CCRphoto

Many thanks - will take a look!

Another one in the over 50's club - still going!

Many thanks - that's a pretty comprehensive reply. In my case I will be sticking with stills, but my neck issues mean that trying to get eye to viewfinder isn't as easy as it should be so a monitor will be my workaround - it doesn't sound like it will overly constrain me then.

One other question about monitors - what are the disadvantages of using a monitor vs a viewfinder underwater? Obviously battery life is one, but are there any practical differences between using a monitor vs a viewfinder for composition, going through menus etc.?

Interesting! The wide lens in the setup is the Canon 10-22 - no idea how useful this lens is but I guess at its widest it is roughly equivalent to a 15mm Nikonos? I'm still learning how to read the Nauticam port charts but it looks like the 10-22 can be used with a 180mm dome which would be a little more travel friendly. The macro lens in the setup is a 100mm + appropriate port. What do I want to shoot? A bit of everything. Do they still make lenses for the Canon mount that the 7D uses + its sensor size? And are new lenses still being developed for it? Seems to be a lot of new lenses coming out of China these days!

I'm getting back into underwater photography after a 30 year break. Way back then I taught underwater photo on liveaboards in the Red Sea, on Aggressor Fleet boats in the Caribbean and for Jim & Cathy Church at Sunset House on Cayman. This will be my first time using digital cameras so it will be quite... different I expect. Locally there is a Nauticam 7D setup with 230mm acrylic dome port, macro port, strobes, lenses etc at what I consider to be a reasonable price. Are the latest cameras much much better than a 7D? If so in what areas? Will I find a 7D limiting?

How is the M1 Pro for photography in the 60 metre housing? (when shooting things at about 2-3 metres range without any accessory lenses). Reason for asking is am wondering whether it is going to be an improvement over the Hero13 for photogrammetry work?

Welcome from another Aussie!

Life in the Red Sea was a lot simpler back then - and probably a hell of a lot more enjoyable. "carve dive cylinders out of tree trunks" - only amateurs did that - us pro's would just bung a valve into the neck of a Roman amphora and go diving.

I think back to when I was guiding on liveaboards in the Red Sea in the late 80's early 90's and look at the liveaboards today and bet the punters these days don't realise how good they have it! For some reason we didn't bother about safety briefings about life jackets or life rafts etc back then...😄

Ordered from the U.S. - we had quite a lot of work going on at the time and so we had a freight consolidator/forwarder in Los Angeles that happened to be just around the corner from Blue Robotics, we had spare parts and addons for all sorts of exotic equipment from various manufacturers in the U.S. all being sent to the consolidator and every Friday in L.A. the consolidator would box up everything that they had received and send it to us, and we would receive it on the following Tuesday or Wednesday - it worked pretty well for us.

Yes - doing over 2 hours deco each day - day after day... sucks...

If you are in the UK then it is well worth talking to Easy Composites - their knowledge and customer service is absolutely top notch.

We coated it in an epoxy coating and it was incredibly durable - we beat the absolute crap out of the ROV's doing inspection work that would have had ROV lovers screaming - e.g. running a ROV at full speed down a partly flooded culvert so that it had enough speed to launch itself over the gravel bar part way through and keep going with the inspection - and then get dragged backwards by its tether back over the gravel bar to get it back out - and the foam was never dented - from memory it was a two part swimming pool epoxy that we coated the foam in - it was just what we had lying around.

In my previous life I have used the buoyancy foam from Blue Robotics when making ROV's neutral and it works quite well, but fishing floats will be a lot cheaper if you can get them! https://bluerobotics.com/product-category/watertight-enclosures/buoyancy/ Is there any real advantage to foam floats compared to using buoyancy arms?

I will see what I can find later tonight.

I came across their high-powered strobe late last night - it certainly looks very interesting and a real possibility for the sort of performance that I want.

Cheers Chris, that will make my life easier!

Ability to watch movies would be a plus when doing my archaeological dives - over 2 hours of deco!

OK it might be worth a try then. Hopefully 12degC water won't affect the battery life too much.

Unless there is one hidden somewhere on here already then I will create a list/table of strobes that are currently available. I will probably do it as an Excel spreadsheet seeing as I'm an Excel nerd and it will be easy to update. I've been out of the loop for a long time so please add to this list of manufacturers - - Inon - Supe/Fotocore - Sea&Sea - Retra - - - ...and please add to this list what you would like in the table - - flashes on full power - guide number - focusing light Y/N - TTL compatible - - -

OK Cheers! My only concern with the Weefine is battery life so I will do some more research on that.

Very nicely done!

BTW have any new monitors been released that aren't on the table? Based on the table specs I am considering either the Fotocore MR5.5 or the MR6. The main difference apart from the slight size difference is that the MR5.5 comes with a heap of buttons on the monitor - any opinions as to whether the buttons on the monitor are a help or just something extra to fail?

I bet - I might have to get you to give me a guided tour sometime!😄