MikeJonesDive

It is a weird one. Got me stumped. But yes, I'll try some variations of manual strobe firing. Re RC - Ive had the opposite experience , works flawlessly every time for years. But, in thinking about it, why would the lens impact exposure at all? I would assume the TTL reading is made by the camera not via the contacts on the lens? (and RC is via the hot shoe from the camera) And if it was a camera issue with TTL then it would happen on all my lenses instead of just this one... To give the specific example of what I was doing: 50cm from the subject. 160/sec, f9, ISO auto (200). Both strobes fire. Image is near black. I wondered if the problem is the camera taking the photo Before the strobes have fired? But why would the camera do that only with this lens when all other settings are the same?

Yeah I did and it seemed to be fine. So Im wondering if the issue is with the lens and TTL? The lens works fine on its won, the issues with when I use RC TTL. So is there some issue with the lens and/or the contacts not transferring the TTL data to the camera (is that how it works?) Looking at the contact points they seem perfect and clean.

Hi folks. I have a problem that has me stumped. Im using an OM-5 camera in an AOI housing. Has served me superbly well for years and tens of thousands of photos with 30mm, 60mm, 14-42mm lenses. Ive just added an Olympus 9-18mm lens and suddenly have a problem I've not seen before. Im shooting with a pair of AOI QR Strobes using RC mode TTL. Same settings I always use and which deliver consistent great results. However, with the 9-18mm lens 9 out 10 photos are massively under-exposed. Near black. The flashes fire but the image is near dark. At first I thought I might have accidentally bumped the exposure compensation setting down. But that wasn't it. Ive tried changing all the exposure settings - shutter speed, iso, fstop - doesn't matter what I choose, 9 out of 10 are near black... Both flashes are firing, image should be lit up bright, but still I get super dark, near black images. But then it will suddenly expose correctly - 1 out of every 10 or so. Then back to near black. I thought it might have been a camera issue so swapped out other lenses - they worked perfect every time. Then I put the 9-18mm back on and the problem returns. Im stumped...! What could be in the lens itself that could cause drastic underexposure....? Or am I missing something....? Welcome any thoughts.

I use Flat Ports and in reality you'd have to be a super pixel-peeper to see any real world image quality difference between flat port and a dome port on the 30mm.

I second the above re 30mm macro has a happy middle ground. I often use my 30mm while carrying two wet lenses in caddies on my housing cross bar. An AOI UWL-09 wide angle wet lens and a AOI UCL-05 diopter. The 30mm gives me a fish-portrait style width and decent macro then I can add the diopter to the 30mm for closer macro. Then with a swap to the wide angle wet lens I get a FOV better for bigger subjects like sharks. It's the combo that covers just about everything. Many of the pics on my site were taken with the 30mm and wide angle wet lens. https://mikejonesdive.com/gallery The 60mm is a great lens but really no use for anything other than macro.

Just released and a must for any diver coming to Sydney Australia, this book is the first to cover every known fish species from Sydney Harbour - more than 700 species! The book features over 2,500 colour photographs contributed by over 350 photographers along with maps and dive site listings. For all the divers who regularly explore our Sydney coastline and harbour this book is a must. Orders available https://sydneyharbourfishes.company.site

You can do this manually through the standard older system of your Mac FINDER but this is always going to be very clumsy. The better solution is to work through a particular software system that will automate file naming on import and allow you to categorise files in a variety of ways. Lightroom (classic) which is ostensibly for photos can also handle video files and it makes this process very easy. In the import settings you specify a naming protocol that will be automatically applied as Lightroom copies the files from your memory card onto your hard drive. For example each file might be labelled YEAR-MONTH-DAY-TIME which Lightroom will read from the file's metadata written by the camera. It can then automatically create a folder for each day and save the files inside. Then within Lightroom you can create virtual folders for whatever personal categories you want (favourites, different dive sites based on their GPS, and so on). You can have as many of these as you like, and clips can be place din more than one without ever disturbing the base level folder structure on your hard drive. HTH

Pen and Stylus does take some getting used to. They can be very fiddly in an untrained hand. A possibly better and more common solution is a form of dial or jog controller with short cut buttons (Shuttle Pro or XPPen make some good inexpensive options). https://contourdesign.com/products/shuttle-pro-v2 https://www.xp-pen.com/product/ack05-wireless-shortcut-remote.html

As a contributor to a number of marine science projects I've spent quite a bit of time wrangling my ever growing underwater photo collection into a functional database. And recently Ive had a few divers (and marine scientists) ask me about how to better use and modify metadata fields in Lightroom - things like species, depth, temperature, and relevant keywords. I've written up a short piece on how I make the most of Lightroom's database features and a couple of the very effective plugins I use to customise Lightroom for underwater pics. You read the full article via the link below. Hope it might be useful. https://mikejonesdive.com/lightroom-metadata

Hi Folks. My name is Mike Jones and I'm joining from Sydney, Australia. I dive several times a week and am an enthusiast for marine biology and citizen science projects. My subjects are diverse - from muck-diving nudibranchs and seahorses, to off-shore reefs with Grey Nurse shark colonies. I keep an online gallery at www.mikejonesdive.com and regular posts on instagram @ mikejonesdive Cheers Mike