stiebs

Couple of points that I started to make but neglected to finish. Every now and then I'll do a manual purge where I'll filter only on "unflagged" photos and delete them from the disk and catalog. With my recent hard drive failure, I've often wondered over the years whether its really worth having raid. And this single event has dispelled any doubt I've had. Yes, all my data is backed up, so there's very little, if any, that I would've lost. But despite the cost of buying 4 new 12TB disks (yes, I could've got away with replacing just the one) and the time it took to rebuild (almost a week, as I added the disks one at a time, and rebuild the entire array each time), it was still a lot less painful that restoring everything from backup.

Interesting read here, and I'm constantly thinking of or looking for "better" ways to do things. I use LightRoom on my desktop, but my library is only on NAS. It may be slightly quicker on local SSD, but really I think it's just the import that could speed up. I shoot only in raw (except for my son's soccer matches, which I take in continuous shooting JPG, and often get up to 500 shots in a match). And I keep almost everything. On each import, I'll flick through very quickly and flag the ones I like most, unflag the massively out of focus or other atrocities, and then go the flagged ones for editing. For diving photos, I'll rate the ones I like with stars, but TBH my star ratings aren't very consistent. I'll also colour tag "blue" ones that I think are worthy for exporting for any purpose, I then tag all of them with the dive site (hierchical keyword Diving / <Country> / <Region> / <Site> and give a Job ID of the dive number to correlate back to my dive log. I also use the iNaturalist plugin for LR (https://github.com/rcloran/lr-inaturalist-publish?tab=readme-ov-file), so group any sets of the same subject into the same plugin group, then drag the "goodish" ones to the iNaturalist sync collection (this allows for easy taxonomy / species searching) I also have a filter collection that I use to export my "blue" tagged photos to an export folder where I can include them in my dive log. My NAS is a RAID10 array (using 4 hard drives), and also holds a lot more than just photos. After six years, I actually had a hard drive failure about 2 months ago, and took to the opportunity to upgrade the 4x4TB array to a 4x12TB array. For backup, I do a daily backup from the NAS to Amazon S3. All in all, the photos take up very little space. For 25 years of photo library (some years with more photos than others) my photo library is less than 2TB. I can't say as much for the video, which is much more painful for me to catalog and edit, and also uses much, much more space than photos, even thought I focus predominantly on photography with video just an occasional thing. One great example of the benefit of keeping rather than purging, is similar to what @Tom Kline stated above. There is one photo that I published on iNaturalist that I didn't really think too much of. It was right at the end of a night dive, just as I was surfacing, and managed to get one quick shot off of a juvenile shark. Two people have requested to use that photo in a publication, so even though I wouldn't consider it a keeper, others did. And I'm glad I still have the raw image so I could re-edit it for their publications. (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/124560131) A similar situation occurred when I took my backup camera out for a dive and saw a group of sea hares for the first time ever in that location. Uploaded to iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/259299585) and again for a photo which I'm not particularly proud of, someone else thought worthy of publishing in a local marine life publication.

Yes, Nauticam NA-XT3. As expected with anything Nauticam, not cheap! Base price is AU$800 which is full break down, inspection, clean and every o-ring replaced and moving parts lubricated. Does not include replacement of any parts (eg, bent pins, shaft, levers, worn gears etc).

Thanks for the suggestions. I've sent my housing off to be serviced (hasn't been serviced since I bought it just over 4 years ago, so it's probably due :) .. and sent my WWL-C along with it for a new front glass. Estimate is 700 Aussie pesos to fix the lens. About 40% of the price of a new one, and less than 1/3 of the price of a 180mm dome.

My GoPro 9 has had a reasonable amount of use over the past few years, but I've never been enamoured with it. It seems that every second time I take it out, it screws me over somehow. If it's not failing reconnect to my phone if I've been rude enough not to use it for a couple of weeks, it has a wonderful habit of giving me SD card errors during a dive, or deciding to corrupt videos never to be seen again. And just this weekend, after 25 seconds of recording at the start of the dive it froze up - screen stayed on and viewfinder was updating, but neither the record nor power buttons were responsive either to push or long holds. After the dive I had to remove the battery to get it working again. And these things happen with SanDisk Extreme, Ultra, and Extreme Pro SD cards, so I'm not exactly cheaping out on SD cards. Some of these cards have worked flawlessly in my DJI Mini 4 drone. I've been considering an upgrade to a GoPro 13, but I'm really struggling to find a good reason not to ditch GoPro in favour of a DJI Action 4 - there's a good deal going at the moment - has anyone else had similar experiences with GoPro 9 (or similar vintage) GoPros that have improved in the later ones? Or do I just cut GoPro loose and try the DJI. Given that the action cam is just a secondary that usually sits atop my mirrorless housing, I'm not sure the the noted edge distortion which has been reported on the DJIs is too much of a concern for me. [Edit: few grammatical errors]

Thanks for the responses. It is most definitely a scratch, and looking through a jewelers loupe I can see the etch marks. I have tried to polish it with a microfibre cloth, also with a bit of toothpaste as well, to no avail. I'm not keen on trying anything more abrasive lest I do more harm than good. It looks like it another camera right might have been put next to it, and a sharp corner of a tray or something rubbed up and down. It is a circular shape, not just a single linear scratch. My housing is due for a service, so maybe an opportunity to send the WWL-C off with it for a front element replacement. Repair will no doubtedly be less than the cost of a new one, and certainly less than the cost of a 180mm dome. My original post also implied but didn't explicitly state that's exactly what I do (although the cap usually goes in my drysuit pocket). That's why I used the phrase "I neglected to replace the dome cap before handing my camera back up to the boat"

I've been shooting my Fujifilm XT-3 in a Nauticam NA-XT3 housing for a few years now, and last trip the unthinkable happened.. I neglected to replace the dome cap before handing my camera back up to the boat, and as a result I've ended up with a circular scratch about 1.5-2mm diameter on my dome. See attached photos where you can see an obvious black dot. There are also two less obvious artifacts which appear in the same spot on other photos. I'm not sure whether they were from something else on the lens, or some sort of refractive or reflective artifact from the main scratch. Either way, it looks like I might need to spring for a new dome. So here's my quandary. I have the Fujifilm XF80mm which is great for macro. That doesn't change. I use the XC15-45 kit lens with WWL-C for wide angle. It works well, and despite being a kit lens is a little gem, despite some quirks. I have the correct port extension and zoom ring for the 10-24mm (and it's one of my favourite lenses topside), but I don't have the 180mm dome to take it underwater. When I originally bought the housing I contacted Nauticam who suggested that the 15-45 with the WWL-C would offer a similar FOV but sharper results than the 10-24 with the 180mm dome. So do I simply replace the WWL-C and stick with what I know? Or do I go ahead and get the 180mm dome and go with the 10-24mm? For travel, the dome is larger than the WWL-C, so I'll need to rethink my packing, which is already tight to fit into my flight case. In theory it'll open up over/under shots (which have never really grabbed me anyway), although from my understanding not as good as a 230mm dome. Plus I still have the WWL-C, which I could still choose to use if I don't think the blemish will have an effect, or can edit out in post. Thankyou for listening to me externalise my thought process, and I welcome any further opinions :) (Also tagging @KevinLee and @wetdreams because I know you also shoot Fujifilm!)

Other than the direction this thread has turned to, this is an interesting discussion. I have hardly ever considered using a lanyard for anything other than stowing my camera at the the of the dive. From the moment I jump in with camera in hand, or it's handed to me from the boat, it stays in my hands without ever being tethered. I have a paracord handle-type tether with a boltsnap on each end. Before the dive, it is a attached across the handles, and is used as a carry strap. At the start of the dive I usually disconnect one boltsnap and attach it to the other one, creating a loop keeping the tether out of the way. At the start of ascent, I fold in the strobe arms, and hang my rig off my crotch D-ring using tether. Since a friend dropped his camera this way, I also use double-ender as well as the tether. My camera rig weighs about 8kg dry depending on macro/wide-angle setup, but is pretty much neutrally buoyant so I can let it go quite happily. I've on occasion used the 10s shutter time to take selfies 🙂 Even in strong current in Komodo taking photos of mantas while attached to a reef hook, for the most part I didn't tether the camera to myself.

Okily Dokily

It might be cheaper to double ship. If you're happy waiting an extra couple of days @ratfish, I'm happy to relay your order on you via domestic post to avoid @humu9679 shipping two international packages.

Thanks Craig. No sense in going unders, so I'll get 10m. Unlike the i-fibreoptics shipping calculator, the real cost of shippng 2m vs 10m is going to be negligible.

Also us folks this side of the Pacific 🙂 Which is rather silly if these cables are actually made in Japan 😕

I have a 10m sample of single core (https://www.digikey.com.au/en/products/detail/industrial-fiber-optics/IF-C-E1000/811036) which is almost identical to the 613 specs. Same material, diameter, refractive index, numerical aperture. Only key different is bend radius - 3mm for the 613, 15mm for my single core. I haven't put it through a proper test yet, but certainly bend radius for the Inon L connectors is way tighter than the 15mm spec. Will make up a cable and run some bench tests and hopefully take it out soon. (This cable is also IFO branded, and I happened across it when I was looking for something to add to my DigiKey cart to get free shipping. I couldn't find the 613-core on DigiKey, and this was relatively cheap. But it appears that DigiKey no longer carry IFO cable - must be a recent thing, because I only bought it about 2 months ago)

Yes, would be better to ship direct from the US. Shipping via USPS, or even UPS shouldn't be as expensive as IF's shipping estimate - I'm sure they're adding a fair whack of "handling fees". As far as import duty, Aus is generally pretty lenient on not charging duty for small value items. When it gets up to the $1k mark, consignment is likely to be held until import duties are paid, a couple of hundred usually slips through.

I'll jump onto this as well for 10-20m (in Australia) Here's the per meter shipping to Aus 😯

Hmm.. I only really know the Sony lineup from reputation, not first hand experience so can't really compare the A2R2 directly with my experience with the XT3. I'm not sure that I'd be going for an XT3 now, especially if you already have lenses and ports to suit the Sony. I guess that depends on how good a deal you can get on the NA-XT3 housing. You will still need ports and gears and lenses. Although the WWLC can be used with other bodies as well. I haven't really used video much at all on the XT3. If you're serious about video, you would probably be better off going for something newer in the Sony line-up rather than opting for the five year old XT3. Does come down a lot to total cost differential though I guess. The 80mm generally focuses really well, although it can get lost hunting sometimes if there's a lot of sediment. There is a switch on the lens (not transferred to the housing) to limit focal range to <0.5m, but on the few occasions I've used that, I've always found myself wanting to take a photo from a slighty further distance so usually I'll live with some hunting every now and then. I haven't tried any other wide combination other than the 15-45/WWLC, which I chose on Nauticam's advice. I reached out when setting up originally, and they suggested that the when compared to the 18-55 or 10-24 in a dome, the 15-45/WWLC combo would give sharper results and a wider field of view. Neither the 18-55 nor 10-24 can be used with the WWLC because they telescope too far when zooming.

Do you already have a lens that you're shooting underwater with Fuji and considering changing, or would this be the first? If the former, what lens/port combo are you using at the moment? The 15-45mm has some quirks, but overall its quite capable for a "cheap" kit lens. I still believe my camera and any lens/port combo is more capable equipment than I am a photographer, but below are some shots taken using it - some in tropical, some in temperate waters with poorer vis. The ship wreck and the ornate cowfish just below it were both shot at 15mm and cropped. The rest are at varying focal lengths between 18mm and 45mm, usually with cropping for framing. Pretty much everything there shot with 2xZ240 strobes in manual mode, and mostly between f5.6 and f11 With the WWLC it'll focus pretty much right up to the glass, but at 15mm will vignette quite badly, so it's only really usable from about 18mm depending on how important the corners are for the shot. The two main quirks are 1. On the XT-3 body the lens will retract when you go into playback mode, so there is a delay if you use playback between shooting. It doesn't do this on my X-A7 body, so it's a lens/camera interaction thing. I'm not sure about XT-4 or XT-5. Keeping the post-shot preview on for a longer time mitigates this quirk. 2. The power zoom can be a bit of a pain. In the housing, the zoom ring doesn't spring back to centered, so can be a bit finnicky to get right. In addition, the Nauticam zoom gear actually grabs onto both the zoom ring (which is a jog-dial operation) and the focus ring (which free rotation operation). When moving these both together, sometimes the zoom operation doesn't work so well. I've got around this by reprogramming the focus ring as a zoom and padding the zoom gear with some tape so it only spins the focus ring and not the zoom. But then the next quirk, is that the focus ring will only work as a zoom on Continuous focus mode, not on M or S. I usually use C with focus tracking, so it's not an issue, but if I do want to use S using AF-L to lock focus, I need to set zoom, then change focus mode from C to S.

Tested the updated model (v2.2) on Thingiverse to add an indent within the connector hole, and it seems to work well. I've tried dry connections with the three different connectors that I have - Rubber connector with a raised ridge - Plastic connector with black o-ring - Plastic connector with red o-ring All fit slightly differently, but with all of them I can feel them "click" into place, and then they have a minuscule amount of in/out play before a slightly harder tug pulls them free. They also all have a reasonable amount of rotational freedom with rotational resistance differing slightly between the different connectors.

I'm using PETG. Certainly PLA is easy to print, and I tend to use it only for prototyping and throw away prints. PETG is more durable than PLA in the UV and saltwater intense diving environment, and will also bend before snapping like PLA tends to. Do you also have the same housing? Or a similar housing that it will also fit? If the latter, please let me know what housing you have - it would be good to know if this suits multiple housings!

Interesting .. I just did a write-up with some images attached, and when I submitted the post, it got rid of all my text and only posted the images.. Took the housing for a dive yesterday, and the fiber optic connector was successful on all levels. Work fine, connectors stayed in snuggly for the whole dive, including giant stride off the pier. Still took reasonable force to remove them when disassembling. I will be making some tweaks for a second version though. The first was actually too tight - I had to remove the securing o-rings to insert the connectors far enough. So my next version will increase the hole diameter so the connectors without o-rings fit in with some wiggle room, and then create a small indent inside the hole for the o-ring to lightly positively lock the connector in place. Goal there will be to find the right sizing so its tight enough for a positive lock and to avoid accidental removal, while remaining loose enough to allow easy rotation and removal without excessive force. From a camera perspective, there was a bit of a learning (or compromise familiarisation) curve going from a modern mirrorless camera in an ergonomic Nauticam housing to a 15 year-old entry level compact in a more basic (but still quality) housing. I still much prefer my main rig, but this will suffice for its intended purpose as a backup camera just in case, and for those times where I want to take a camera on dive but don't think the conditions or anticipated subjects warrant bringing my main camera.

I came across an FB marketplace ad that I just couldn't resist - a Canon Powershot S100 with FIXS100 aluminium housing plus Inon S2000 strobe for great price! Even though it's an almost 15yo camera, still a little backup camera, or something to take along for a dive that I don't think warrants taking my full rig, but I don't want to miss out on a photo op should it present itself! The previous owner had fashioned up a makeshift mount for the fiber optic connector as he didn't have the factory supplied one. But I figured I could go one better, so pulled out OpenSCAD and did my best! Haven't taken it underwater yet, but bench testing works a treat. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6590306

Hmm.. I'm not sure I understand these comments ... Saying that the port for the 80mm is $$$, and then in the next sentence saying you use the MWL-1 and are considering the WWL-1B !!!

Let me jump in on this XT-3 discussion! I didn't think anyone else owned an NA-XT3 🙂 I use the 15-45mm with a WWL-C as a "general purpose" lens, which despite its quirks gives some good results. I'll switch to the XF80 f/2.8 for macro. I love some of the detail I can get out of the 80mm, but the DOF can be quite challenging with surge. I've not considered using the 30mm macro, but looking at the range in your pics I might have to think about it 🙂

CFWA. MFT. FCP. WACP. Is there an acronym / glossary post somewhere for those not as familiar with the terms that the regulars to this forum are?