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or something like a Red camera: RED Digital CinemaRED Digital Cinema | Professional CamerasRED is the leading manufacturer of professional digital cinema cameras. Explore RED's modular camera system and groundbreaking image quality.

I got it recently, and I did not notice this problem, but also I did not use it a lot Could it be a problem with trapped air ? Do you burp the lens when you get in the water? Btw, I'll try in the bathtub one of the next evening and let you know

For small and shy critters the capability of the Sony 100mm GM f/2.8 to work with TC's (1,4x and 2x) is another benefit: magnification as well as working distance is increased proportinally when TCs are used - with TCs at a species-appropriate working distance even cropping may not be required... Only the very best for scientific documentation (and the setup fits the budget too)! (I must admit that in my former life I have been a scientist, hence comes this inclination)...😆

The z5ii must be quite a bit cheaper (and a little smaller?) than the Sony. And I wouldn’t pitch those two at each other. The Nikon z5ii is foremost a still photography tool. The Sony is a hybrid, more similar to z6iii in the Nikon line-up. If video is something you might want to do, they make more sense inmo. If stills is what you want to work with, you might be spending on features that has no value to you.

Whether the cropping is a benefit depends on how shy the fish are. You can count the scales the better the closer you are when the photo is taken. Fish from 1 cm to 80 cm seems to be a classic dilemma (and I have nothing to add to the suggestions). But it will always be better if you don't need to crop because you were close enough to fill the frame.

Just a small comment, as I'm also looking around to upgrade for a more ergonomic kit (read: newbie wants to move from a Seafrogs housing to Nauticam world - ha! should have paid more attention to all the feedback I got here :D ) I also thought that newer models are likely just around the corner (a Sony A6900 for 2027...?), but not only they aren't here yet, housings will also take a while to come around (I read 6-18 months after a new body is released). That adds quite a long time window to any model that isn't here yet. I'm leaning for the A6700, mostly because I find very marginal the gains of FF for what I do and the increase in bulkiness is substantial. That said, cropping from a A7R VI most be such a pleasant experience ! :)

** Retra Maxis

That’s a wonderful niche project. If your budget prioritizes image quality, how about the the Fuji GF series? https://www.nauticam.com/products/na-gfx100ii-housing-for-fujifilm-gfx100ii-camera

You can’t go wrong with the Retras. 👍🏼👍🏼

Aloha and welcome @Airintheocean

From the setups you are considering, I would go for A7R VI + 100mm macro + MFO-3 (+ possibly MFO-1 on double flip): MFO-1 will not bring much, but with SMC-3 (2,4x magnification) instead, a 10mm fish will fill approx. 68% of the width of the photo (i.e. approx. 36mm). With the bare 100mm lens (1,4x) a 10mm fish will fill approx 39% of the photos width... Concerning FF vs. crop sensor, you can crop the photos made with the 67 Mpixel sensor also in postprocessing to the dimensions of APS-C or MFT without any loss of IQ (in case you do not mind the big setup)... In case size matters, I would go for MFT with Zuiko 60mm +/- MFO-3 (CMC-1 is required only when very small objects are going to be photographed)...

I'm a glutton for punishment😀 I'm planning to get Retra Maxi strobes, so then it will be a case of testing them to see what frame rate they can keep up to at the strobe power settings needed for macro and then set that in the focus stacking menu when setting up a stack. Will be trial and error, but hopefully the results will be worth it - if not then nothing really lost. Everyone else is snooting so it will be good to produce some different macro images if I can.

Ugh N100 ports for Sony - that's a bit of a turn off - I've no idea why they can't build housings for Sony that take N120 ports directly. Will see waht the hotshoe and flash trigger situation is like for the A7V - hopefully they have resolved the hotshoe problem by now! The Sony does seem to have a couple of advantages - Sony make their E-mount available to far more 3rd party lens manufacturers than Nikon (or Canon), and the battery life on the Sony is a lot better - which wouldn't be important for a lot of people but might be important if I get into doing a lot of focus stack macro.

I don't know if you read the ongoing endless debate FF Vs Crop, anyway I will try to stay away from it, but I do not know for how long 😁 Let us say that regardless of the camera and its format, the current mainstream solution is to have a macro lens in the 90/100mm range and a double flip MFO-1 and MFO-3. This solution works with both FF and M43. Just my 2c.

List of our DIY projects in the first post updated! I hope I did not miss anything. I see that several requests did not get a reply. I would advise our members to post requests as new threads in this forum so they get more visibility. Ciao

Noise & dynamic range: Maybe one should stop discussing sensor sizes and instead refer to pixel sizes? After all, you can buy full-frame cameras from 24 Mpx all the way up to 61 Mpx. The larger a pixel is, the more light it can collect and as far as I understand this translates to higher dynamic range and better signal/noise ratios. Considering that the full-frame sensor has a 3.8-fold larger surface than a M43 sensor, the pixel size of a 20 Mpx M43 sensor should correspond to a hypothetical 77 Mpx full-frame sensor. If those two sensors were built exactly alike, then their signal/noise and dynamic range should be the same (per pixel). I know there are other things to consider, but let's keep it simple. In that comparison, the 61 Mpx FF camera is thus not soooo different from a 20 Mpx MFT. Sure, you can add up neighboring pixels from the 61 Mpx shot and thereby down-sample to 20 Mpx. This will improve singal/noise, but then you lose the argument that the 61 Mpx allows for much more cropping. (Interesting to follow where this thread has gone from the original post. Special thanks for the history and archeology info, VERY much looking forward to more posts on this and especially to the eventual opening of the museum! Also the practical info is wise - you can pay a lot of extra luggage for the price of a new kit, I agree.)

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum. I'm an ichthyologist looking to upgrade my UW fish photography gear. I currently use a Canon G5 XII with a CMC-2 and an Inon D-200 strobe, which gives me a very versatile magnification range, but I'd like to switch to a mirrorless system with better autofocus, a larger sensor, and higher resolution. My goal is to be able to photograph, during a single dive, a ~1 cm goby sitting on the sand, a moving damselfish swimming past at 0.5–1 m, and larger fish up to 0.8m in size. I don't do true wide-angle or aesthetic photography: I "just" want sharp photos where I can count the scales and fin rays. I would also like to keep the setup fairly compact for snorkeling, rough water entries, or when squeezing between rocks. I have a generous budget, up to $15k. After quite a bit of research, I'm considering several Sony options (I am open to other brands but they do not seem to offer what I am looking for), but none completely satisfies me: A6700: compact but APS-C, relatively small sensor, getting pretty old now (it pains me to put a lot of money into a model that will be replaced in 1 or 2 years), flash sync limited to 1/160s. A7C II: compact as well, but also getting a bit old, sync limited to 1/160s. A7CR : more pixels but sync limited to 1/160s, and also getting a bit old. A7R VI + 100mm macro + MFO-3 (+ possibly MFO-1 on double flip): lots of resolution for cropping, excellent AF, the MFO-3 would allow a wider field of view for larger/closer fish. But the whole setup seems bulky. A7R VI + 28–60mm + CMC-2 on a flip adapter (+ MFO-1 if useful?): this option would better replicate the philosophy of my G5 X II: versatile, more compact and lighter than 100mm+MFO-3, but I'm afraid of losing a lot of working distance, magnification, and perhaps ease of focusing on very small fish. My ideal lens would probably be a small macro zoom, for instance something like a 40–100mm capable of going from infinity to 1:1, but that doesn't seem to exist. Failing that, a compact 50–60mm macro with extremely fast autofocus might be the best compromise, but the Sony one gets bad reviews. I would appreaciate any advice. My best Fred.

Hey Fred! Great to have you with us. A warm welcome to Waterpixels. You've come to the right place to look at upgrading. We offer expert advice! And we love to help members empty their bank accounts 😝 Best wishes

Hi, I am a ne member from France, and somtimes Belgium. I am doing underwater fish photography, exclusivelly. Currently with Canon G5xii+CMC-1 in Nauticam housing + INON D200 ans INON S2000 strobes. But I consider upgrading. I am amazed by the quality of the discussion on this forum.

I think these days modern sensors are so good as long as you don't badly clip your image it doesn't matter , many sensors are ISO invariant and tweaking up exposure is no different to raising ISO in camera. Where it does help is in judging you haven't had too much flash as increasing exposure in post brings up flash as well and you wouldn't see it necessarily when reviewing the image when UW. But again if you have a histogram like shown above in my post you are not blocking shadows or blowing highlights and in fact you are only using 60-70% of the available dynamic range, so a high dynamic range camera does nothing for you. Stretching this histogram out with a levels adjustments maps the brightest pixel to just below clipping and dimmest pixel to just above blocking up and the contrast comes up and image is 90% of the way to being the finished product. So underwater all you do is expose to approximately centre the histogram and don't overdo the flash. What is happening is the strobe is not really brightening up your subject but adds enough reds that you can successfully pull the colours up and get a decent white balance. So in effect it's an ambient light shot with some warm colours added into the mix which enables you to achieve a satisfactory white balance when you adjust everything. Forget about balancing WB on the water vs the subject, you are not going to achieve deep tropical blues, but it will look OK. The other thing is that you'll only light up a 4m wide section of wreck or so at most with your strobes on the best of days so you are effectively shooting ambient light and colouring up some foreground objects with the strobes.

If you are proposing to do this UW - good luck!, I do a lot of focus stacking macro on land and anything but the stillest condition will make it near impossible, then your strobes need to keep up and there will be limitations on how fast you can shoot. You need to solidly mount your camera then rack it in and out to get the near point in focus then guess how many frames you need and give it a try and then check that the last the frame gets the most distant part you want in focus. Then you do all that and get home and find that you missed on getting the closest bit in focus as it was another part of the object that was actually closest and you go back and try again. I use an external monitor and magnify the image 2x on it to check the focus point for the start of the stack and again the check I got full coverage. Underwater - no thanks I'm not that much of a glutton for punishment.

I would suggest that these days there is little to pick between sensors in UW cameras you can either have a 20-30MP FF or a higher pixel count in the 45-60 MP range. Pick your poison in MP count then look rather to other features like flash sync speed, and the range of available lenses as well as housing support from various vendors. Also important is battery life, can it charge over USB through a bulkhead? what is flash trigger support like, all practical things that make life easier living with an UW housing. If you are looking at Nikon vs Sony in Nauticam that means N120 ports for Nikon and N100 ports for Sony. Practically speaking the N120 port range is not as good as N120 and you can end up needing an N100-N120 adapter (not cheap for Nauticam - but then again neither are their N120 extension tubes these days. In Isotta they both use N120 ports. Personally I'm not a fan of the Sony flash hotshoe it's a known weak point with lots of fine contacts which give connection trouble periodically, there have been a few people on here having issues with their hotshoe as I recall. Beware of paralysis by analysis though - just setup a costs spreadsheet to get what the lens types you want to use housed and UW and compare costs.