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I do think Nauticam's promotion of the MFO-1 has caused plenty of confusion around this lens, because they have drawn attention to minor features equally to its main purpose. I asked Nauticam to develop this product because I wanted a high quality, but weaker close up lens than the SMC. There are lots and lots of subjects that are a bit too small for a straight macro lens and too big for a SMC. The MFO was designed to plug this gap. The optical design of all of Nauticam's close up lenses includes a correction for the image aberrations created by using a flat port in water. This is beneficial for image quality (especially away from the middle of the frame) and also by presenting the lens with a clearer image - improves focusing performance of the lens a bit. The MFO also improves focusing because it stops the lens hunting as much because it makes it impossible to focus on very distant subjects in UW terms (as the focus range is now shifted closer) . This is particularly helpful with mirrorless cameras (PDAF) - which can struggle to know what to do when a subject is totally out of focus. That said, I would say AF improvement is a minor benefit of the MFO. Image quality improvement is also the same as other Nauticam close up lenses (they all aim to do the same correction for the flat port). I like Mike Bartick's comment on the MFO-1 in this regard - "think of it as a make it 'betterer' switch - stick it on your macro lens and just go and use it". The MFO will allow you to fill the frame with smaller subjects, stop you shooting things that are too far away, give small improvements in image quality and AF. The optical correction that all Nauticam's close up lenses make for the port is the reason it does not make sense to stack the MFO and SMC. As both perform a correction - you end up with a double change, in other words as far away from optimum as having no correction. So they work together, but without the image quality benefit. The other point I want to mention is that you should not ever use the Focus Limiter Switch on your macro lens whenever you might be using UW close up lenses. You need this full range of focus to properly exploit the full range of these lenses. I previously used the FIT +5 and the Nikon 5T for the role of the MFO. But these did not have the same image quality of the MFO, as they did not correct for the flat port aberrations (which is why I pushed Nauticam to make the MFO). I have shot the MFO for over a year (in pre-production form last year). It does not record in the EXIF, but there are 25 pages of images on my website since I started using the MFO and most of the macro shots are taken with it: see this page https://www.amustard.com/library/page/search/alex/26/ and forward to 1, which cover the last year (my most recent trip was sharks - so ignore the newest 90 or so images - pages 1-5!).

List updated on: May 20, 2025 Prices are just a ballpark This post will be updated based on your feedback regarding errors, omissions, and new models Housing + Monitor Model Size (inches) brightness (nits) UW Weight (g) Avg. Price (Euro) Marelux MX-SHINOBI (SDI) + Atomos Shinobi 5" 5" 1000 ? 2400 (2100 + 300) Nauticam NA-Shinobi II + Atomos Shinobi 5" 5" 1000 -180 2900 (2600 + 300) Nauticam NA-Ultra5 + SmallHD Ultra 5 5" 5" 3000 +480 4900 (2700 + 2200) Sea Frogs SHIMBOL-M5 5.5" Professional Underwater Monitor Housing + Shimbol-M5 5" 1200 -280 1000 (850 + 150) Standalone Monitors Model Size (inches) brightness (nits) UW Weight (g) Avg. Price (Euro) Anglerfish HD57 4K 5.7 550 -145 1800 Kraken KRM02 V2 5 3000 -260 1300 Kraken KRM07-2200 V2 7 2200 -560 1900 Weefine WED-5 5.5 480 -260 1000 Weefine WED-7 PRO 7 500 -280 1600 Nauticam 7" T7 HD UltraBright Monitor 7 3000 -830 3000 SUPE/Scubalamp UM5.5 5.5 3000 -700 1000 Fotocore MR6 6 2600 ? 1300 Fotocore MR5.5 5.5 2000 -740 1 1200 Dive & See DNC-5C 5 600 -300 2900 Dive & See DNC-7B 7 450 ? 3000 1 = data obtained via private spec request Some monitors are sold under different brand names: SUPE/Scubalamp/Fotocore/Aquatech

Filmed over hundreds of dives around Vancouver Island and the Salish Sea, this is a 1-minute teaser for my full 2-hour film featuring wild Pacific octopus and Ruby octopus. From babies the size of a pea to full-grown giants. No narration, no captions—just octopuses doing octopus things in the cold, emerald waters of British Columbia. You’ll see them hunt, change color, fight, crawl, vanish, and interact with their environment in ways that might leave you with a new appreciation for these incredible creatures. Great to play in the background—or just zone out and watch them move.

At the suggestion of TimG, I thought I would share this. Many, many years ago I got into photography and for a while, was a photographer for a major newspaper chain, doing mostly sports photography. Later I pursued other career options and recreational activities and did little photography. Eventually, I began taking pictures on beach vacations with my wife and kids and while snorkeling, using a compact camera in a cheap waterproof housing with no external flash or auxiliary lenses. I was not impressed with the results and when I later learned to scuba dive I went down the rabbit hole of dive photography, moving from compact to M43, to DX formats and now full frame. My very recent change has been to a Nikon Z8. That change was not prompted by format size...I find APS-C just fine for my purposes. But my vision has changed and underwater find it hard to use the back LCD screen as well as before. I have only taken one dive trip with the Z8, so am still learning the camera and adjusting a couple of lens changes that go along with that. Here is what I have found so far: The electronic viewfinder is great. Bright and contrasty and highly adjustable. The ability to use just the viewfinder when I want to has been great and has allowed me to make adjustments and reshoot a subject more quickly and efficiently than with the DSLR. For Caribbean diving, I have been enjoying the fairly compact WWL-C. On a given dive I may shoot blennies, jawfish and nudibranchs and then a loggerhead turtle or shark or reef scene and the flexibility is nice and the optic pretty compact. My general belief is that it is better to have one type of photography in mind on a given dive, but I seem to end up on a lot of smallish dive boats where I don't know what dive site I am going to until I am on the boat that morning, and often can't really plan on being able to change lenses and ports on the boat and will need to keep up with the guide and group in the water, and not spend 10 minutes minutes getting a shot or looking for a specific subject. On other dive trips or when I am shore diving, I will take the 105 or the 60 macro lens or the 8-15, FTZ and a 140 dome and the WWL-C will likely stay home. I believe I can alos use the 60 and 8-15 in DX mode if I want, giving some additional flexibility and permitting me to use a kenko 1.4. Not sure if that will be worthwhile, but I like experimenting. Overall, I think I am enjoying the Z8 a little more than the D500, and the size and weight difference is minor. Of course, great photos can be taken with much smaller cameras and simpler setups. It is the person not the equipment that matters, but I am something of the photo equivalent of a motorhead (lenshead?) and can get carried away with the toys pretty easily. I may have more insights after my trip next week.

Hello from Backscatter Underwater Video & Photo in Monterey, CA. I'm Becca, the operations manager.

Since there is so little posted pictures taken with an MFO-1, I thought I would share my experience. Here is the short story Canon R7 with RF100mm, 1/250 f18 iso 320 on all shots. All pictures unprocessed. without MFO-1 with MFO similar distance with MFO moved back to get similar size of subject compared to shot with no MFO-1 without MFO-1 100% crop with MFO-1 100% crop Now the long story. My main reason for buying the MFO-1 was to help focus hunting issues I was having when shooting fast moving fish like wrasses and in particular, flasher wrasse. I was very excited to find some flashers on my first dive with the MFO-1. I spent 30 minutes shooting them and did not see any noticeable improvement in focusing with the MFO-1. Many times I would preset a focus distance and when the flasher swam into focus, I would half depress the trigger and the camera would immediately go out of focus and hunt back and forth, just like it did without the MFO-1. I have had this problem ever since I got this camera a couple of years ago and even sent the camera back to Canon for repair but they did not find any issues.. The camera is awesome once it locks focus and works great on slow moving subjects. I was so disappointed I did not plan to use it again on my trip. After a couple of days, I thought it would be interesting to test the enhanced image quality the MFO-1 is suppose to provide. This is where something interesting happened. I started the dive with the MFO-1 attached to my flat port. When I took it off to shoot without it, I was shocked to see lots of air bubbles escape! Was I shooting through air on my first dive with the MFO-1? I did several shots with and without the MFO-1 to test image quality (picture above) then kept it on, excited to try shooting a wrasse without any air bubbles. No flashers but when shooting other wrasse, the same focus hunting problem occurred. I am not sure if my camera is causing the problem. I plan to send it back again to Canon again. So take my results with a grain of salt. Anyone want to buy an MFO-1 that was used for only on two dives? And just to show you I do know how to use a camera, this shot below was taken from my first dive with the MFO-1, maybe through an air pocket?

"unlimited Budget?" Easy...... I would hire someone a lot better than I am to dive with me, And also pay their expenses. Have them agree the images/videos and copyright are mine. We swim around and I point to what I want photographed/filmed and then claim the image/video later. Problem solved. 😉

While I fully agree that smaller sensors give more depth of field, there seems to be a mistaken belief that the goal of macro photography underwater is all about maximising depth of field. Sometimes it is. But usually it isn't. I shoot on full frame. And this same thinking would mean you would imagine that I always have my lens closed down to maximise depth of field. Instead you will see a very wide range of apertures used. This, as an example, is the apertures I have selected for the 4300 macro shots that remain in my Lightroom (after culling) from my shoots over the last 12 months. I share this to make the point to show the fallacy of the sweeping statement that saying that one camera system giving more depth of field makes it better for macro.

Friends, I've only been an APS-C camera owner and shooter over 25 years of digital. I truly have never understood all the obsession with corner sharpness. If that's what you're looking at as THE important element in your image I just don't get it, but that's just me..... I head to Red Sea in a couple days and like last October on a Cozumel trip will attempt to "shoot different". I take a new lowly APS-C 24 megapixel Canon R100 camera, the unbelievably sharp Canon RF-S 10-18mm IS STM lens and compact Ikelite DLM housing with 6" dome port. I have a pair of 2,000 lumen 120 degree beam lights plus a smaller slightly narrower 1000 lumen light especially for inside the Thistlegorm and other wrecks to play with. That's it...... I can borrow a small Inon S220 or Sea and Sea YS-03 flash from some buddies on board our liveaboard if I care to shoot something with flash, or maybe not....... I'm becoming bored with what I've coined as: "SS" for "Shampoo Shooting" as in "lather, rinse, repeat". Been there done that for too long. I don't mean to sound dismissive, again it's just where I'm at after decades of taking pictures. I won't be obsessing over corner sharpness as I also crop every photo I take (well, usually) and fine tune images to my liking. I realize most of this forum has high end talented shooters desiring top technical quality and have the means to buy top shelf gear, etc. Most (all?) are not making a living from photography as hobbyists not selling or licensing photos. Many win contests showcasing their photos and that's great ! Just thought I'd share different thoughts versus debating age old technical discussions that seem to dominate the forums (sometimes, not always......) Keep diving, shooting and more importantly have fun :) David Haas Some pics shot with everything from 1" sensor compacts to APS-C dSLR even with lowly "kit" lenses......

on my first dive with the mfo I took a picture with and without the mfo, just to try. Free floating in drysuit in a silty lake in the Netherlands, so a little shift in position. This shot is from a 105 macro (AF-S 105mm F/2.8G IF-ED VR) in the bottom corner on fullframe DSLR. No sharpening, removal of CA etc. F16 1/60 iso 100. In the centre the difference is still there, but less noticable. Left mfo, right no mfo

One of the really nice things about this community is the mutual support folks offer. Long may that remain!

In short - sometimes... For comparison first I am bringing 2 images shot on the same location (Carnatic shipwreck at Abu Nuhas, Red Sea) 1 year apart shot using WWL-1B and adapted canon's 8-15 (no TC). I would say it even may be the same corral just shot from different side. First WWL-1B from 2024 300% central part and 300% kind of out of center to show depth of field And kind of extreme corner lower right Now the same for 8-15 at 15mm F10 center off center with background and the corner lower right You can clearly see that 8-15 significantly outperforms WWL/28-60 on subjects sharpness, micro contrast and overall rendering. Where WWL excels is a uniform unsharpness 🙈 across the frame and much greater perceptual depth of field for entire image viewed on a small device. And it's kind of logical. Nauticams wet optics (WWL, WACPs, FCP) final results on Sony (do not know canons and nikons lenses) are held back by poorly performing 28-60 which - compared to canons 8-15 - is soft and especially on tight end with relatively poor micro contrast and overall rendering. On the other end if one doesn't plan to crop heavily or print large HD prints then it doesn't matter that much and this expensive wet optics will produce nice postcard size images🙈. Fisheye on the other hand will produce much greater field of view which also means that one has to get much closer to the subject for meaningful impact which means that one needs to select the scene very carefully otherwise only central piece of image is going to be in focus and the rest will be a mess. Especially for concave scenes (like small caves where subject is in the middle in the back - see pictures below) the use of this fisheye lens would be less then ideal. Basically for CFWA shots like clownfish anemone sunburst it's like 1:10 you could get into a good position while with wet optics much less. These results are not surprising as for DOF and are in line with dome theory and wet optics theory. Simply said with fisheye you need to be so close to the subject that you effectively focus at minimum focus distance for lens while hyperfocal would be much further away. With all DOF implications. For subject-less scenes 3m away this would be different but for smaller subjects you need to get real close. I have had TC2x only on first dive and at first glance I didn't like the results so I skipped using it - perhaps prematurely judging from anemone detail taken at 30mm... oh well. And also this is an example of that wrong scene for fisheye lens. So 8-15 TC2x at 15mm the same scene at 30mm and 300% crop So this is my experience with adapted 8-15 which except for autofocus misses fulfilled my overall expectations even though it brought different set of challenges. And lastly following image shows example of a neutrally buoyant configuration - 140mm glass dome + 35 + 20 + 8-15 + Metabones + Sony TC2x + A1 + Shinobi (NPF970 battery) + Retra Pro X with superchargers

Hi. Im Naef from Saudi Arabia, jeddah I'm using Sony a7siii & A1 Nuticam housing if you plan to dive in Saudi let me know I'm willing to help Thanka

We did a Bonfire dive on BON with Martijn of Twilight Diving - Private and Personalized Night Diving Trips in Bonaire. Good guy and a fun dive. Similar to blackwater but done from shore in 40 feet of water. Not as many critters as we've seen in offshore blackwater dives, but still a lot of larvae and much more convenient.

Very different to MFO-1. So not relevant to the discussion here (I didn't bring it up!). Since many still struggle with the job of the MFO-1 - it is to give you a bit more magnification than the lens does on its own (while improving IQ and AF a bit).

Hi I build 1 or 2 years ago this connector The target of this item is to bring the FO cable near of the arm without a large amount of cable and avoid to break it if it is catched in someting Easy to remove And the small black part is allways protecting the cell of the Retra The FO is going into the arm.. clean On the top coming out and go in the big floating arm and again comes out near of the housing where the FO is attach with my selfmade connector All this pieces are printed with TPU If want want the stl feel free to ask me. Hugues

In this fun project I tried to show another perspective of the anemone fish. I used the material filmed last year December in Tulamben, Bali.

I'm waiting for later this year when the Pro Max III come out.

I just shot the MFO against some ISO targets. As far as I can tell for micro 4/3 (30 macro Oly, 30 macro Pany, 45 macro, 60 macro and 90 macro, there is no obvious increase in edge quality. Perhaps it has great use only in FF cameras. I talked to the Backscatter guys at the Long Beach scuba show and they said of course it is only for FF. I wish they told me that BEFORE I paid them for it. Bill

A lot depends on what you want to do with the images. If you are wanting to make 3 ft by 6 ft prints then more pixels be more better. For 16x20 inch prints, or smaller or for sharing online then u4/3 gets you more than enough to work with. Video capabilities are beyond my understanding but both Olympus and Panasonic shoot with good enough resolution unless your unlimited budget includes an imax theater in your garage. We just finished the scuba show in Long Beach where OCUPS had a booth. I did all the prints for the booth at 12 x 16 inches on metallic paper. We had shots from Z9, R5, D500 micro 4/3 TG7 and even some iPhone shots. Hard to tell which cameras made which pics. Bill

My name is Sabrina Schumann. I'm new to this community but not to diving and underwater photography. I live in the Peoria, Illinois area but am moving out to California next year and am super excited to be closer to the awesome diving that California offers. I currently shoot a Nikon Z8 with 3rd generation retra strobes, but have only used this new housing on one trip this past May to Fiji where I shot only WA. My next diving trip isn't until January (Boo)! After 5 years, I've said goodbye to my D850 though it served me well and I hope I can love the Z8 just as much. I look forward to learning and sharing from this community.

I think corner sharpness importance depends entirely on the photo. Where the corners or edges are blue water or sand or dark, etc., it is often unimportant, but sometimes, softness of the corners can detract from the image. For me, I just like to know what to expect at different apertures so I can make informed choices. But I agree we can become obsessed with the issue. Compromises must be made sometimes, and I am not one to magnify an image to examine the corners or edges. Some of my questions are related to the fact that I just moved from my trusty D500 DX camera to the Z8, so am still in the honeymoon period and getting familiar with the differences.

500 USD flights friday evening to AMS/BRU, saturday morning there, rent car for the day and drive to uwcamerastore buy strobes, sleep in car (its Europe, no problem), sunday morning flight back to US, arrival back home sunday evening. Surely works also to London and some UK supplier of the strobes. Profit.

We seem to be having something of a Spam Attack going on at the moment. Many thanks to members who alerted us to the first intruders. Just to let you know that the team are monitoring the situation and are whacking moles as necessary.

First picture After the test if all is ok I ll make a new one without the sepration to gain some gr To be coutinued...

First of all, I tried using it in Underwater for a two-day monitor test. Yes, it's a heavy brick, but it's comfortable underwater with the addition of a buoyant to the arm. The weight underwater didn't bother me too much. I mounted the ball on the rear side, making it as close as possible to the camera housing, and set it to look in the 45 degree direction. (The rear screw hole is shorter than the screw in the component, so I added a washer to fix it without a gap. The design is a little strange.) It's bright. The brightness adjustment can be wheeled from 1-100%, but it never went up more than 30% even in very sunny weather. I don't need 3000-nit brightness monitor is necessary. I can't hear the cooling fan. I'm not sure if I removed the fan while waterproofing the feelworld monitor or if I can't hear the sound. I'm 95% photo, less than 5% video. I only use mirroring. I only use brightness control for my monitor, and I don't need anything else. I haven't used it for wide angle shooting yet, and I used it for snoot shooting during macro shooting. The monitor was installed in the front of the camera housing a little bit, making snoot aiming a lot easier. Because physically my arms can go further. The color of the monitor is not very important to me, but the color temperature seems to be a little low. I saw complaints about monitor delay in other reviews, but I couldn't feel the delay on Nikon camera. In the camera photo mode, the 16:9 of the monitor cannot be fully filled, but the intuition is increased by showing the camera setting values large on the black remaining areas on both sides. The satisfaction is high enough to try the underwater monitor now. The downside is that first of all, the cable protrudes to the left, causing the buoyancy agent and interference when controlling the arm. I'm a little worried about the durability of the external hdmi cable. I have plan a two-week trip in dauin, Philippines at the beginning of next month, so I think I can tell you more about it after using The Long Term. As a result of many searches before purchasing, supeum5.5 seems to be sold by changing the name not only in fotocore but also in Aquatech Housing.

I weighed the SUPE UM5.5. There is a slight error between the precision scale and the luggage scale, so it is not very accurate. Since the baggage scale cannot be measured less than 1kg, it was measured by adding a weight and then subtracting the weight from the weight. The weight includes 2 * 21700 battery and an inch ball. Precision scale on Land: 1320 g luggage scale on Land: 1.2 kg luggage scale Underwater : 0.7 kg Error approximately 120 g SUPEUM5.5 seems to be the same as fotocore. I received the monitor last week, and when I turn it on, the fotcore logo appears on the screen. (Weighing in cold water, the fog in the picture is an external screen.)

I'm waiting the first test Isotta Shipping New RED64 Strobe

Sorry to hear about your MF-1 strobe failing. It’s never any fun to have your equipment stop functioning and we understand your frustration. One thing that I would ask you to test and check is what happens if you use the battery and/or battery handle from your other MF-1 strobe in this unit (sounds like you have based on previous replies in this thread)? Does the behavior of that strobe change? What happens when you do the reverse and use the battery and battery handle from the questionable unit on the other functional strobe? From your description of the blue blinking light turning to red blinking, this to me points to a possible fault with one or more components on the internal circuitry. If this is actually the case, there is unfortunately no quick and easy field fix and the strobe will have to be evaluated at either our service center in Monterey or sent to an authorized Dealer. The closest Backscatter dealer to your location in Bali would be DiveSea Indonesia. While they are located on a different island, they can potentially ship a replacement strobe out to you relatively quickly if you wanted to order another. At this point, these MF-1 strobes are out of their normal warranty period. Here is their website: https://www.divesea.co.id/pages/contact-us. We have reached out to DiveSea Indonesia from our end to alert them to your situation and give them a heads up, but I encourage you to reach out to them yourself as well. Feel free to email our Service Department directly at [email protected] if you wish to discuss the issue further.

Sorry the better half found typos in the version I posted, lol. So here his the correctly spelled version....

Favorinus tsuruganus

By the way, I want to thank everyone who offered to lend me a strobe here in Bali or even from Europe. Luckily, I have other strobes with me so I can continue enjoying photography on my vacation. Thanks to everyone, and best regards.

Was a wetpixeler (very bad one I must confess) from ca 2005. Have been shooting Nikon D200 and D300 in Hugyfot housings and are currently on the hunt for a D500 housing.

Hey dimsak I'm sure you'll get lots of great advice on the qualities of each. I'd like to give you a different perspective: My experience has been that a fisheye and a macro are the essentials - anything else is marginal and I'm not convinced by the need for something mid-range. The fisheye covers the vast majority of wide-angle stuff unless you are determined to use a rectilinear lens. Then a macro lens covers the majority of the fish portrait and macro type images. You have the excellent Sigma 15mm; and are planning the macro. The only potential use for a mid-range, for me, is maybe pelagic that won't come close. But even then, really marginal use I've found it better to plan the dive setup for macro or fisheye and then search for subjects that fit that criteria. Mid-range is very much neither here nor there. My advice: save your cash.

Hi everyone! Dimi fro Greece here! Relatively new to the world of diving (~100 dives) and completely new to the world of UW photography (aside from action cams). In the process of building my first rig :) Eager to meet you guys and get insights based on your experience and, ideally, make my own contributions further down the line!

May be RETRA offers Pro Max users update on excisting flash for reasonable price. New flash Max II looks mechanically quiet similar so may be there is only exchange of electronic & reflector necessary (just kidding/dream, they want to sell new ones). Anyway would be a great idea to support underwater photographers in future. Also would be great in relation of sustainability. Getting new updates of hardware in short sequence is quiet anoying. Br Markus

Hoping to learn from this forum. Underwater photographer way back in the Nikonos day. Just got an OM 1 so a big learning curve.

If you have updated LR recently to v14.3.1 you might have discovered a new Mask, Landscape, in the Develop Module. I've just played around with it a bit this evening and have found it works really well for many u/w images. It even identifies the water as, err, water. It seems to be able to differentiate divers, water and corals. I found I could create a number of masks which allowed me to make adjustments to the drivers face, to the corals and to remove backscatter by masking the water. Definitely worth a try.

I use a later-generation 15mm with a Sony A7C in the nauticam housing with the stock adapter. One thing to be aware of - the lens, due to it's short focal length, is extremely sensitive to its flange distance (distance to sensor) being exactly correct. The difficulty with the nauticam adapter system is that it does not come into contact with the camera, and manufacturing tolerances by Nauticam just aren't precise enough to ensure perfect lens positioning. Not that their tolerances are bad - the system just requires it to be exact (±0.1mm or less) or else it doesn't work well. Some folks have gotten lucky and it's spot on from the get-go, others not so. When I first got my setup, it would not focus beyond about 1-2m underwater because the flange distance was too long, i.e. the lens was positioned too far away from the sensor. I had the lens serviced and checked by Devon at Pacific Housing Repair so it wasn't a lens problem. I solved the issue by filing a bit of plastic from the front of the camera plate that secures the body inside the housing. My copy needed exactly 0.5mm filed off (yes, it's that sensitive). Once I did that, it worked flawlessly. I still retain full use of all housing buttons and dials. Just be aware of this if you try to make it work. Like Alex's images demonstrate, once you get the lens dialed and get used to manual focusing with it, it produces seriously excellent images.

Hello WaterPixels Community! My name is Sevag and I am the Service Manager at Backscatter Underwater Video & Photo. Feel free to send service questions and inquiries to [email protected]

If you are bored, have a cup of coffee here is the long version, 17min, Anilao trip. The classic Mark Twain quote, "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead". Next cut it down to under 6mins....

Hello there, I've been diving for the last decades and started taking memories with a Canon A95 and no skills at all. Once amazed by gopros I skipped from hero 3 to 8, tried my luck with an insta X4 and ater months of phycological warfare managed to get a refund. My latest endeavour consists of using my Samsung s24U inside a Divevolk housing. As you guessed by now with my luck streak, this is not going well: the black magic app does not really do wonders, the standard Samsung video pro remains bland and I am having second thoughts before buying a motioncam pro licence. If one of you has reached some level of success with this setup ... I love you already.

In this post I want to share some experience with photo processing using ON1 NoNoise / Photo Raw 2024 (still the current version of the AI tools). There are now many programs out there with AI de-noising, sharpening and more capabilities and they likely all do a good job. ON1 allows quite flexible tuning of their algorithm and for my images the default settings are NOT what gives me best results. This may be comparable in other programs – so here it comes. My personal “sweet spot” is to use both, NoNoise and TackSharp. For NoNoise, I set luminance to 65%, detail to 23% and color to 50%. Tack sharp is very aggressive and I only add it in to give a small “touch-up” at 15%. There is another slider called “microsharpen” and I tend to leave that at the default of 100. Like this: If the contrast is too crisp, I reduce the microsharpen value (to 50 or even 30). If I am disturbed by AI artifacts I first reduce the TackSharp to 10% and then if necessary the detail to 15 or 20%. Usually that is enough. I use either an Olympus E-PL5 or an EM-5 (the first model). Both cameras have the same sensor, so the IQ is the same. And they certainly benefit from modern processing software. Examples, of course! I start out with above-water pictures because I vary the ISO more than under water. But water is close (lens was a Lumix 12-32 kit zoom, the tiny one). First, an outside picture at base ISO of 200 (full image is AI-processed): And a 100% crop without any de-noising applied (so essentially raw but with adjustments of contrast, vibrance etc.) Here is the crop with the AI-settings applied: I like the detail in the shadow below the deck that is much better here; some artifacts are visible, but not too bad. And now an image of the steam engine inside the boat, this was taken at ISO 6400 (full image is AI-processed): Here’s a 100% crop with no noise reduction applied. Not bad at all, I think – considering it is a 13 year-old camera model. I use ON1 PhotoRaw and this also offers a “classic” de-noising option so I can compare NR options while everything else is the same. Probably comparable to other programs and I applied this with caution at something like 25% luminance, 50% detail, 100% color and 50% detail in that. Slightly better, but if you go stronger luminance values it wrecks all the detail. Now here is the crop with the AI settings applied: Not magic – but better still. There is a bit of luminance noise left, but for my purposes this result is perfectly sufficient. What I like about this algorithm is the “elasticity” – both images were AI-processed with the exact same settings and they both (and many more) turn out nice. The program defaults are way too aggressive, though. As mentioned before these settings are my “sweet-spot” and I now routinely apply this to essentially all images (but read the very end of the post). Does this turn my classic cameras into a current Sony full-frame model with a Zeiss Batis lens? Certainly not. But this is better than the out-of-camera jpg (which I am not showing because contrast ect. is different). And it of course does not change the autofocus-performance of my old cameras - just forget about using TackSharp to recover an image that is clearly out-of-focus. That’s a myth. Now what about under water? This is a grouper in Madeira, shot with the E-PL5 and the 14-42 kit lens behind a flat port and an Inon UWL-H100 wetlens (no dome) at ISO 200; some sand was in the water and I used strobes, so lots of backscatter (full image is AI-processed): A 100% crop of the cheek with no noise reduction applied: Here is the “classic” NR version (though it really doesn't need any NR): And here comes the version with AI applied (my settings): Some detail on the grouper skin is probably AI fantasy, but if I really turn up the contrast on the original I can see the larger wrinkles. The grains of sand were real, too. Artifact or not – once I stop pixel-peeing, it looks really natural and I don’t have the actual grouper to compare with. But I do think that ON1 was trained in part on pics of leather sofas. This is the eye with no NR: With classic NR: And with the AI settings: Pick your preference… I am also cropping a region with backscatter for obvious reasons. For this, I am comparing the mild “classic” noise reduction: And the AI version: I read they trained the model to be well-suited for starry skies, and this can be seen. Backscatter is more focused and more intense – which is, after all, what I am asking for with my settings. In this picture, the backscatter has to be removed by other means anyways; I ended up using a blur and masking out the grouper. Whether it is easier to do this before or after applying the AI de-noising I honestly cannot tell, it probably depends on the strategy and tools employed. Is there any other downside to this? Yes, and that is processing time. I do not have a powerful computer (a 5-year-old laptop with an i5 processor and its built-in graphics only). Processing a 16 MPx raw image with these settings takes literally 15 minutes. To make things worse, ON1 PhotoRaw will go through a new calculation every time you re-open the image for processing (I hope the Photoshop-plugin is different). Thus, with the settings in place, it takes me 15 minutes to open an image. No kidding. That’s why I don’t apply these settings until the very end. Rather, I open images without any NR, adjust whatever I need (contrast, white balance, remove blemishes etc.) and with highlights and shadows I leave a tiny amount to room because the AI procedure increases contrast a bit – thus I avoid clipping. When I am all done with the images in e.g. one folder, I navigate to a different source image, copy out the NR sweet-spot settings, go back to the current folder, select all images, paste in only the NR settings, select to export all images as high-quality jpg to a subfolder and then go to bed. Depending on how fruitful the trip was, I might even go to bed twice before it’s done. This is why the “elasticity” of the algorithm is so important & useful. If you want to try it out – they offer a free 30-day trial with no restrictions, I believe. There are standalone packages and a photoshop plugin. I have no affiliation whatsoever with the company and I am sure other tools can give comparable results. Just make sure you venture beyond the default settings.

Oh yes, David, of course, I was just agreeing with your statement. I had just been trying to get the flash working for the umpteenth time, with the same results; you can imagine my frustration. I was simply reiterating what you had written. Best regards.

Our first Macro trip in years and I reaffirmed I just see the world in wide angle, lol. Few ok shots but nothing I really love. We stayed at the Solitude Acacia Resort and really liked it. Food was good, room nice, guide was excellent and so much less expensive than your typical live aboard. Can definitely recommend it. RANT TIME. We are a muck stick or one finger on dead rock photographers. No lying on the sand or wedging into the reef for a shot. Watching guides turning over creatures to expose shrimp, crabs, etc was sad. Seeing them physically putting hands on coral fans to maneuver pygmie seahorses was heartbreaking. Even worse was clearly guest, fellow photogs, promoting the behavior as they covered themselves in crinoids, sand and bits of reef to get a "better shot". Ugh. Having to witness that every dive will temper my desire to repeat this destination. (Yes, I to bump the reef, sand, and wall on occasion)

Hi, my name is Tony . I have been diving since the late nineties. Getting ready to retire to Thailand and wanna learn about underwater video and photography.