CCRphoto

Which Retra's have you got?

I think that I will run both the 60 macro and the 90 as well - for two very different purposes. Agree that the 90 is somewhat offsetting the benefits of a M43 system a little, but it will be much nicer to use than the 180mm macro that I had years ago! The local waters really suit macro more than fisheye or wide angle, and I think that I may skip the fisheye altogether and probably go for the 12mm rectlinier as that would probably be preferable to a fisheye for underwater archaeology work. I'm really not into video, years ago when I was working on liveaboards I was basically forced to make a video of the trip to sell to the punters at the end of the trip - company policy, and of course you had to get a short piece of every person on the trip diving and after 18 months of punters giving me a cheesy wave and then having to create a video out of it I was done with video! It was back in the VHS tape days and there were no real editing facilities - just two tape machines. That is a very interesting comparison for the various cameras - cheers! It certainly looks like the Oly 60mm makes a nice small package to use! I guess if guys like TimG and Chris have been happy to come down to the OM-1 MkII then it should be plenty good enough for me given that I have never used digital before.

I think that a monitor is definitely the way to go. BTW I saw your signature - have you heard anything about that training fatality in S.C.?

Many thanks for that very comprehensive post - I have made a lot of updates to my lens spreadsheet according! Agree that a 180mm dome kind of defeats the purpose of M43 - and I used to find that domes that were considerably bigger than the housing had a tendency to pick up scratches or otherwise get damaged far more often. Coming straight from 35mm slides 30 years ago I really don't know much about the sensors yet, the 7D that I was originally looking at was APS-C about 18mp, the OM-1 MkII is 20mp, I really don't know if there are APS-C cameras now that have more megapixels. Apparently 20mp is roughly equivalent to the slide films I used years ago - but without the chemicals smells when you process it. Cheers for another recommendation for the Retra's - seems like the way to go!

LOL!! I'm a top 20 shareholder, it has taken longer than expected for this project to produce the fruit as the filter press that they installed when building the processing plant turned out to be a complete piece of crap, they spent a lot of money to get a good one from a well known & reputable Italian manufacturer and the problems only became apparent when commissioning the process plant, so they were only operating at about 45% capacity for more than a year while a new one was made by a Chinese manufacturer - that one is operating reliably and doing so at a rate that is higher than its rated capacity - China for the win - wasn't expecting that compared to a long established Italian manufacturer but anyway... I don't want to spend all of my winnings on underwater photography gear, so If I could obtain a secondhand Nauticam OM-1 housing I would happily go that route, however secondhand ones seem rarer than rocking horse dung at the moment - it seems that everyone is quite happy with their setup.

I do a fair bit of shore diving and so I'm not sure that I want to go to a FF-sized system for that reason if an m43 will do the job perfectly well.

I think that I am becoming convinced about the Maxis, the problem that I had was that for some weird reason, when you click on the Retra Flash tab on the Retra website it goes to a page with massive amounts of information that goes on and on about the Retra Pro Max II - and there is no mention at all of the Maxis - the only way anyone finds out about the Maxis is to go to the Shop and find them there and then click on them and it takes you to a page for the Maxis - anyone who doesn't go to the Shop would be left thinking that the only strobe Retra make is the Pro Max II, and they are out of the price range of most people. So I'm glad that you guys pointed out the Maxis! Even if the Pro Max II was affordable the oodles of AA batteries needed was an instant turn off - airlines allow you to carry 20 lithium batteries and if 16 were needed for a pair of strobes, a couple of camera batteries, two batteries for the rebreather, a battery or two for the monitor - and I'm over the 20 battery limit! I will do some more reading on the Maxis but they are more or less favourite now.

Interesting! Agree that the Maxis look better option now that I have found them!

Europe's 22% VAT is insane - makes everything so crazy expensive when visiting there. I will take a look at Retra's, the Retra Pro Max II and Backscatter HF-1 each have their own pluses and minuses, I will have to spend a bit of time researching each and then making a decision.

At this stage the OM-1 is still favourite for the smaller size and portability, I will take a look at the Nikon Z5 II etc, but the OM-1 + 90mm macro has some appeal to this old supermacro nerd. What strobes did your buddy set his rig up with?

OK will take a look at that too...

The Nikon could be an interesting option - a lot will depend on timing, at the moment I'm not sure whether it is going to take another two weeks for the shares that I am going to be selling to hit their peak - or is it going to take another 3-4 months until after the next set of quarterly financials are released... very hard to tell but they jumped 19% on Friday after the April-June quarterly report was released on Friday morning, and should go up another 100-125% from here now that they have proven that they can mine and process the copper consistently and successfully. Its a very good time to be owning shares in a copper miner.

I think that I am fairly sold on the OM-1 now, will take a look at Nauticam & Isotta housings if I get to the GoDiving show in Sydney in a month or so. Good to know that battery life of the OM-1 will meet my needs! I've got to do some research on Strobes. What are you using and how have you found them to be?

Interesting - will be interesting to see what the OM-1 Mark III is like.

Definitely will need an external monitor. I can see that digital will certainly have some advantages over a roll of 36! I don't think that GenZ would cope very well with film! I haven't looked too far into wet lenses yet, I think that will come later after I have learnt to use the system.

I think that the OM + Nauticam housing will have monitor capability but I will check!

Definitely not a manual focus masochist these days - my eyes are too old for that! I didn't realise that M4/3 was an actual standard - good to know. Great info about the lenses - cheers! Saves some trial and error!

Cheers Tim - all good information to know. Have you had a chance to take your OM-1 underwater yet?

Cheers - another vote for OM-1. Hopefully the Mark III will be released soon - bonus points if it fits the existing housing!

I like to keep things simple... - Nemo - Not Nemo

OK cheers. I would definitely want something with a range of ports - I do unusual things at times...

Many thanks for that comprehensive reply @TimG . You were in the unfortunate position of having to replace everything / start from scratch very recently and so you were kind of where I am at but for very different reasons. More than 20-25MP is mostly only needed by people who can't compose properly and so need to crop like heck - well that's my opinion anyway😀 The OM-1 MII seems to be the pick of the M4/3 cameras that work well for underwater stills. There are lots of rumours of a Mark III coming out in the next couple of months - but like a lot of these rumours it is 9/10ths speculation and 1/10th wishful thinking combined with people making social media content about it because they can - we won't know until the day that it is announced. I've got some shares that are (finally) getting the price rerating that they deserve so I'm happy to wait a few weeks and see if the MIII materialises, and if so whether the improvements are ones that are useful for underwater photography - and whether it will fit into the existing housing or... The Australian GoDiving show is in about five weeks, so I might go to that and suss a few things out. Do the lenses from the various companies making M4/3 cameras all share the mount? (or did you have to get an adaptor for the Panasonic 8mm Fisheye?). I've just been doing some reading, and of the available housings for the OM-1 MII the Nauticam seems to be the way to go - AOI housings for the OM-1 sound like they are very very hit or miss as to whether you get a good one or one that is a complete nightmare. With your Nauticam housing - the specs say 307mm wide - does that include the handles or just the housing? I'm hoping that I will be able to fit the entire housing and camera package into a Lowepro roller carryon, and then the rebreather can go in its huge Pelican case from their lightweight series (can't remember their marketing name for them). Australia back to Europe for any repairs to Retra strobes is quite a hassle and expense so I will be looking for something with decent punch that is sold/warranted locally. Inon are releasing a new Z360 strobe sometime soonish... the Backscatter Hydrid HF-1 sounds interesting too - can buy them locally.

You have all successfully convinced me to go for something more modern than the Canin 7D, but I don't know yet what that something should be... so here are some criteria, and ask any questions because I'm coming from 35mm film days and camera specs were a lot simpler/different then! Something smaller than a large DSLR rig would sure be nice as I'm already carrying so much stuff when CCR diving that a large camera system just gets in the way. Having looked at the Nauticam port charts, a Micro four thirds system that uses the N85 ports seems like the way to go as there are a reasonable number of ports and lens combinations for Nauticam and other housings such as AOI in that size range. Someone mentioned in the other thread about the Canon R50, there doesn't seem to be a wide range of ports available for that one though. So I think that limits manufacturers to Sony, Panasonic or Olympus/OM - I've never used any of them so know absolutely nothing about them at all - in fact I have never used a digital camera apart from a phone one. So here goes... in no particular order - camera/housing must be able to use an external HDMI monitor - must be compatible with fibre optic strobe triggering - but I don't need TTL - I'm happy to buy secondhand - must have good low light autofocus - must have a good range of OEM and aftermarket lenses suitable for underwater photography - must have controls/ranges that would be familiar to an 35mm SLR user - e.g F2.8 to F22 or greater, shutter speed controls etc - must have really good battery life - must be able to produce a good quality image - not sure how many megapixels that requires? I've no idea what else are required as far as speccing a camera these days?

I think what I am going to do is forget the 7D idea, and instead come up with a list of minimum specs etc for buying a secondhand rig and see what you all suggest. See https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/3775-which-camera-housing/

Reading the article that @Architeuthis provided the link to - I think that a monitor will work for me - but I need a bit more info on this part from the article - "Back in the DSLR days, monitors were really practical only for videographers, because you would have to rely on the camera’s “live view” autofocus, which was painfully slow and unreliable. As a stills photographer, you needed to frame your images through the optical viewfinder, for the camera’s autofocus to perform at its best. " How bad is it with a DSLR such as a Canon 7D? Having only ever used 35mm film cameras underwater, and the only digital camera I've used is on a mobile phone, so I've got no idea how bad what he is talking about actually is - or how big a problem it really is?