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apparently the vacuvin pumps for resealing wine work??

Thanks - fingers crossed it's the battery! It wasn't red blinking or solid on the safety stop so at least it waited til I was up. My hand pump completely fell apart this afternoon, too! $53 for a new one is insanity. What a weird day 😄

Seacam updated their port chart, and they recommend the PVL65 extension for the 100mm macro. I can confirm that a 60mm would not work. By email, Harald also recommended the PVL65+20 for the TC1.4, and PVL65+30 for the TC2.0 combos. Given what I already had, I ended up using the PVLs 45+20 for the 100mm, 45+40 for the 100mm+1.4, and 40+35+20 for 100mm+2.0. Stacking 3 extensions isn't optimal, but it works. Now for the test - I had a chance to go to the pool and play with everything. My aim wasn't pixel peeping, but to get a feel for this new gear, confirm that everything works, and see approx what magnification level I can get. Gear: A1, Seacam housing, MIP80 with extensions as above, no strobe, SMC-1. Lighting was inconsistent due to clouds so I did what I could. Some editing to try to get a consistent look across photos. All pictures use the same settings for texture (0) clarity (+10) dehaze (0) sharpening (40) and noise reduction (L15 C50). All pictures uncropped, exported at 1920px. I'm hoping the pictures show up in order. For pictures 2-9 I aimed to achieve the maximum magnification I could. Picture 1: Subject is 10cm long and has 2 rhinophores (elephantophores?) and a snout (snoot?) which is about 3-4mm. Picture 2: 90mm, 1/160, f/10, ISO 3200 Picture 3: 90mm + SMC1, 1/160, f/10, ISO 3200 Picture 4: 100mm, 1/125, f/10, ISO 1600 (inadvertently used different settings) Picture 5: 100mm + SMC1, 1/160, f/10, ISO 3200 Picture 6: 100mm + 1.4x TC, 1/160, f/10, ISO 3200 Picture 7: 100mm + 1.4x TC + SMC1, 1/160, f/10, ISO 3200 Picture 8: 100mm + 2.0x TC, 1/160, f/10, ISO 3200 Picture 9: 100mm + 2.0x TC + SMC1, 1/250, f/10, ISO 6400 (had to use faster shutter speed and bump up the iso) My perspective: this lens is going to be very fun to shoot. It is definitely faster to focus than the 90mm macro. The 100mm is slightly bigger, unfortunately it makes it tricky to take both the camera+lens out of the housing in one go, it's better to unscrew the lens first through the housing front. A battery change on a boat is a riskier operation. I love that we can natively achieve 1.4 magnification without having to add the SMC1, while keeping a greater working distance than the 90+SMC1. I also love that I can still add the SMC-1 to get an even higher magnification, whether used just with the 100mm, or with the TCs as well. Adding the 1.4x TC gives a 140mm lens, which can achieve about the same magnification as 100mm+SMC1 but is much more comfortable to handle. The 1.4x TC is light and adds weight towards the center of the camera whereas the SMC1 is heavy and off balance (I'm aware the SMC3 helps with that). And adding the SMC-1 on top of it really expands the range to super super macro Adding the 2.0xTC gives a 200mm lens. Magnification is great but the 200mm seems really inconvenient underwater, to get the whole elephant in the frame I had to move back more than I wanted, and I can see this would be both harder to frame subjects, and to position strobes. Adding the SMC-1 gives an even higher magnification as well, but the working distance was very small and getting the shot was really hard - despite perfect conditions with static subject and photographer. I can't imagine this working too well underwater. With the TCs, the minimum aperture also increases from f/22 to f/31 or f/45 so that may occasionally be useful as well. So the 100mm + 1.4x TC + SMC-1 will be coming with me to Lembeh, 90mm will enjoy its retirement. I'll keep the 2.0 TC for specific targets on local dives, like Shaun the Sheep

Thank you @ChipBPhoto for your "real life return of experience" That help me a lot .... to save some money :)

I personally owned the SMC-1 for years and now own the SMC-3. Honestly, they are very similar in 'real life' usage. To me, the biggest improvement is the SMC-3 is smaller and lighter. As far as image quality, they are both exceptional, once you get the hang of the very short working distance. Yes, the SMC-3 has a slightly larger working distance, but nothing that is worthy of selling an existing SMC-1 and purchasing the SMC-3. It just makes it a little more usable in the everyday usage. The SMC-1 is discontinued and removed from the Nauticam charts because they are basically the same thing designed for the same task with similar specs. Think of the SMC-3 as a 'v2' of the original SMC-1. Hope this helps, chip

It should flash yellow first when it senses you are losing vacuum, flashing red is vacuum lost already. Funny enough, i had this today on 3rd dive, started flashing yellow at 20 meters, got up to 5 meter and it went to green again.

I notice that unhelpfully the SMC-1 is no longer in the port chart so you can't compare working distances any longer. Depth of field increase I'm not sure hoe they would increase this - it's generally proportional to magnification.

First suggestion is fresh battery. Though it should blink red/blue when switched if low. If you lose vacuum it signals this by flashing red not solid red. I found another reference online which indicates that solid red is dead battery. That's you best bet I think.

Started with the green light of happiness today, did my dive with happy green, came back to wash things down and now there's a red light. Bummer, right? Undo everything. No water, not even a hint of a drop. Good. Trying to get a green light back as it went straight to blue after I flipped the switch off and on. I can get a yellow, but then it either goes off or goes back to blue. I can't get a green. Battery? Hopefully I can find a replacement in the morning, if so. Issue with the vacuum seal port? How to troubleshoot/fix this? Other suggestions? Totally bummed. Wobbie from the other day for tax.

As someone who works in the AI space, and has some deep, recent experience in this area, we are moving quickly towards a world where AI models will be able to generate both the perfect subject replicas in realistic looking images or videos (with the right prompting and training data) and even the imperfect ones if prompted to do so. There is still "original art" that will remain human for the foreseeable future - where I see AI will have the greatest impact (for still photography) is in the ID type shots (side on, etc). The artful ones will be harder to prompt or generate. Video is a bit different (play with Nano Banana if you want to experience some of this). There is so much video training data available for models now that any animal motion or any subject proportions are going to improve very quickly, as will light management (modeling sunrays, etc.). It's going to get very hard to tell the difference between what's real and what's generated. The actual delta may come down to nature being much more creative and chaotic than most humans can perceive. If we can't imagine it happening, then we can't prompt a model to generate it. There may be a time when models can start "imagining" things, but that likely implies we're living in more of dystopian Bladerunner type reality at that point. The irony in this is that those most experienced in viewing underwater subjects will likely be the most knowledgable in understanding what can be generated realistically.

True, but where’s the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction? Isn’t that a big element of what we do? That’s mine. I did that. 😆

I read that the "theoritical" working distance and d.o.f. is "better" but how is it in the real life?

This reminds me of a program on BBC some time ago, where they had a guy who specialized in cat photos. He said he would add some random cat hair on the (black) backdrops as a 'signature'. I thought that was interesting -- for amateurs (like me), I just don't care if the AI model makers (or humans, even) download my images and use them for anything, but for people who made a living doing this, it's going to be tough. As an aside, one interesting thing is that I can input an image into perplexity (running gemini pro for me), and ask it how I could make such an image. And out pops a "how-to" guide. How much more fun, than, you know, asking a real human how they make these brilliant images.😐 [I tried this, using the image on https://www.uwphotographyguide.com/saga-magic-tube-review, and got this response from the Perp: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/i-want-to-get-this-kind-of-spe-kbbx7T7DQ1Wh2EzmaxuvSQ#0 ] Another scary thought (😅) is that I could just let the AI make my images, and dive to enjoy the UW scene and experience, eyes wide open, rather than through the viewfinder.. Kind regards, Ajay

the port chart provides this information. My understanding was that the 1 and the 3 were very close in performance.

Depth of field is a function of magnification, if you reduce the magnification on the sensor you get more depth of field at constant f-stop. There are special cases with wet lenses but shouldn't apply to a simple diopter. Bearing in mind of course that the depth of field is already razor thin at less than 1mm with the bare lens at 1:1 magnification.

Images attached. Feel free to reach out if different angles are required.

Anyone get their hands on one to see if it might work in an R6 ii housing? Since Nauticam released a specific housing for it - it makes me think that the III won't fit in the II housing.

I wonder about the DOF of the CMC2 compared to the CMC-1 lens I have a MFT camera (Olympus) in a Nauticam housing. When I dive with macrolens (mostly a 45mm) I add a CMC-1 on a flip adapter. However, I don't like the combination, for me the DOF is to narrow. As I am also not very interested in supermacro, I am thinking about buying a CMC-2. Jet I doubt if I will be disappointed with the DOF of that wetlens as well. Can someone tell more about the DOF improvement after moving to a CMC-2?

I think it is now more important that ever to sign one's works to "humanify" them. Hence a watermark. This can be forged as well but if there is an authorship question the author can be contacted to verify. It is only a matter of time before AI starts adding imperfections - a speck of backscatter here and there for example. Easy to ID species will be less problematic for AI compared to others. I invite people to look at dichotomous keys to see the types of minutia that may be needed for others. Some require looking inside as well as I recall a fish key I used in a class that showed up during an examination that required knowing the peritoneum color.

A drop of diluted citric acid (20%)

I'd rather see images which are imperfect and REAL over anything which has been "improved" by AI. I have even less patience for generative AI and the theft it requires. I absolutely hate that I have to distrust everything I see on a screen now.

I have discovered a water spot on the inside of my AOI glass dome port. It must have gotten there from condensation. I have tried to remove it using a lens cleaning cloth and ROR lens cleaner. However, I think ROR is more for removing residual oil. Do you have any suggestions on what might work?

Please, no. I hve not entered a contest ever but I apprecite looking at the photos you folks put up and the skill and luck and chance and dedication. AI will ruin photography because real photographs can never be perfect. I understand using some tools to get white balance, remove backscatter perhaps but at what point is it no longer your photo but something else.

At 42 seconds, one of the dolphins just grows longer and longer for no reason. But it's scary that it's so hard to tell except for little things here and there.

@hedonist222 My question is: What is the benefit of the SMC-3 compared to the SMC-1. 1) lighter that's ok 2) how is the working distanceimprovement?