All Activity

You should be able to now. You had to introduce yourself first and then we put you into the system. It’s part of our effort to deter spammers.

Hey Addi! Great to have you with us. A warm welcome to Waterpixels. Best wishes

Thanks for this, very helpful to know!

You're going to need a new housing one way or another I suppose, and the A7C II/ R do use the same Nauticam housing which is somewhat cheaper than the A7R V housing, as well as slightly smaller. Not sure about housing compatibility with the A7 V and A7R V.

I like a camera-mounted light with a variable power setting. If I'm in the tropics with a lot of krill in the water, I'll often cover the light, switch to red, or turn it off and let my eyes adjust to everyone else's lights. I like an additional spotter light in addition to the camera's focus light. For California day diving, I often use my focus light on 7% brightness just to see colors and spot things more easily. I like my Fix 2000DX because it has such a big range from candlelight to LUMENS! so of course they don't make it anymore. (Maybe L&M has something to replace it?) For black water I have the same arrangement but the focus light is usually much brighter to assist focusing, also because krill is not as common away from the reef. But still with the spotter light looking for critters in the distance.

Hi all! Excited to be a member of this community and be enriched with all the uw photo and video wisdom held here! I am currently working as a Biologist, and in my spare time working on my video and photo skills I shoot with a sony A7CR in marelux housing- currently with a jack of all shots setup with a sony g 20-70 f4, and a 180mm dome port. Excited to get into macro and more video in the future. Cheers! Addi

Adobe's color profiles look awful for Canon, IMO. Canon used to make their own nice profiles for the 5D4, but the ones for the R5 aren't great. But these are: https://www.colorfidelity.com/ Here's a review video that shows the difference. $25 well spent IMO. Also check out this video on adjusting color balance using the color range tools. He has several videos about color and other photo editing that are applicable for underwater: The Match CMYK game he built for this video is fun and good practice.

attached image is ISO200. shutter 1/250 f16 and pretty much as close at the outfit allows

the bath test are pretty much done and I am looking impatiently at the calendar for my first warm water trip of the year in conclusion the 90mm on an APSC is not great unless you are prepared to go high ISO or not take macro images at f16 or f11 but happy to go wider, significantly sacrificing depth on a long focal length. I will use the traditional strobes with this lens. Smaller apertures are leading to unacceptably long shutter speeds and unless you are able to sit tripod still it will blur the newly 30mm f3.5 Sony macro is a whole different story. It is incredibly close focusing so that illumination with the ring light is brilliant and allows small aperture and a decent ISA. Photo of a British banknote is my standard test of image and luckily recent UK banknotes are waterproof... Can't wait to give this a go, the small rig with no strobe arms will also be a major plus. If I get any decent pictures I will post them.

It produces a disco effect, a new technique I have developed. I am sure Alex and Matt on the UWPS will soon copy it. But I did it first! Really, I always set my system up (on the dining room table) before a trip and run it through it's paces. I know that most people wait until they are on the other side of the planet on the RIB heading to the once in a lifetime dive site to test their equipment! Maybe I am a little over kill but my stuff usually works, ha! My wife tolerates me, she is used to my oddities.

In many cases, the color of water in a photograph depends on the actual water. Transparency, impurities, and depth all determine the color. It can certainly be dramatically corrected in Photoshop. This applies only if the original color channels contain enough information (16-bit can sometimes help). In one of the photos in the original post (3th), you can see how the blue color takes on a purple tint near the edge. If you examine this photo layer by layer, you'll see how the black in the red layer transitions into a bright spot. This is a problem with insufficient natural light and dynamic range (especially with older cameras). You can artificially correct the color using data from other channels.

Hi Johan, I look forward to see u there soon! Thanks!

Hey everyone, I could really use your advice. I’m planning to upgrade from my RX100VA to full frame, but I can’t decide between the A7 V and the A7R V. I’ll be doing both video and photography, though not on the same dive. I’ll also use the camera topside alongside my A7S III and A7C II. Here are my thoughts so far: Pros A7 V: • Faster sensor • 4K 60 without crop • Dual base ISO of 8000 Pros A7R V: • Ability to crop for macro with 61 MP • Basically two cameras in one with APS-C mode • Better viewfinder Which one would you go for? Thanks!  Edit: Or should I go for the A7CR and use the A7C II for video dives, and the A7CR for photo dives? The only downside is that I’m not a huge fan of the smaller bodies for topside use…

These days the need to use sRGB is less than it used to be,browsers these days have colour management by default and the blues are so much nicer in Adobe RGB. I think you should at least try it out. I work a different workflow to many by Raw processing in Capture one and then finishing in Photoshop and I do it specifically because I can access levels as I find that the very simplest to way to colour balance a photo. Unfortunately Lightroom doesn't give you levels, you can do something similar with the tone curve though. You don't really go into what processing steps you take - with the wrong steps it's easy to get messed up and become totally lost, You mention Calibration and HSL, I only use these sorts of tools very sparingly. In Raw processing typically you have ability to adjust the colour temperature and Tint. Temperature is blue- yellow balance and tint is green magenta balance. It helps to have a good understanding of colour. basics are adding red reduces Cyan, adding magenta reduces green and adding blue reduces yellow. You should be able to get the balance close there. Typically I find adding some magenta to the image darkens the blues and makes them richer. If you wanted I could try processing one of your raw files assuming of course my copy of Capture one will open it.

Gopro 14 will be presented from 19 to 22 April 2026 at NAB show Las Vegas according to Digital Camera World.

The kit for night divr depends on what and how I am going to shoot. For timid creatures that don't like light, i use a small flashlight with a narrow beam is used, sometimes with a colored filter. When photographing squid, I like to use a separate flashlight that I hold in my hand. This makes it easier to lure the squid to the desired location. If the location is new and I don't know what I can see there, I use a powerful modeling light with 10,000-15,000 lumens. Plus a modeling light from the flashes. Art photography is a separate category. Here, lighting setups can be quite complex, such as individual mini-tripods with lights or flashes.

Ive work on liveaboards so from that point of view, generic advice, deck space is limited. You might get away with 1 person with a personal tank but if more than that have the same idea there really isnt space. Theres also the issue fresh water is a finite resource so constantly refilling/emptying personal rinse tanks isnt great for that. Depends on the boat of course. Decent boats will have a rinse tank thats clean, fresh and hopefully policed so people arent putting mask soap or god knows what in it (all boats im on camera buckets are separate from the rest of dive gear buckets...and dive gear is only rinsed at the end of the trip). As a photographer, ive had a camera setup destroyed in a rinse tank. Left it there while i legged it to help untie the mooring line. Came back and a "helpful" entitled teenager with parents had put their dslr setup in the tank on top of mine (a Canon 70D in ikeite housing, 8" dome and 2 DS161 strobes in a black bin isnt hard to see), found resistance to their housing so rammed it as hard as they could. This crushed my at the time ikelite, snapped the dome port off and flooded/destroyed the whole setup. Rinse tanks are for rinsing not leaving. Swill it, remove it, take it away. If it needs further washing use the shower (if fresh water) when you wash or whatever. If you bring anything at all, make it a cooler bag type thing and nothing rigid. And be mindful of fresh water usage etc.

Im in Japan and buy a load of stuff there. Just ordered a Nauticam. Websites are indeed awful. Not sure about Retra but Mic21 (big dive shop chain) are the nauticam main dealer and they do answer in English to emails. They have some English speaking staff in shops at certain times too. Fisheye are the distributor/importer and they organised my housing, in English via Mic21. If theres something specific there you want its worth contacting Fisheye https://store.fisheye-jp.com/ (distributor) or Mic21 ( https://www.mic21.com/foreign/english.php ) via the emails. Replies are quick. You'll get 10% tax free. Unsure about Retra though - maybe contact Retra themselves and see if there are dealers? If its general electronics, Bic Camera (10% tax free plus 7% for no clear reason if foreign), Yodobashi (tax free) etc. Websites are woeful but good enough to find stock in which shop. Shops themselves you can get by with English and translation apps. FWIW tax free currently you dont pay it at all. Its deducted at purchase. From October its changing to claim back at airport.

That depends on the Japan import fees and what you get back at the airport. You get 13% more Yen compared to year ago and 40% more compared to 5 years ago. But like i said, i havent found a shop that sells them to see the price. In Europe you pay VAT that you cant get back as private customer. Absolutely no point buying them in Europe as a private person, specially if going abroad when you can buy them.

Not sure that will matter as i can just set that after the event in LR as its Raw anyway.

My setup for night dives is the same as for dives during the day. I always have a torch with a neoprene Goodman handle on my right hand, as well as two small torches that can be switched between spot, flood, red, and UV modes. The latter are mounted next to the base mount of my strobes (a dual ball mount on each side of the housing: one for the strobe arm, the second for the light). They are used as focus lights and for video. This setup gives me maximum flexibility: I can direct the main light in any direction using the Goodman handle, while at the same time I always have focus lights pointing in the same direction as the camera. The focus lights are only turned on when needed, whereas the light on the Goodman handle is almost always on. Why red light? Some creatures, especially fish, cannot see red light. This allows you to approach them more closely without scaring them away.

Are Retra going to be any cheaper in Japan? They’re made in the EU, presumably against Euro pricing converted into Yen?

I have some work trips coming up, and one is going to be Japan, Tokyo/Yokohama area. Been contemplating on buying new strobes, and as the exchange rate is very favorable this got me thinking. Why not buy them from Japan? Found atleast S&S being priced very nicely, but i would be probably on the market for Retras. Problems im facing are the design of Japanese website. And finding the suppliers online. So any help on websites and/or diveshops with Nauticam/Retra would be appreciated.

I wonder if setting white balance in camera to 4800k would make any difference? On the HF1 with diffusers I see it is recommended to set the same colour temp in camera as the diffuser used. The HF1 is a much warmer strobe at 6500k and personally I found the 4500k diffuser with WB set at the same temp also produced blues that did not look real (well to my taste ayway)! Best of luck John

I should have included that really. My display is a correctly calibrated DCI-P3 (95%) on both laptop and when home, the external screen. Output is going to always be sRGB as output is for screen use and rarely if ever printing. Its LR/PS so is using higher than 8 bit colour. I dont see banding or things falling apart, its the default "look" causing me issues. Viewing software is ICC aware as well. Camera matching.... Historically ive never found any of those actually come close to matching the camera (either in camera or applying the same in Canon DPP). Camera landscape comes closest to making the water blue but at the expense of messing up saturation on this or other colours. Ive tried with my own preset but no amount of fiddling with calibration or the HSL gets something really useful, certain now an import preset "starting point" level. The DS161s are basically half stops from max down to i think -6 stop adjustments. Generally if i have diffusers on then anything less than -0.5 stop (ie one click down) is too little. Without diffusers i can get to maybe -1.5, Shooting at 10mm (APS-C Tokina fisheye) and subject distance is typically closer than forearm length ish for turtle/reef shots. In the above examples max distance is about 1m. most are 20-30cms. Macro i can go down to -3 or -5 but for wide angle i just cant throw enough light onto them to get loser than iso400/f8 most of the time. Might be positioning related, no idea. I dont think tubes lose output with age that much (they're about 15 years old). Ive never been able to get satisfying water colour starting point from any of the 4 (i think) Canon DSLRs ive used underwater over the year and not found a useful picture profile (or preset) yet as a starting point. For obvious reasons i dont like/want the one click "adaptive colour" to do "things" on every image as a starting point.