CCRphoto

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?

Very nice!! We get a very similar species down here in winter and they make spectacular subjects!

Many many thanks for running all of those tests! That gives me an absolute ton of useful information to work with. It is obviously going to take some work to get things up to around 8 frames per second. I guess besides increasing the ISO or lowering strobe power to get the frame rate I need, the other answer would be to add more strobes😀 Or for really still invertebrate subjects use longer exposure times and video lights.

Not my footage so please don't critique, but really interesting - I have never seen or heard of Emperor Angelfish acting as cleaner fish! https://www.facebook.com/reel/1457512566216158

If you have time to test the Maxis at power level 2 that would be awesome too. If the Maxis can sustain high fps at power levels 2 and 2.5 then that will help me immensely.

Many thanks - that would be hugely helpful. Jellyfish are always interesting subjects - do you get big Lion's Mane Jellyfish up there?

One other question - how many frames per second do you think that the Maxis could sustain at power level 2.5?

Cheers - will do! I would have thought that they would have resolved the problem with newer cameras to avoid warranty claims and reputation damage but maybe not...

Consider me suitably warned!😀 I'm still researching tripods at the moment - not racing into a decision. I'm planning on using Helicon Focus for the software - is that one that you have used before?

I'm glad that Sony's model naming conventions are pretty logical to someone... The A7 V is a hybrid camera, but the A7R VI is a high end stills camera - surely it would make more sense to give the high end stills cameras their own number line like A3 VI instead of mixing them in with the A7 hybrids and hoping that everyone somehow figures out that an A7 without the R is a hybrid and with an R is a stills camera with nearly twice the MP? Gen Z must be totally confused as they usually have absolutely no knowledge of Roman numerals! At the moment I am waiting to be approved to join a A forum so as I can ask a couple of really indepth questions.

Their whole lineup is so all over the place that their cheapest 24MP camera is three times the price of a Z5ii - but it is designed for Pro sports photography. They have four less expensive full frame cameras - one of which is the A7V at 33MP, and the other three cheaper cameras are all 61MP cameras - there just seems to be no logical progression to their lineup at all!

The Nikon is certainly a bit cheaper, but not enough to rule out the Sony - especially with the $400 cashback and a few other bonuses. Dimensions - the Nikon is 134 x 100.5 x 72mm, the Sony is 130.3 x 96.4 x 72.3 - so sizewise they are much of a muchness. I agree that the A7V isn't a great comparison to the Z5ii - unfortunately it was best that I could find as Sony's current range doesn't seem to have any natural order or ascendancy - it just seems like a whole bunch of cameras that were designed were each designed by a separate committee - that never communicated with each other... but if you can know of a Sony model that is a better comparison I would be keen to know! The battery life is I think going to be important to me if I get right into the focus stacking - using the CIPA standard the Z5ii will run for 330/380 images, however the Sony will run for 630/750 images - which could be important as my favourite local shore dive is a 600 metre swim out to it - and I'm getting too old to swim out all that way, run just 5 or 6 focus stacks before running out of battery...