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The 7 kg limit is not uncommon, 8 kg more so on most international airlines unless you travel business. So one has to check things, depend on luck or pay up. . Nauticam housing, Z6iii+battery+charger, z240x2, macroport, z24-50, extension, cables in pelican 1485 air (2.4 kgs).

Interesting! It looks like you have 3D printing all squared away too!

Nice! A bigger bag looks like it would be a good way to carry an assembled rig to a local diving site too! Anyone in Australia wanting one of the bags in @Troporobo 's post - half price at Woolies this week - https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/310586

Ok thanks for sharing ! In the case you're too lazy to id species and tag individual images, would you be interested in trying my plugin ?

Stationary in current - holding me wedged between the rocks - keeping distance swimming in parallel - guiding me :-) It all depends on shooting style. If someone (like Mustard) is using viewfinder exclusively then he is not getting into these situations because if there is no viewfinder position there is no framing and no shot. Then of course they can swear by BBF as they would rarely get into one hand or extended hands awkward angle situations. But for me I find myself doing gymnastics or sprinting underwater and so using BBF is impractical. Like try to catch up with this guy and frame the shot using viewfinder... and no he was not coming to me to check me out 😆

In m43 terms, the 12-40 and 12-45 lenses sound ideal, they are very sharp and will work in either a 140mm dome or Isotta's 6"dome. I've used the 12-40 quite a lot around Sydney and it produces nice images. Image from Oak Park Cronulla a few years back, 12-40 at f8.

Every one is different , but I do similar regularly but using a 45 ° viewfinder, I just picked up my housing now and I can do it but it's difficult because of the weight and leverage from just using one hand, but I regularly use one hand UW with the left hand stabilising me against surge and/or current and the housing being close to neutral means i don't have the weight trying to pull the housing out of my grip, it's mainly for macro work, but I work similarly for wide angle work depending on whether I am hovering in mid water or doing something more like CFWA work close in where I can use my left to to stabilise myself. Out of curiosity what is your left hand doing that you are operating one handed?

Where I am currently based in Fiji, all my trips involve a flight on an ATR turboprop with a strict 7kg weight limit for carryon bags. I have a great Lowepro roller that holds everything I need, but it's 4.5kg empty and fully loaded it weighs 13 kg. So I have had to get creative. I decided to carry only the valuable and fragile stuff in a backpack, and put arms, clamps, etc into my checked scuba gear bag. So here is what I carry onboard: camera and lens and trigger in housing, macro port and lens, two Inon strobes, a Kraken focus light, my wrist computer, and two sets of batteries for the camera and strobes (not shown). I found some cheap sort-of insulated lunch bags for school kids that happen to be just the right size. The housing goes by itself in one bag, and everything else goes in the other bag. I wrap the miscellaneous stuff in a layer of bubble wrap to prevent scratches, but sine the bag is never out of sight I am not worried about things getting banged around. All in, the total weight is just under 6.5kg. There is room in my commuter backpack for a few travel essentials too. Water bottle is 1.5 liters for scale. I am happy to be a m4/3 user!

I use Sony C-AF (with tracking) all the time underwater, and mostly BBF. I could be mistaken, but I sense that BBF makes it quicker to acquire focus in tricky situations. On land I rarely use BBF, because the Sony ergs are not so good for that. In the end, it's whatever maximises your keepers.

Cocos Island in the Eastern Pacific is a dive destination my wife and I have been wanting to do sooner than later. While diving in the Galapagos several years ago I remember the crew telling us how devastating the last El Niño was to the marine life because of the abnormaly warm water. Does anyone have any thoughts or experience diving the Eastern Pacific ( Cocos Island, Galapagos or Revillagigedo / Socorro Islands) during an El Niño? Thanks

👍 By the way, as soon as I can get around to it, I will post a brief review on the forum of my testing of the Flexibuoy.

It works without the ring on the Marelux flip just as it would on a Nauticam flip. The $299.00 price is attractive as well.

Phil: Well, that all makes sense and was the question that no one seemed able to answer. In one of your shots you show an SMC mounted on the Marelux flip and sitting nearby is the spacer ring. I take it the NA lenses work correctly on the flip without a spacer? I was intrigued by the hydraulic aspect and that's what got me looking at this and interested in getting one.

You can get to most dive destinations in the South Pacific with a direct flight (or one stop in the Solomons for PNG) from Fiji. There are many options for affordable longer-term rentals around Nadi, often listed on AirBNB. There isn’t a local listing site here, but if you booked a week or two for a start you’d have the ability to look around and find a place that suits your taste and budget.

I agree that Retra really did a good job making the Maxi neutrally buoyant and it's a big advantage of their design. However, adding floats to the HF-1 does level the playing field a bit. Below is a set of photos with the Maxi strobe vs the HF-1 with my float design. As you can see, they are not wildly different. The HF-1 is about 12mm wider at the maximum, but shorter overall. With a float installed buoyancy of the two strobes is about the same. There might be an opportunity to make the HF-1 floats a bit taller and less wide with the same buoyancy.

Hi John, I am Marelux Senior Advisor and I can assure you that both Marelux and Nauticam in this case were wrong. I used the NA-flip with MX & NA C/U lenses until it broke on my last trip to Bali. Both NA & MX C/U and MV-60/MFO3 are in fact interchangeable between system flip adapters as well from both manufactures. They have different ways of making the spacers but both with respective spacers can also be direct mounted to ANY 67mm flat port. The newly designed Marelux double flip has the advantage of the Patented hydraulically balanced damping system which flips smoothly without sagging and has an optimized sealed rotating shaft which allows smooth rotation without jamming after thousands of flips. Photos shown are the Marelux Sony A7R VI housing with Sony 100mm macro port and double flip with Nauticam SMC-1 and Marelux MV-60. Also shown is the housing with MV-60 and MV-10 +10 C/U lens and the new double flip with the older style MX-single flip adapter.

guys ( @Architeuthis @Clifton ) , I am able bodied right hand male with Nauticam housing. So I am not talking about left handed big hands small hands... I am talking about situations where I keep my camera extended in one (right) hand and using external monitor (forget viewfinder or built in monitor for these situations) I am framing and executing the shot. Now think through how you hold your Nauticam housing and where your back button lever is and imagine holding the grip, using back button lever and executing shutter at the same time. Not going to happen. And besides since camera is moving respective to subject all the time one has to rely on C-AF anyway. Then all BBF issue is a moot point. At least in my humble opinion.

Marelux has just introduced the new double flip adapter to complement the Marelux MV line of wet lenses including the MV-60 and MV +5, +10 and +15 closeup lenses. The new Marelux flip adapter has a hydraulically balanced damping system, flips smoothly without sagging and has an optimized sealed rotating shaft which allows smooth rotation without jamming after thousands of flips. This is another Marelux (Patented Design). Additional information on the new Marelux flip adapter and Marelux MV wet lenses can br found in the Product section under Optics at Marelux.co The double flip adapter retails for $299.00 on the US site. Images show the double flip (and older style single flip) on the new Sony A7R VI housing with the MV-60 and MV-10 lenses.

I recently saw that Marelux has introduced their own double flip holder with a novel feature, for wet lenses. I am/was interested in this, and specifically, whether the Nauticam threaded spacer ring would be necessary to use Nauticam lenses like the MFO and SMC with the holder and if so, whether the standard spacer ring would work on the holder (it does not, for example, fit on an AOI or Saga holder; they require a different spacer). I contacted Marelux and half-expected them to say they had not tested Nauticam products on their flip holder, which would be understandable. Instead, they just responded to me with a link to the website product page and a note that I was "welcome to check." Perhaps mentioning I wanted to use Nauticam products on their holder was a mistake. I then spoke to a Nauticam dealer I deal with often, in case they had any info and of course, was told they had no idea about the Marelux product, which I pretty much expected. So I reached out to a Marelux dealer who also sells Nauticam, and asked about it. I was told the Marelux double flip holder only works with the Marelux brand wet lenses, which seemed odd, since all these products have a 67mm thread, but whatever. So I thought I would ask here in case anyone, perhaps Phil Rudin, could confirm what I was told or provide other info, mostly just out of curiosity at this point.

I love the mfo-3 on my 105 or on the olympus 60mm. Nauticam makes and overpriced "M82 Filter Holder for MFO-3" It allows the use of a lens cap and I use an 82 mm threaded lens hood on it at times. Of course, 3D printer experts like Dave Hicks could make something better.

I'm pretty sold on the Maxis - they are locked in on my spreadsheets!

Pretty much - avoid distortion, generally don't need a really wide rectlinier lens for archaeological work (unless you find an underwater city or something like that!). It looks like I can use the Nikkor 24-50 with a 180mm dome port or some quite short flat ports.

Some years back I read about and heard about BBF and how wonderful it was. All the cool kids did it, you know. So I set up my camera for it and did the back button thing for a long time. It was fine. It worked. I was able to coordinate my thumb and forefinger fine. But as time went by it seemed that although it was fine and worked, it did not do anything "better" for me and my style of underwater shooting. I began to wonder if it really made sense to use two fingers on two different buttons to accomplish what one finger on one button could do just fine. It also was not the most comfortable on some vertical shots. Maybe it depends on the camera or housing? I switched to using he shutter release button (well, the Nauticam lever) for both focus and shutter release. I am probably not allowed to have lunch at the cool kid's table anymore, but otherwise, I don't feel I am missing anything and I now have an additional, conveniently located button that I can program to do something else. Again, this is for me and for my style of underwater photography. I am not saying one way is wrong or right. Vive la différence.