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Here two things you can do to prevent this. 1. Don’t allow saltwater or freshwater where there is calcium present in the water to dry on the glass. If you can’t keep your housing in the rinse tank/bucket on the boat, wrap a wet towel around it. 2. After the dive(s) when it comes time to rinse/soak your gear in freshwater, be sure to dry off the glass with clean dry towel or cloth as soon as that done to prevent water spots from lingering. Even my face-mask gets this treatment I live in South Florida where our fresh water is loaded with calcium. If you allow them to dry in place they will leave micro deposits where they dry which are total bitch to remove afterward.

As a chemist, without doing any significant review, it seems unusual to me that evaporating sea water would reach a low or high enough pH to dissolve glass. I would expect evaporating sea water to result in precipitation of various solids with calcium and magnesium carbonates probably being the first to precipitate and later calcium and magnesium sulfates and eventually sodium and potassium chloride and maybe magnesium hydroxide. The carbonates and any hydroxides dissolve in acid so you may want to try vinegar or citric acid if the coating is compatible with them. Citric is a stronger acid and also complexes with calcium and magnesium to increase solubility. I use NOVIS polishing products (mainly the fine product) to remove and polish small scratches or minor deposits (nothing like your pictures) from my plastic ports. I believe the NOVIS components are somewhat less abrasive than cerium oxide but they would probably also damage any coating on the glass. Or if the lens is coated then maybe there is some reaction of evaporating sea water with the coating?

could be different glass compositions? in any case the cause doesn't change and allowing your rinse water to dry can do this. What is your fresh water like? Is it hard water? This makes things worse as hard water is caused by alkaline salts and they can etch (corrode) the glass if sufficiently concentrated. You can use a blower or a nozzle attached to a tank to blow water off.

i fear my 2 x solis ys01 are ok for macro but a bit weedy for wide angle what’s the logical upgrade - looking like sea and sea DS3 to me- is this reasonable?

i’ve finally got diving with it - one dive in at iso 400 and f16 it’s very much a macro light for small and very close things for more than 6 inches the light falls off. for up close it is brilliant- i’m using f16 and aperture priority. you can see the lizard fish is well lit at the front but a bit blue at the back I think it would also work ok as a focus light for macro using strobes. planning to find out tomorrow on a night dive. DSC08457.arw

Slow in getting a case...haha... Hope it will be back in stock soon... Seen the video with the inon zd lens... Let's seee

Hi guys, could someone please explain to me why a coating would be applied to the outer surface of a port? We all clean and dry our lenses after every dive. Even if we were to use a super-soft cloth, it still means we are compromising the coating. In my view, an AF coating only makes sense on the inner surface of the lens. But please—I'm open to being corrected. I use Ceroxid to polish all my glass ports and had never a problem. BR Markus

Most dome ports are made of plastic . They don't have the coatings dome glasses have. The water burn (it's called like that) also depends a lot of where you are diving. Some freshwater attacks harder than other including anodization on aluminum housings. The real limiting thing is to wash in freshwater and blow immediately some dry air to remove any moisture from the glass.

Your link does not work. I'm in Bali now with last day of a 24 days of diving tomorrow Dive # 62 was today ,most are three dive days for us. This my 7th trip to Bali-dove the wreck from a boat on last day of a 30 day trip in 2005 from Sorong thru Raja Ampat ,Ambon ,Flores snake island , and up thur Komodo and finished at the wreak at 7 am when the Bump heads where there . It was film days then and less crowed. Stayed at Puri Mada many times and this is the 1st trip where we did not dive the wreck. The wreak is great but the mob is not.. If you come its must do . That said I'm not missing it this trip. My buddy has been diving every year since 92 here and there have been many changes but the wreck keeps this town alive.

Thank You @Chris Ross We clean these glasses with freshwater same as our dome port, but there's no problem with the dorm port, I found that all our WWL lenses have this issue with less than a year. we usually do around 150-200 dives per year which is I believe very less. And also this is design for saltwater and it must be more durable? Thank You

Welcome Don! I picked up a subsee +10 from you on Facebook a while ago, nice to see you here 😁

Thanks. I certainly should revisit that topic I had read a long time ago before getting more into blackwater but I won't derail the L10 thread here with the frustrating and exciting world of blackwater which adds another load of problems when shooting fast moving macro subjects :)

Hi, I first dived Tulamben and the Liberty in 1992. Tulamben did not really exist. There were only few huts and a "parking area". Last time time I dived there in 2024. In between, I visited and dived Tulamben various times. Things have changed significantly. But nowadays, that is not just a problem in Tulamben. Dived this spring Philippines for 5 weeks. Malapascua/Kimud Shoal and the treasures are a nightmare. We had 25 boats anchoring. Big party underwater and Gopro show with a lot of "nice models". I have never seen before so many divers on such a small place underwater. Guides told me they have up to 50 boats at high season in may. Sabang/Puerto Galera same. Bohol/Alona beach 600+ cylinder early morning on the beach waiting for divers. But I still know some places.......but they are becoming rare. Br Markus

Thank you :) !

The multi-use housing and trigger-power bank makes an interesting solution. Given other housing prices, $3,400 is reasonable as well. Thanks for sharing, @Phil Rudin

Unfortunately this is a case of prevention being better than cure. This happens when salty water is allowed to dry on the surface. The salts concentrate and the pH increases and eventually it etches the glass. Some people have reported success using optical grade cerium oxide to polish. This risks damage to anti reflective coatings, so use at your own risk, but there are reports of it cleaning the surface up reasonable well. To prevent keep the glass wet till you can soak it in freshwater. When you remove it it blow it dry and wipe with a microfibre cloth to prevent the droplets evaporating on the surface. Even the rinse water drying repeatedly will eventually etch the glass surface.

I concur - and amazing subjects! 🤩 if you want to share some tips on BW video, we have a thread open here btw: https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/638-blackwater-video-shooting-techniques cheers

A critical problem, in my opinion, is the minimal focus distance with Mission 1. It is way longer than in the case of the black series due to the larger sensor. It will be OK for reef scapes but CFWA pictures will be not sharp. As moving as close as possible, especially in case of lower visibility, it is important for underwater videography to use an additional correction lens. I'm not sure if existing lenses (non or AOI) were compatible or not.

Hi Can anyone help me how to clean these Nauticam Wet lenses ? We have 4 lenses from our friends with same issue. I have sent few emails to Nauticam but did not get any reply. Thanks

eocean-eu - the blackwater footage in your Cosmogonie video is fantastic!

I first dived the USAT Liberty wreck way back in 1999 and developed somewhat of a fascination with the site itself - which was and can still be an incredible dive - together with how much Tulamben and the overall experience has changed. These days it would be very easy to take one look at the divers kitting up around mid-morning and simply get back in the car and go to a different site. On a busy day at Tulamben there can easily be more than 100 divers on the wreck and it's pretty easy to see that many of them don't have a lot of experience - hoods with white rabbit ears are a key indicator... Underwater that lack of experience becomes even more obvious! And yet, despite the damage that traffic around the wreck has done, it's still a great dive if you understand the site and know when to dive it. In my early experiences on the wreck I used to get lost all the time and basically just meandered around photographing interesting stuff as I stumbled on it. Then back in 2012 I decided to get serious and booked a week of diving with Tulamben Wreck Divers (TWD) who enjoy a very solid reputation. I dived the wreck five times a day for that week and really got to know it and its moods (It does have them). I repeated that experience again in early 2020, just before the pandemic, and in March this year I went back for another week with TWD. Which means I have digital images of the wreck going back to 2005 (plus some earlier film ones...) and, combined with my understanding of the wreck paints a very interesting story. That story has just been published in X-Ray magazine and can be read on this link:

Welcome onboard Don, good to see you here.

Yes absolutely - 60fps is totally fine for macro unless you're capturing a super fast subject (blackwater critter for instance) or hunting sequence and want to decompose the action - 120fps also requires more light in general. 5.6K 60p should be fantastic for this kind of work. the L10 really ticks many boxes!

Hi, this is Don Silcock and I am an Australian underwater photographer, SEACAM ambassador and photojournalist based from Bali. Looking forward to being part of and contributing to WaterPixels! Don