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That is just it, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Didn't that get somebodies head removed or was that "let them eat cake" or something! Anyways, to have a monitor or 45 degree VF and a dome, it is what it is. By going to the larger Maxi strobes which are neutral I was able to remove the outer float arms and just have bare skeleton arms outboard. View finder/monitor, no. Run and gun or jump and go, all of that stuff added negates the premise. In some future where I am exceedingly wealthy I will hire a porter to haul all my equipment about and when we see something photo worthy they will hand me my camera and assist. And serve as a model and set up off camera lighting. And if an OWT shows up hungry sacrifice themselves for benefit of my escape!

Partially plastic, not that there is anything wrong with that! The front end is aluminum and acts as a heat sink. The rest of the body is very tough plastic that does not scratch and dent like aluminum body strobes do.

Basically no. The video light is on a programable switch position that is via the Retra app specified to be TTL cancel or the video light. Either but not both. And the programmable mode (U) position is on the mode dial and power is set on the strobe power dial. The focus light is available in all modes via a push of the center button a two power levels. And, yes, it does shut off when the strobe is triggered. I find both focus lights to be adequate for lighting my way through swim throughs or a night dive. I do not think the HF1 can do that either but I admit to not being particularly smitten with it once I found out it had no support for Canon/Nikon and Sony only via yet another $ trigger and no universal TTL. And it is plastic, yuk.

Serendipity. Nothing is better. Amazing footage and great patience letting her relax and the encounter happen. And your breathing rate stayed steady.... makes everyone smile who is lucky enough to see this. Thank you.

The Maxi video light mode is exclusive of the Flash. Pretty sure the HF-1 is the same.

Thank you @Nando Diver Now I've DR21 studio version. I bought DCTL by xtremestuff too, as you suggested. Do you use GP-TUNE+ Transform? I suppose + has more controls not very effective in my case. Last but not least, a LUT is also provided together the DCTL: I suppose LUT is not necessary using DCTL as first node. Bye Giacomo

I couldn't agree more. Often technological replacement is confused with the extinction of an entire sector. The idea that smartphones would completely wipe out cameras was based on the assumption that taking a picture is just recording pixels. Following this linear reasoning, if the phone takes good photos for 99 percent of daily situations, the dedicated camera no longer has a reason to exist. Instead, something very similar to what happened in the music market with vinyl is happening. The more mobile photography becomes automated, compressed, and dominated by aggressive computational algorithms, the more people rediscover the value of the physical object, manual control, and an image with a natural optical rendering. "organic" 😁 Just look at kodak and film stocks. it was declared dead but now a lot of movie are shot again on film stock. The phenomenon of the Fujifilm X100 series and Ricoh GR is explained precisely like this: Fuji has intercepted a huge audience that wants the "organic" shooting experience and ready-to-use color rendering, without necessarily having to spend the evening developing RAW files on a monitor. The overtake of Nikon in terms of volumes tells exactly this change of priority in the consumer market. I guess that most of the X100 and GR customers comes form smartphones and not from hard core photography. The roles have simply sorted themselves out in the end. The smartphone acts as an omnipresent visual notepad and finances technological research on sensors, the dedicated camera remains the tool of those who look for deliberate action and control of parameters, and action cams and products like the Osmo Pocket have taken the place of old camcorders for mobile video. Smartphones may cannibalize large numbers, but they will hardly erase dedicated tools as long as the latter continue to offer a user experience that a flat touch glass can never replicate.

While it's tiny, it's a prime lens so you will not get the flexibility of a fisheye zoom and TC

Yes certainly but ours is a niche need. In normal photography today HDR is used. But surely underwater photography will benefit from it too. We need to keep an eye on the reviews of the new high end Chinese phones coming at the end of the year that will use Sony and Omnivision sensors.

This, and other native Sony FE (zoom) fisheye lenses, look great, since they are smaller compared to the adapted Canon 8-15mm. The question to me is, however, whether they accept TCs and if yes, whether they provide acceptable IQ...

You say that this technology changes little for photography, but would it not be a hughe benefit against the blown out sunballs in WA photos?

I have never owned a MFO-1, but I am/was using adapted Canon 100mm IS macro/Sony 90mm macro/Sony 100mm macro on the Sony A7RV. Even with the adapted Canon 100mm macro AF was o.k, but a liga below the native lenses. AF is great both with Sony 90mm and Sony 100mm on this camera body, but there were several complaints that AF is slow/pumping on Sony A7RIV and downwards. AF may be even better with A7RVI and it should be on par with A7RV on the A7RC, but I did not use this camera ever... In the MFO-1 portchard (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YcKS767I57nPedgq5vG3WVlElsp3XVLF/view) the Sony 28-60mm is not listed as compatible/tested, probably not useful for this lens (AF from the model A7RV upwards is very capable without any special diopters, however) I started by using the back LCD on my first UW camera, an Olympus EM5II (and previously the Panasonic TZ5 and Olympus EPL-7 from my wife). Upon upgrading to EM1II, I got a 45° viewfinder together with the second hand Nauticam housing. Since then I greatly enjoy using it (also now with Sony A7RV). It helps a lot in getting a slightly upwards from the bottom perspective without bending body and neck too much... I would not switch back to a plastic housing these days (e.g. like the initial Panasonic and Olympus housings of my wife, that I could use occasionally). My first alu housing (EM5II) was Nauticam (at this time very good quality (what is still the case) at a low price (unfortunately not valid any more)). Since then I use Nauticam. I presumably will not switch to Isotta or Marelux upon updating to a newer camera model, since (i) I know Nauticam as reliable and very ergonomic (I cannot say about the other brands, I never used one) and (ii) when switching to another brand I would have to deal with adapters for my other gear, i.e. (dome)ports, extensions, wetlenses, that is more expensive than just a bare housing ...

Interesting. By chance have you tested 28-60+MFO-1, mostly to see if the wet lens improves auto-focus ?

When a smartphone arrives that can trigger an external TTL strobe...

Yes, absolutely. Smartphones are vastly bigger in volume and a huge amount of imaging technology research is now clearly driven by the smartphone market. Where it's a little weak in the knees is to use this fact to predict that the dedicated cameras will effectively disappear fast. It seems to me the market is evolving into something rather different: smartphones dominate general-purpose photography, while dedicated cameras survive - and in some segments are actually growing again ( built-in-lens camera shipments is forecast to grow by 13.6% this year for instance by Japan's Camera & Imaging Products Association) - because they offer things a phone can't, despite being a cumbersome dedicated tools. And then we also have action cams on the video front, which in a way seem to be mutating into some high end neo-camcorder function. I guess it's more about different tools for different purposes, and this makes predictions a little more complicated as society, users and uses evolve as well. Video, as a medium rather than a format, has little to do now with what it was 20, even 10 years ago. And we see weird things in the music sector as well. I suppose the lesson is that predicting market dominance is easier than predicting actual market extinction.

We can have other, more artistic topics such as Golden ratio vs Rule of thirds ("vs" is important) or Can we learn from Renaissance portrait painters for underwater photography? etc. We can probably expect less active discussion.

It will be interesting to see how this new 7Artisans compares to the Canon 8-15 + Metabones underwater. Certainly a significant price saving for those that do not already have the Canon. It should also yield a slightly smaller setup with a less extension needed. At $450 USD I am tempted to give it a try behind my 140 dome.

Hi, Can the 6000 lm light (or that light at lower power) be used while the strobe is in normal flash mode (TTL or manual), essentially as a powerful focus light? More specifically, does the continuous light stay on between shots and then switch off automatically during the flash exposure before turning back on again? I know the Maxi has a separate 400 lm pilot light, but I am specifically wondering whether the video light can be used this way. For comparison, the Backscatter HF-1 allows its continuous light to be used together with the flash, which is very useful for tracking and focusing on moving fish. Thanks!

We are not very good at predicting market trends 🙃 And anyway I will never tire of emphasizing that the number of smartphones sold is 1.25 billion units, while the entire photography sector, including compacts and mirrorless cameras, did not even reach 10 million. Two orders of magnitude. Technology advance comes from smartphones.

still remember a couple of years ago, when compact cameras were pronounced dead and buried for good in one such report - and of course, in our cozy forum pages. 😁😁😁 Isn’t 2026 the year we were all supposed to be shooting underwater on our phones, BTW? 😁

Something more serious

Nikkei shared its Industry Map 2027 with a ranking of global camera shipments. Canon – 4.5 million units (45.7%, +2.5%) Sony – 2.42 million units (24.6%, -3.9%) Fujifilm– 1.16 million units (11.8%, +2.8%) Nikon – 880,000 units (8.9%, -2.8%) Panasonic – 430,000 units (4.4%, +1%) Ricoh Imaging – 210,000 units (2.1%, +1.3%) OM Digital – 150,000 units (1.5%, -0.4%) Image credit: mirrorlessrumors.com It is worth noting how incredibly Nikon is no longer the third player in the market, surpassed by Fujifilm. This is probably due to the incredible success of the luxury compact camera Fujifilm X100VI. This retro-designed camera that mimics the style of rangefinder cameras has broken every historical sales record for the brand and is often hard to find in stores. It is compact only on the outside: it packs a 40.2-megapixel sensor and in-body image stabilization and offers Fujifilms famous historical color profiles without the need for post-production. More and more manufacturers are launching vintage-style compact models. On September 9 OM formerly Olympus will launch the successor to the legendary PEN. for the rest, Canon is firmly in the lead, Sony has a slight dip and the others... are fighting in the mud 🥲

Wow a really good job! One single very long tracking shot, you never lost focus or shook during the shooting. Bravo! P.S. At first glance, getting that close would have scared the crap out of me 😱