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A tray with a slight ridge at the back A thin strip of rubber or silicone between camera and tray

thanks everyone I'm not underwater until September so i am using BBF on my camera at work and getting used to it I can see the advantages immediately but it is not second nature yet the recent shark dive with ultra wide angle produced very few out of focus shots but my attempts at macro in the past have been much worse - it seems like a definite for macro at least

Ah, scientific documentation is a major goal... Then it very well might be that the choice of lenses is further narrowed - e.g. I am not sure that 180° fisheye is the right lens for this purpose. The Subal PPO with an excellent 16-35mm WA lens MAY BE the king here (but I do know nothing about UW archeology and optimum lens types)... => Better ask these UW archeologists which lenses are useful...

Qantas has recently started flying to Samoa and the airfare prices are quite reasonable - just wondering if anyone has dived there as I have a friend who has just started diving who is looking for easy diving destinations.

The Retra's better buoyancy characteristics probably mean that they take up less space in luggage overall than HF-1's + floats

Yes there is that aspect I suppose!

Hi, the goal is to be compatible with all the softwares, so you can apply and you'll get some infos when it's available ! (here is the link : https://survey.zohopublic.eu/zs/U3CA15?Source=Forum&[email protected])

Hi, maybe Papua again, too. We dived Milne Bay with Mike Ball’s Liveaboard Paradise Sport back in the early 2000s. I completely agree—superb diving in papua. If you want to dive all good spots in the south pacific area and you have no home base there, it is quite difficult to plan the route without paying a hell of money for flights (f.e. excess luggage charge for our diving equipment & FF photo rig.... are pretty hefty these days). If we do this extended trip we want to take most of our equipment incl. some spare (2. body, spare flashes, 2,. dome....) with us. We are thinking about to find a base in one country were we can store some stuff. So we take only things with us we really need for each destination. Sounds good. Thought Australia is the best base for the trip. But if we get direct flight from Fiji to most destinations we will check this option.

OK that's interesting - likely housing choices will be Nauticam or the red one (whose name completely escapes me), but I will certainly be checking that it has the facilities for HDMI output to a monitor.

I've really got to get my head around wet optics - that and digital seems to be two massive changes that I need to get used to after 30 years on the sidelines - note I said Sidelines not the Sin Bin!

For the next few years the only place I am likely to be shooting wide angle in bright sunshine is the Red Sea, but that is going to be archaeological photography at 62 metres - should be OK. If everyone in the general region would kindly stop lobbing missiles at each other that would help enormously - I've given up on plans for the Red Sea this year - flying Melbourne-Singapore-London Heathrow-Cairo just to get to the Red Sea is too much for me.

If you went Sony FF, like an A7Cii, you have access to using Nikonos manual lenses. Which are simultaneously the most frustrating and rewarding lenses I've got. They are also tiny.

I guess when flying from UK/Europe it is a consideration as you have the low cost carriers etc like EasyJet, unfortunately in Australia we aren't that lucky, but I am fortunate that I have decent membersip levels with Qantas (OneWorld) and Emirates so the minimum checked baggage allowance I get is 56kg, +10kg carryon. For most routes however my checked baggage allowance is 69kg and sometimes up to 96kg.

How do you prevent a TG 7, or any compact camera, from twisting on an underwater tray? A single 1/4 inch screw becomes the rotational axis. What is the underwater equivalent of an Arca clamp, or a good enough solution for using a TG 7 without a housing?

I am expecting to be selective with packing - will I take a 105mm macro and port to the Red Sea? Probably not. Will I take a big fisheye and dome port to Tulamben or Amed? Probably not.

That is a very interesting comparison tool to have!

I think that I will probably end up with a variety of lenses, and given my old habits of pushing the boundaries of macro I suspect there will be a few that aren't normally in the collections of underwater photographers... Cheers @Architeuthis - a lot of good info there!

Hopefully I will get a better idea of the size comparison at the Sydney dive show in a month's time - I think that once I have seen and handled things there then I will be able to make a decision.

Some great diving in PNG - Walindi resort on New Britian island has excellent diving on seamounts.

The other consideration is that you can get by with smaller cheaper strobes on m43. I used the Z240s a lot till I got Retra pures, but tests on here showed the tiny cheap INON S220 have similar output to the Z240 and I'm sure would be quite enough particularly for macro on m43. You can do this as you don't need to stop way down - f8 is my go to when I shoot with fisheye - both the Panasonic 8mm and the Canon 8-15 and I'll drop back to f5.6 on occasions. On full frame you are shooting f11-13 generally. Macro I shoot at f10 mostly - FF often stops down more than this, but it's not so much an advantage as the strobes are very close to the subject. Opening up means you need less flash power. On the other side of the coin you can mostly shoot at ISO200 making it easier to get sunballs and you also undo some of the gains of FF where you might often use ISO400. on HSS you can use the Nauitcam flash trigger to get 1/400 without needing to resort to HSS. On the rectilinear front I recall seeing a post on shooting the excellent 12-40 lens in a 140mm dome - much more compact if 24mm FF equivalent is wide enough for you if you need a rectilinear. You can go smaller and lighter on the lens side using the excellent 12-45mm f4 lens as well. and the 140mm dome will also suit a fisheye lens well. On the Isotta side you could use their 6"dome for these lenses for a very compact rig.

I'm about to look it up - sounds like a Gen Z thing - probably developed for iPhone...

Back button focus for at least 20 years, separating out the focus from shutter release makes life easier and the Nauticam thumb lever means it remains easy UW. Different cameras have different options, but ideally you want AF only on the back button as if it remains on the shutter release the camera will attempt to refocus when you take the shot. On some cameras the options are all together on one menu line, others you turn on BB on one line and turn off AF on shutter release on another menu line I find I can judge using it stop the lens hunting and also for the classic focus and re-compose, use it for all shooting. Can help when the camera for eaxmple doesn't want to focus on a shark body on the shadow side - just move to place the AF point on a fin and recompose. Once you learn it, it becomes second nature.

Back button works good but will not let you focus on a new shot till you use the shutter button, that's they way it works on my Nikon.

I have my Sony set up for BBF and it locks. My Canon does not seem to have that capability but I do have BBF without focus lock. I find BBF more useful for macro than WA. But BBF can be a game changer. Just do not forget to focus!