CCRphoto

Hmmm, or Hong Kong as there are no sales taxes and then come home via Bali...😄

Definitely wide angle country - you can leave the macro kit at home. Basically you are doing a north reefs & wrecks trip from Hurghada - will be windy that time of year so make sure you pack a hoody. Probably 5mm wetsuit too rather than a 3mm. Best tip is to take two wetsuits - one can be drying while you are diving the other one - that way you are always putting on a dry wetsuit.

Down here in Australia the price difference between Nauticam & Marelux isn't that great unfortunately - tariffs might be the cause of the bigger price difference in the U.S. Nauticam is supported extremely well by their distributor here - good stocks of housings, ports, focus & zoom rings, etc. Isotta fairly close to that, unfortunately the distributors for Seacam, Aquatica, Marelux, etc keep little stock and don't keep their websites up to date when new models are released etc. Having said that I am considering the Marelux Apollo III 3.0 - they have some features that suit me. The local distributors are still listing the 2.0 and haven't even listed the 2.1 yet so I will have to email them about a price for the 3.0. They haven't listed the housing for the A7RVI yet either. The other distributor doesn't list any of the Marelux strobes. I will take a look at those UWPmag articles that you mentioned - cheers!

Welcome from the cold, clear waters of Tasmania!

Many thanks! I was hoping that the website would say that the 3.0 offers better this, this and this and we have added this and this (compared to the 2.1), but your post has now provided that information.

A bit over a week ago Marelux released the 3.0 version of the Apollo III strobe - but there doesn't see to be any information from there about how it differs from the Apollo III 2.1 previous version - @Phil Rudin or anyone else?

Sssssh!😂

Finally getting a chance to reply once again - someone else has been spending time ON my laptop today Many thanks for all of the replies - it is good to get some really great feedback. Cheers to @Phil Rudin for the detailed explanation of how shorter MFD is needed for smaller domes etc. I'm keen to avoid the need to carry a 230mm dome, but am happy to carry a 180mm dome (especially as Nauticam make a N100 180mm dome), so I guess what would be useful is everyone can add to the list of lenses for Sony full frame that will work with a 180mm dome (Sony or third party). So far - - Sony 16-25mm F2.8 G - Sony 20-70mm (F4 G model?) - Tamron 17-28mm Any others? The Sony 16-25mm F2.8 G would be fine instead of the 16-35mm, the 20-70mm would be fine for the archaeological work although oddly the Nauticam port charts only offer a N120 180mm dome solution with N100-N120 adaptor instead of a N100 180mm solution. I am planning to add the new Sony 8-14mm Fisheye once a port becomes available.

After a lot of asking questions on here, heaps of research, several spreadsheets, and a few other things, I have decided to load up with - Sony A7R VI camera - Nauticam Housing - Sony 100mm macro lens + Nauticam N100 125mm macro for it - Sony 16-35 rectlinier zoom lens + dome port - diameter to be decided - Nauticam MFO-3 and SMC-3 wet lenses - Retra Maxi strobes - Nauticam 7 inch monitor Main Question at this stage is - - has anyone used any of the Sony 16-35 zooms? I'm particularly interested in the FE PZ 16-35mm F4 version as that doesn't physically extend like the GM F2.8 versions, and so I think that it will be better in a 180mm dome than the GM F2.8 versions because of that.

Fingers are crossed! My copper mine shares have jumped 29% today so not long now!

A big welcome from Tasmania!

Many many thanks once again! Looking at an image of the back of a HF-1, it looks like it has three power settings below 1/8th - a . then 1/16th and then another . - if the . between 1/16th and 1/8th will happily chugg along at 10fps for a while and will sufficiently light a small 1:1 macro subject then one of my problems is solved!

Many thanks Simon! Looks like a big gap in the Sony lens lineup has now been filled! Are you coming to the Sony Scene event in Melbourne next month?

Why - big underwater focus stacks - up to 300 images. Any chance you could replicate those tests you did for me on the Retra Maxis - but using the HF-1 instead - to find out if it can 10 fps at any power settings?

This chart from the article is interesting showing recycle time compared to guide number - I have selected the fastest recycling strobes. It is possible that there might be some strobes that are even more suited than the Backscatter HF-1 for shooting say 10 frames per second continuously. The HF-1 tops out at around GN10 before the recycle rate suffers, whereas the Supe D-Pro doesn't suffer until at least GN18, and the Sea&Sea YS-D130R is at GN16. It would be interesting to test these three strobes for their ability to maintain a continuous 10 frames per second.

I too would like to thank Backscatter for their enormous amount of work putting this together! A ton of useful information there - some new, some confirming what we sort of knew (or suspected).

Rumour also has it that Sony are going to be releasing a 10-? zoom fisheye sometime very soon.

Many thanks! With that information and then finding out the distance from the front of the camera in the housing to the flange it will enable me to work out what port + extension rings if needed for any particular macro lens.

Hopefully a few of you are clued up on how Nauticam names their flat ports. The N100 Flat Port 66 looks to be considerably longer than the N100 Falt Port 32 (as an example) - but where is the 66 or the 32 or for that matter the 74 or the 55 actually measured from? (I'm assuming that it is a measurement).

You need to delay the price increase until the 1st of October! My copper mine shares haven't reached the top yet.

Cheers! Will be interesting to see how I go! Hopefully I don't get too many garbage in...

Ah OK. My memory might be too fuzzy to remember... I'll blame all of those all-nighters on Tuesday nights at Cha Cha's nightclub in Hurghada back in the late 80's / early 90's😀

Interesting! Have you found any software that is better than Helicon?