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and thank goodness for raw files hopelessly underlit image of a black frog fish hiding in a hole. wrestling with 90mm macro focus and strobe arms but play around on lightroom and there’s an image there

Gili Air was a great place to stay less spectacular but my first experience of muck diving in two dives and less current and easier to find a spot to stop and take images first frogfish!

If you are interested in a review I did on this new lens you can check it out here

Gili Air and Komodo are not the easiest for photography, especially macro - I love Komodo and it has great macro, especially in the south but it's Komodo and not many sites are protected. With a 90mm, in the central part a site like Waeniliu is great for macro but not dived that often, not in my days anyway. And the south is more seasonal. I've never been to Gili Air but did dive Gili Meno in 2014, and I imagine it's not very different. Good "fun diving", lots of courses but not the best settings for imaging (unless you work there that is) and a little lacking in subjects perhaps? Yes, I definitely second Tim's Lembeh recommendation - otherwise Bali's Tulamben will have plenty of subjects and good spotters, and lots of photography oriented resorts and diving When it comes to dive operations, Lembeh and Tulamben are probably the most photocentric diving areas in the country. Plenty of others of course (Triton Bay, Alor, Raja4 to some extent, etc) but in terms of imaging-friendly areas, these two areas really stand out I think.

I agree with Phil that the Sony 16-25 is worth a look if you are OK with the shorter range, and cheaper too. Not only does it work nicely with the 180 dome, it works equally well with the 140 dome.

Based on my tests with the manual version, it needs a full hemisphere dome for proper alignment. You can order a custom one, but I don't know of any off the shelf full domes. The Sony fisheye seems a much better option.

For you nerds: everything you always wanted to know SEE about camera focal plane shutters, leaf shutters and flash sync. Gavin Free explores the intricate mechanics of mirrorless and DSLR cameras using high-speed cinematography. By filming shutter mechanisms, aperture blades, and flash sync operations at up to 80,000 frames per second, the episode visualizes the complex, often invisible processes that occur during every single photograph.

Since (from what I understand) the projection on this is skewed closer to a rectilinear do you think it would benefit from a larger dome? Added to that does anything think it would de-fish with less correction than say the 8-15mm lenses while retaining corner sharpness? Reviews above water are impressive.

@RomiK i think the Lut you applied is not specific for the X6, that has bigger sensor and more dinamic range than X3,X4,X5, or did you apply the Lut before stitching ?

Its HDR, the reddish/magenta is there, also the blow highlights means the light had excellent water penetration (midday perhaps) but you saying you had poor visibility and light... https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/15u8jzse3skcr51v9njc7/Captura-de-ecr-2026-09-11-s-20.14.28.png?rlkey=6s27psff20nxkr7uywdgnryw6&dl=0

My views have of course changed over the years as lenses have become more refined but in general the zoom lenses with the shortest minimum focus distance tend to work best in all size ports and especially 180mm and smaller. These days the first thing I look at when a new zoom or fixed lens is announced is minimum focus distance. I have not tested or purchased a lens with MFD over 20cm for some time. While I have owned the 16-35mm PZ and like the idea of not having to buy a zoom gear the newer Sony FE 16-25mm F/2.8 G simply has better sharpness towards the edges at 16mm in the 180mm dome. I credit this to the MFD of 18cm over the 24cm for the 16-35 PZ. If you shoot the lens mostly at the 16mm end you may also want to consider my favorite 16mm the Sony FE 16mm F/1.8 which has a MFD of 15cm. This is an excellent lens for the 180mm or even in a pinch the 140mm dome port. This site and others frequently talk about how much sharper fisheye lenses are in the corners compared to rectilinear lenses, this is urban legend related to older zooms with MDF values of 25cm or more. I have attached a photo taken with the 16mm F/1.8 in the Marelux 180mm port with 30mm extension at F/8 and ISO-1250. It has corners far sharper than any fisheye lenses I have tried at F/8 and the same distance to the subject. By comparison the second photo is the WACP-C, with 28 to 60mm at 28mm, F/11 and ISO-400. The 16mm clearly has corners sharper than the WACP-C even one stop higher. For those who want to argue that the WACP-C has a much wider 130 degree AOV, V. the 107 degrees for the 16mm I offer a third photo using the Laowa 12mm which has an AOV of 122 degrees. The Laowa 12mm photo was taken at F/8 and ISO 400 in the Marelux 140mm dome port with a 30mm extension and in a smaller port a stop wider it also looks better towards the corners than the WACP-C. I suspect you will find this to be true for any of the wet wide lenses. What should be considered first is how much are you really going to notice the corners in real world use and does it make a difference to the 99% of use who are not major pixel peepers.

I was thinking about the Seacam too, for 16-35 for sharp rectlinear FF, without having to schlep on a big*ss dome. But I know little about its compatible lenses… So only Nikon, huh. Peculiar. For semi-fish, Nauticam and a WACP or WWL with a 28-60 for SONY would be the no-brainer inmo.

Domeport 180mm and Sony 16-35mm is not the perfect combination, 230mm domport, or, even better, Seacam PPO is the way to go (but this is not what CCRphoto asked for)... (Seacam wrote me that the excellent Sony 26-35mm GMII works very well with their PPO; flange distance in Seacm housing seems to be bigger compared to Nauticam, hence after doing appropriate recherches, Saga could make an adapter for Nauticam) But it may be useful still to state that it depends very much on a particular lens. Tamron 17-28mm works very well behind 180mm, even 170mm, domeport. Same with Sony 20-70mm. I can say this from my own experience, I use both lenses behind Zen DP170 with A7R5/Nauticam..

Yes it depends what you are shooting! A 230mm dome is a big beats of a thing to travel with. As I recall you were shooting archeological sites, I guess you could crop some or zoom in a bit and do mosaics. You could always look into the new Seacam precision port but it currently only works with a Nikon 16-35 I believe, it'll do a great job at emptying your wallet though! But seriously, I recall you mentioned you thought a 20-24mm lens might do what you wanted and it will play better with a 180mm dome - The Sony 20-70 is one that a few people on here like.

I agree. Cover the OD of the leafs and with an inner wall to to pinch the groove inside the tree tall leaf shades. Perhaps a thin elastic rubber collar at the top of the float to capture bungees. Now i just need a WACP-C, FCP, n100 Sony 90 & 100mm macro ports. Covers and float collars for these are all on my ToDo list.

Yeah, that was my thinking too. My experience with 16-35 rectilinear lenses (in my case the Nikkor 16-35), is that a 230 domeport is pretty much essential unless you are happy with squishy sides and corners. Even then and stopped down to say, f11, perfection is not guaranteed. You can avoid the problem of course by having non-important edges - blue water for example- where blurring has no impact. But once you start shooting reefs, the edges do tend to show up and is, in my view, one of the drawbacks of FF sensors. (But I think we have sailed around this buoy often enough)

Welcome onboard Brett, good to see you here!

Hi Mike Some excellent learning points! Yep, group dives are pretty hopeless for taking "good" pics. If you go back to Indonesia and you want to photo macro, I'd recommend the Lembeh Straits. Not only amazing (weird!) diving, buy most operations run a two guests-to-one dive guide system. So spending time taking images is relatively easy. And yes, you definitely need a guide but, believe me, that's good! Wide-angle shots with a group is, errr, challenging to get all the flailing, inelegant legs out the way. Take a buddy (preferably with good legs) and a guide. Sounds as though the Salted housing buttons may have been subject to the water pressure at 30m and just kissing the camera buttons sufficiently to cause unexcited activations. Expensive though they are, that's one reason why the aluminium housings (Subal, Nauticam, Isotta etc) are so good. And so expensive! Yes, by and large, you get what you pay for. Sounds as though you had fun though - which is a large part of what its about......

just coming to the end of a wonderful trip to komodo and gili air. came with quite a lot of gear that I hadn’t really used much before - but after doing Alex Mustards excellent reboot course and then fannying about underwater for a fortnight several things are apparent taking good photos on a group dive is impossible- you need time and ‘normal’ dive groups don’t give it to you. ‘drive by’ snapping are very hit and miss you get what you pay for. The salted line alpha 6xxx housing is usually waterproof and cheap but don’t expect to be able to change the settings at 30m- at one point it was randomly scrolling though the iso settings for no reason - another times the shutter wouldn’t work the sony macro 90mm 2.8 is a stunning lens- when you can get it to focus! next time i even think about it i’ll put it on manual and set the focus before the dive - use a snoot and just take pictures of things that way. Should be great I’m definitely coming back to Indonesia