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If the lock is sticky I'd recommend rotating the ports slightly, mine doesn't want to lock or unlock if they are fully rotated together but instead need to be slightly backed off.

The right tools will always help. But prevention is even better. Looking at you housing in the photos it seems to me there's deposits on there, in the video you posted and with the surface between the ports/adapters. I would suggest a good long soak after any diving session. Also recommend applying some grease to your screws holding on the lock mechanism. Should make them easier to remove. Does the mechanism rotate freely now? It should rotate quite easily- if it is stiff perhaps it needs service, there will an o-ring on the shaft of the control that unlocks the port and the shafted should be lubricated.

AI hallucination - it conflates things all the time. Yes definitely plankton, I get small straight very tight spirals floating around in photos on my local sites.

The R50 with the 18-45 suffers from the same things any lens does through a flat port in that wide is not very wide when it comes to big stuff and zoomed in is not quite zoomed enough for macro. Thus the Nauticam housing and the AOI housing are both configured for use with their respective macro diopters and wide angle lenses. Otherwise it is what I call a fish pic lens ;). My one real complaint for the lens is that it is an 18mm and would prefer it be a 16mm, thus the WWL-1B or the AOI UWL-09 will be needed instead of the slightly more compact WWL-1C. The pros are also the cons, no ports to tote about, no expensive trigger than does not work when I need it to, more travel friendly but relies upon external wet optics but you get by with a single camera lens and no domes, vfs, monitors. For surface photography, my complaint there is that please Canon, come on now, give the little thing a modicum of weather/dust sealing please. The R50 is fast to focus, not fussy about dim light, takes pictures like what you would expect of a Canon camera. The guys with the latest full frame Sony AR7-5-6-IIIV-B will not be impressed with their domes and monitors and whatever that $7,500 Nauticam lens is and 45 degree view finders, but heck, the idea was a compact outfit that can produce stunning photos and hold it's own and that is what it is.

I am not particularly enamored of the categories since they seem to cater to tropical locations, but that seems to be the focus here. Likewise I'd rather allow not fixing of composition errors such as removing backscatter but that's just me. Perhaps I just dislike post-processing and would rather take better pictures?

@dhaas do you have examples of the widest scene and smallest creature with no add ons?

@dhaas thanks so much for the information. It definitely sounds like this will suit her and I'm very tempted to give it a whirl, too. At this price point, I wouldn't even stress if I find out it doesn't suit exactly and i need to "upgrade" in the future, unless I'm missing some huge issues.

Realizing many of the folks on this forum are very serious about everything they do I hardly see $5.00 as an impediment to entering a for the fun of it contest to support the site. Cap the entries to five photos and just charge a $20 entry fee. Or charge enough to enter that it would include a choice of a ball cap or a tee shirt. And if I or some of the less serious guys entered, uh, for the purpose of supporting the site, promise not to laugh, at least to our faces! Or a sticker for my camera case, "I am not a Professional, but I did enter a Water Pixels contest and they laughed" or something!

Maybe a photo?

I've just spent some time looking over this in some detail. Lots of high quality data - Zero conclusions. Backscatter is in the business of selling all of these strobes so it is no surprise that they are not making any editorial comments. I think that their data matched up pretty well with what I generated in my review of the Retra Maxi with comparisons to the Backscatter HF-1. My take aways from the Backscatter data: Look no further than the Retra Maxi and Backscatter HF-1 if you want a wide angle capable strobe Beam Pattern, smoothness, and brightness of the Maxi and HF-1 are pretty much neck and neck. All other strobes are dimmer and less wide, sometimes with inconsistent patterns. The HF-1 is the champion in fast recycle time with the shortest interval between flashes as any target power level. The HF-1 is about 2-3 times faster at cycling to the next flash at the target GN. The Maxi stomps every other strobe in the Buoyancy / Weight ratio making it very easy to handle in the water. One surprise was that most strobes had a big mismatch between their stated color temperatures and the measured temperature. All of the Backscatter strobes (HF-1, Atom, MF-3) had accurate temperatures along with the Kraken S160 and S&S 250. Every other strobe had significant measured variances, including the Retra Maxi and Max/Max-II models. My Review: Inside ScubaLong Term Review of the Retra Maxi StrobeDave Hicks tests the Retra Maxi strobe across 100+ dives in Raja Ampat and the Pacific Northwest, comparing it head-to-head with the Backscatter HF-1.

Backscatter.comThe Best Underwater Strobes Tested 2026 - Underwater Phot...It may or may not be a surprise, but there are no industry standards or governing bodies conforming the methods, or the specifications, on how underwater strobes are tested. Most strobe manufacturers

I recently build a customized fiber optical cable for myself. IMG_4902.mov

Like @Klaus I find this document a really good base ... I like it

Even my E-PL5 uses some (simple) AI for face recognition. Subject tracking is for sure AI-supported in almost all cameras. But I don't think the intention was to exclude all AF-C images.

These rules seem practical and well balanced. You emphasize the intention (... substanitally altered ...) as the editing limit, rather than any specific tool or slider. 👍

The next work is to optimize the form of the snoot to concentrate the light in the middle on a point of 30 mm You see the iris in the middle in red

38 mm diameter it's not so big... I made a snoot 100% 3D printed The main problem was to make it watertight and to be able to rotate the iris in the snoot. It work now I have to optimize the weight and reduce the loss of light to have a maximum power for the position lamp and also enough when the hole are only 2 mm

@Dave_Hicks Thanks for the response! That's help me clear up what I doubt about ChatGPT and Gemini. At first I thought that it should be some algae or plankton as you said but both kept insisting that those lines are scratch on the port.

The intent is to build or modify a custom snoot around the part.

This is common. Straight, corkscrew, beads, all sorts of plankton, algae, and similar critters.

Hi All, I’ve noticed persistent, faint transparent lines appearing in my recent macro shots as shown in this 2 photos. Do you have any idea what are they? Both photo are taken with EF 100 F2.8 Macro with SMC-3. Thanks in advance for any insights!

The link doesn't work...

@CaolIla Curious what iris you found that will fit. All I find on AliExp is this thing... and it looks way too large to fit in the RSD slot... https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256811677909186.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.8.13e3ATm0ATm0mV&algo_pvid=3fae3008-1df9-401e-aa8b-3b193aac761b&algo_exp_id=3fae3008-1df9-401e-aa8b-3b193aac761b-7&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22order%22%3A%22-1%22%2C%22eval%22%3A%221%22%2C%22fromPage%22%3A%22search%22%7D&pdp_npi=6%40dis%21USD%21148.58%21118.86%21%21%21993.21%21794.57%21%402101ef5e17882860377635853e0e57%2112000056827284887%21sea%21US%210%21ABX%211%210%21n_tag%3A-29910%3Bd%3A726f99c0%3Bm03_new_user%3A-29895&curPageLogUid=YJd20wtKwJ7R&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A%7Cx_object_id%3A1005011864223938%7C_p_origin_prod%3A

Thinking it would be more useful if I posted the draft copy of the guidelines we were working on for this contest. Clearly this does not have the changes for Entry fees but we have more time to plan this now. I could see adapting this to any contest we may host and I am also using this as a development document for setting up rules in a backup system. The system will be pretty much automated on taking entries, Judge private invites in to the system, Contest deadline management, all aspects of the judging process including RAW file reviews to awards and members choice and the public publishing of everything. SO for a conversational piece, your direct input on this document as a skeleton rule set for future Waterpixel use, I am interested in hearing. Thanks... WaterPixels_Contest_Rules_DRAFT.pdf

But where does that end? No adjustments of any kind in LR? No exposure, cropping, white balance, saturation/vibrance, clarity, etc? I know some locations make it easy, but here in the more dark and green temperate waters, silt and junk in the water is just a way of life for us. I think there's a somewhat fuzzy line between the provided tools in LR and some of the more powerful generative fills/removals that are also available.