All Activity

Was working on some cloudfare stuff. should level off..

Thanks, Dave. I wasn't aware of any issues but we will check it out.

I don't really see an issue with some minor dropping of corner sharpness in an image like this. If you don't like the look, you can try a smaller aperture next time, or crop in a little tighter clipping off the edges. I personally like an 8x10 or 1x1 ratio for a lot of my photos. I do a lot of large format prints and find these to be the best options for display.

I have actually one strobe at each end. And I can adjust the trim without changing the stobes position.

Is there a problem with the hosting service? I've gotten quite a few instances when the site won't load and times out.

Welcome, Tia — two quick thoughts that may help: There’s a must-read thread on corner sharpness with the Canon 8–15 fisheye. The author questions the Nauticam port chart and also ran extensive Nauticam port tests. It includes a simple “at home” position test you can do to confirm whether the lens is sitting at the correct position in the dome: https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/1438-testing-nauticam-n120-port-extension-for-140mm-and-180mm-domes-with-wide-angle-lenses/ Even if everything is set up correctly, you can still run into depth-of-field limitations underwater (similar to what you’re seeing on land). Your sample image might be a good example of that. Former forum member Interceptor121 has a very good write-up on this, and he repeatedly notes that placing your focus point closer to the corners of the frame can help improve corner sharpness: https://interceptor121.com/2023/03/18/canon-8-15mm-with-kenko-1-4-teleconverter/

What is a big animal ? Dolphin ? Yes you have some dolphin tour to do (made 2 times) They are also sometimes some whale tour (We didn't make it, but I guess they was some sperm whale some guest in the resort made the tour and saw the whales) Dugon ? Yes We saw 1, 2 times (Bunaken + Bangka) Shark ? Yes it's possible (Bunaken) After that you can see... a lot of turtles in Bunaken. and small and very small things

No, it's not a typo. Marelux USA and Europe prices are 1:1 dollar/euro and Marelux Europe website specifies prices are VAT excluded.

Even though you’re on the West coast, reach out to Reef Photo in Ft Lauderdale if you get in a Nauticam bind. They are connected to Nauticam USA. Ikelite is the least expensive. There are reasons. I’ve owned a couple and have been much more happy with the build quality of Nauticam. Get what you pay for.

maybe Strange new species :DD

Nope - or did you mean it the other way round and this was a typo? I guess you fell in the common trap that prices in the EU are only allowed to be advertised incl. VAT, while online advertised prices in the USA excl. VAT.

Are you sure? I sat through hundreds of posts debating NiMh and Lithium batteries in total silence, soso I’ve earned my right to talk about this ! hahahaha I'm joking of course!

Aren't the softer edges expected with the 140mm? I shoot a Zen DP100 with the Canon 8-15 (Nauticam NA-A7C + N100 ->N120 converter (no extension)) and run into the same, It's just the limitation of the dome size, thus the advantages of the larger domes. Can that be minimized with extensions?

I'm not such a photograph ... But I known they are such person... photograph, or, or etc and to be honest... a screw more or less will not help you to make a better photo... I love pragmatism and a screw is eally not that. No no... but for me if I can shoot easy and steady it will be ok for video...

I decided to start a new thread on this becasue my previous posts about this question (and many others') came under sidetracked forum topics. I'll start with this image: This is a shot taken recently on my first dives using my new Nauticam housing. ISO160, 1/250s, F11, 30mm (2x15mm). I chose this image as it has a lot of detail at the edges and is excellent cenrte focus. Gear setup for reference: Sony A7rV, Metabones converter, Sony 2x TC, Canon 8-15mm Fisheye Nauticam Housing, 35.5 n100-n120, 60mm Extension and 140mm Nauticam dome port. My question relates to ideal port extension, and image quality. I have seen others post about this specifically, but none of the images posted previously (IIRC) never really helped understand whole-of-image quality becasue they lacked detail in the edges. I think this photo does well becasue it does have a lot of this detail to evaluate how it's performing. One of the previous, sidetracked posts (perhaps sidetracked by me), @Architeuthis had suggested 60mm extension was a good starting point for this setup. It's what i've used here. My view is that the image quality is great for about 75%+ of the frame, but drops at the very far edges. Something like this range is where I think it starts dropping off: A zoom-in on the areas that have a lot of detail.. Bottom right: Bottom left: Top left: And for the sake of it, this is the centre: Others might disagree and have better words to describe what I think I'm seeing. I'm sure theres a bit of out of plane blurring happening, but I think it's just slightly more than that. My questions are: Has anyone had any experience and good example images like this one that show off the performance of different extension lengths for this exact setup? We might be talking 5mm increments here. Does anyone have any alternative views on what the ideal extension length might be (Ideally on the Sony and using the 140mm dome port)? TIA!

It never used to be......

Fair point! If you're a photographer who just occasionally shoots video, pretty much anything works. But if the whole reason you're diving is to shoot video (like the OP here), then no, it’s not just about the person or their style, at least not mostly. Forgive me for being a bit of a nerd, but I’ve spent years watching you photographers obsess over every single screw on a strobe... 😂 so give me a break and let me do the same for video! 😜

I was looking at Marelux's European and American price lists, and we’re clearly living in The fabulous world of Amélie now, where housings cost more in Europe than in the US 😆

Wetpixel.comTest: Optical performance of Nikonos 15mm, flat and dome...Wetpixel is the premiere community website dedicated to underwater photography and videography

One thing I will say about Ikelite (I don't own one) is they will sell you parts to service it yourself and it's not expensive. Getting Nauticam to even reply about parts is impossible. That said I shoot Nauticam.

Thank you very much for your answers. Manado is good for big animals? I Thought that it was more for macro. Thank you for all these ideas. Galapagos : I just talked about it with my wife and she is scared by the iguanas lol Australia and Hawaii : too far away Dominican Republic for humpback whales : could be a good one. I will have a closer look Costa Rica: I think it is forbidden to go in the water with dolphins, right?

Here's my take from a long time Canon dSLR and now mirrorless shooter...... The R7 is a fine camera no matter what housing you put it in. APS-C versus full frame is in my opinion not as critical as too many whine about. Any print, self printed book, online use or whatever can be done with APS-C or even 4:3....... As to lenses for Canon the EF-RF adapter (I'd recommend getting the Canon brand) will function fine with several EF lenses and new RF or RF-S lenses designed for APS-C sensor Canon models including Canon R100, R50, R10 and R7. The Canon 8-15mm is stellar and APS-C designed Tokina 10-17mm can be a good choices. Both lenses are discontinued but can be found on the used market. Since the Canon R7 is APS-C the Canon RF-S 10-18mm rectilinear lens is a bargain producing great sharpness and color. It's all I own for WA shooting now. Just noticed the poster is more interested in wide shooting but here's info for any potential macro shooters. For macro several lenses are fine including the discontinued but very sharp Canon EF-S 60mm. With the Canon R7 camera's 1.6X sensor crop factor it "sees" like a 96mm lens. On APS-C sensors I feel the Canon 100mm Macro whether the older EF or newer RF model are way too long and simply frustrate people. On housings I'm tired of people denigrating Ikelite...... Are they perfect? No, but cost to benefit are still an attractive option...... Full disclosure; I was an Ikelite dealer for over 35 years and user and also owned Aquatica and Nauticam housings. You can search for comments and recent use in 2025 of the Nauticam Canon R50 housing and various WWL and other lenses with sample photos. Ikelite's smaller DLM sized housings for Canon APS-C and even the full frame Canon R8 and Dry Lock port system can withstand any typical dive conditions. Their full sized housings as evidenced by many top notch shooters (see several web site stories at www.ikelite.com) have enabled photographers to capture great images from Norway's arctic to wherever. If you really need 100M depth rating then sure buy an aluminum housing at 3-4X the price....But you'll still be shooting the same lenses inside any housing. Famous underwater photographer Chris Newbert long ago at a DEMA trade show told a friend considering an Ikelite housing; "They're all just boxes with o-rings keeping your camera dry". He shot many (all?) of his macro images for his famous underwater coffee table book: "Within a Rainbowed Sea" with Ikelite housed Canon F1 cameras.....At another show I had Michael Aw of Ocean Geographic fame tell me his early Bunaken books were shot using multiple Ikelite housed film cameras. The argument on acrylic versus glass domes I contend in today's world of shoot, edit, publish and share is simply not as important as touted. I'm sure many will disagree and that's fine...... As I've written the new Ikelite TT5 Canon optical transmitter provides accurate TTL with their newest RC165 and Ecko Fiber strobes. If you have other brand strobes you can trip them in manual flash with a quick change in the camera's flash menu choice. I find people not even trying TTL to be another disappointment in today's tiny underwater shooting world but that's me....... Underwater time is limited and unless you're shooting slow macro creatures playing with flash settings is too "old school" for this 72 year old :) For the original poster here's an article I wrote on DivePhotoGuide shooting the new Ikelite Ecko Fiber strobes in Roatan Honduras. They're all I plan to shoot on my 2026 trips to Palau in March then Philippines in June. DivePhotoGuideShooting the Ikelite Ecko Fiber Strobes in Roatán My intent is NOT to "stir the pot" but share a lifetime of underwater imaging insights with the original poster :) Good luck with whatever set up you choose!!!! David Haas

Hi Conrad, No, in the end, I didn't take the plunge. There were so many options, so expensive and complicated, that I played dead like an opossum in danger 😁 Let me try to summarize what I’ve gathered on the subject. Let's just say the path branches out significantly depending on several factors. To name a few: Local vs. Cloud use Personal vs. Shared use Windows / Mac / Linux You also need a tool with specific features for video that guarantees enough long-term reliability. I could spend months cataloging everything, only for the software company to go bust after two or three years, leaving me with a useless database. Working in the software industry for 30 years, I can assure you this happens much more often than people think. Kyno is school case. My use case was personal use, local storage, and Windows-based. You have to be careful with local use because some products only manage catalogs on a single hard drive. While that’s limiting but still doable for photos, it's simply impossible for video. I keep my videos archived on duplicated, offline drives. Initially I actually wanted to use Lightroom, since I've been using it for years for my photos and family albums. The major issue was that importing videos took ages because it kept trying to create smart previews for all the files. Not only did it take forever, but it often failed or caused my computer to freeze. It's a real shame because I was already familiar with its powerful tag and metadata management. Plus, you are tied hand and foot to Adobe regarding a limited supported video formats. I might be wrong, but even now, there's no hope for ProRes HQ and ProRes RAW. Choosing a video DAM is no easy task. Long story short, for my specific needs, this was the short list: Kyno (The "Zombie" is back): After being practically abandoned for years, it’s back with new updates. It’s the only one truly designed for a video-first workflow. It allows for "sub-clipping" (tagging specific segments of a clip) and can inject metadata directly into DaVinci Resolve. It’s perfect if you need to "pre-edit" or cull footage before moving to the NLE. AbeMeda / NeoFinder (Win/Mac versions) This is the "disk indexer" per excellence. It’s incredibly fast at creating "snapshots" of offline volumes. If you have 20 external drives on a shelf and you need to know which one contains "Clip_0042.mov" in two seconds, this is the tool. Keep in mind, metadata and tags/keywords yoy add are still in a proprietary database. DigiKam (Open Source) It's a big big project. It's the open source version of Lightroom and it has been active for over 20 years. Even if development were to stop today, the software would keep working, and the database (SQLite or MariaDB) is open and readable. There is no risk of proprietary lock-in. but more importantly, it can mirror every tag and metadata into standard XMP sidecar files***. While it started for photos, the latest versions (v9+) use FFmpeg to handle ProRes HQ and even ProRes RAW previews. It’s the database nearly futureproof because even if the software disappears, your metadata lives in plain-text XMP files right next to your videos. And last but not the least, it's free. Among the three, Kyno is the one designed specifically for video and the one I loved the most. However, the fact that it was basically declared dead for about three years after the company was acquired really made me stop and think. *** a note about XMP and a database while managing indexed files Imagine you add an "interviews" tag/keyword to your Clip001.mov files. When you type "interviews" into software like digiKam or Kyno, the information is instantly saved in the Database, usually a single file on your PC, such as digikam4.db. The tag is inside a system file on your main Hard Drive for speed. When you search for "interviews," the software doesn't scan all your external hard drives; it queries its internal database, which is tiny and very fast. The limitation: If your database gets corrupted or if you uninstall the program without having a backup of the database, the "interviews" tag vanishes, even if your videos are safe and sound on the external disk. To avoid the risk mentioned above, professional software uses XMP files. Since writing metadata inside a video file is slow and not supported in all formats, the software creates a small text file with the same name as the video but a different extension. Example: Video: Clip001.mov Sidecar: Clip001.mov.xmp or Clip001.xmp. The tag is written inside this text file in a standard XML format. If you open the XMP file with Notepad, you will clearly see the word: <dc:subject>interviste</dc:subject> It is for security and portability. If you take that hard drive to another computer with different software, such as Adobe Bridge, that software will read the XMP file and know that the video has the "interviews" tag. If you spend months tagging your historical archive in digiKam and two years from now you decide to switch to Kyno or another MAM, you won't have to redo all the work—provided you've enabled XMP sidecar writing. The new software will read the XMP files and import the tags automatically. P.S. before you ask, no Adobe Bridge doesn't work!

Hi All. Am considering a trip to French Polynesia in 2027, hitting maybe Bora Bora, Rangiroa & Fakarava. Am hoping it'll be a group trip, 3-4 couples (not all are divers). In Bora Bora. the Airbnb properties seem to be relatively more affordable for a group as opposed to each couple getting their own room at a nice resort. But then the logistics come into play. I understand flights to/from Bora Bora include the ferry ride between the mainland and the airport, but then how to transport people, luggage, dive & camera gear. Hotels offer transportation, but we'd be on our own staying at an Airbnb. Most of the car rental agencies on the island appear to only offer tiny compact vehicles without much cargo capacity. Anyone have travel advice for FP island travel? Thanks in advance.

Yes . You are right. Sorry. The Canon R7 needs, at least, a manual flash trigger. Concerning Nauticam vs Ikelite : i am convinced that Nauticam is better but the price is prohibitive... Maybe if I find one used but it would probably be for an older camera model like maybe an a7II/a7rii but bigger than an apsc housing... About fisheye lenses , I had in mind : Tokina 10-17 for APSC Canon 8-15 for full frame -> So this lens makes sense for APSC as well? On ikelite port chart, I see that with for Sony E mount, Tokina 10-17 can be used either with a 6" dome port or a 8"dome port (good for slept shots). 6" dome port is too big in order to handle easily ? FOr Canon R7 : also 6" or 8" dome port but no zoom possible for the 8". On Nauticam side, which dome port can be used for the tokina 10-17 for Sony e mount and for canon APSC? I don't see any possibility in the port chart Sticking with Nauticam : For Canon APSC -> I don't see the rtokina 10-17 in the port chart For Sony full frame : for using the canon 8-15 : N100 to N120 adapter + N120 Extension Ring 30 II + 18802 (8.5" Acrylic Dome Port) so it seems very big @Chris Ross : I never looked at the m4/3 world but maybe it is a good option if it is cheaper, lighter and minimal image quality reduction compared to APSC or full frame. Which camera model would you recommend? with an adapter and the canon 8-15? Thank you very much for your detailed answers :-)