe lift in the technical quality from the camera you used a few weeks ago. Next time we'll struggle together with 100 mm macro and manual focus.

Yes, it is night and day compared to the Panasonic GH4. Looking forward to struggle with the 105mm and macro in the muddy fjord.

Btw, I also saw quite many some sea-feathers at Storsand, but not as many as in Bunnefjorden.

@Thomas Pettersen That looks nice. I tend to shoot more macro here in Hawai'i but I've seen friends use lead tape and wheel weights on domes to balance their rigs.

1 minute ago, humu9679 said:

@Thomas Pettersen That looks nice. I tend to shoot more macro here in Hawai'i but I've seen friends use lead tape and wheel weights on domes to balance their rigs.

I've been thinking about wheel weights, so that is on my list. But lead-tape was a new product to me. Thanks for the tip!

Or else I have been thinking about creating some rails with weights on lengthwise along the camera. Maybe connected to the quad-pod on under the camera. In that way I could adjust the balance according to lens and port.

@Dave_Hicks is one of the great tinkerers on this site. He might have a better answer to your dome balancing problems.