RobinD

been to both mafia and zanzibar. I would go back to mafia, I liked it there. We also did shore diving / muck diving, stuff like (hairy) frogfish, seahorse, ghostpipe fish etc we saw in the few dives we did from shore. Zanzibar I would not go back to, the diving was very poor in my opinion, also very crowded with tourism.

hi @CaolIla Im not sure how many dives the flip has done. If I have to guess, around 100-150? The printed parts dont seem to age / get worse over time. That said I'm sure an aluminium construction is stronger.

I use a flip adapter from onderwaterhuis for my subal housing. I often use it with the double flip (smc and mfo) They are 3d printed, the ring that the lens screws in is aluminium and I believe it is glued in to the printed part. I use it for at least 5 years now, it works nice. Once fitted on the port it feels sturdy, For travel I take it off the port and store it in a little box, as it does not feel too strong on its own. the part where the 2 halves are screwed together on the port, is the least good part. When you over tighten the screw, the 3d printed plastic can snap. I use a little stainless steel bolt, washer and nut as mine snapped a few years ago. This sollution works very well. This flip (at least the one for the subal), allows the screwed in lens to be flipped allmost onto the port, when using longer macro ports. This is really nice, as it doesnt make the housing very nose heavy and allows for strobe positioning pretty close to the port. I attached a photo, only 1 flip installed at the moment for local diving. Hope this helps.

fyi its also posted on the nauticam website: https://www.nauticam.com/collections/water-contact-optics-for-nav/products/mid-range-focus-optimizer-3-mfo-3

in one of the last shows of the underwater photography show, Alex and Matthew talked about this lens: Probably nice if you shoot 105 often, but at times you wished you brought a 60 macro for slightly bigger stuff.

I wonder if a smaller focus point, free floating in the ocean with a moving subject, would make my life easier or harder 😄

I dont know much about video, but for photo, having a good enhanced viewfinder will make your shooting a lot easier and more fun.

tnx John!

tnx for the report John, could you please tell your experience with the autofocus system of the Z8, compared to the D500? And what housing did you choose for the Z8?

I doubt the one testshot I made is very usefull for a fair comparisment. There is difference in composition, distance and perhaps exact point of focus. Anyway here is the centre shot, same settings, left MFO right no MFO

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

very nice, thanks for sharing!

in air, my MFO on a 105, can only focus up to +/- 30 cm in front of my port, anything beyond it wont focus. In water, its up to +/- 100 cm (like on the nauticam port chart). So i do believe, water has a big impact in how this lens works, although I dont know how it affects image quality. I would not use the mfo without water between port and wetlens.

im using Panasonic BQ-CC55 chargers. I did have one or two dead batteries a long time ago, but not in recent years. I allways travel with a few extra batteries. I do try to keep the eneloops bundled in pairs of 4, Never had issues like in your pictures myself

onderwaterhuis.nl shows the mfo at 449 EUR edit oops thats what you said 🤫