Klaus

Thanks for the positive comments! Regarding „the diving looks good“: The UW pics are of course „representative“ i.e. a „best of“ my shots. Fortunately my photography is limiting so the diving is indeed quite OK. I think of this as well worth my time BECAUSE I don‘t need to go half way around the planet to get there. However, I would not recommend traveling from very, very far just to dive in the Adriatic sea. A combined sightseeing, culture + diving trip can be a different story of course.

I could not agree more - while I wrote that my AF still „works“, it is definitely slower than without the extension. This is of course in part because the focus is just simply more difficult to nail, and that‘s no different in MF mode. It’s always a compromise, I guess, just some solutions are cheaper to try out than others. I bought the extension tubes BECAUSE they were so cheap, and I am happy to use them (only above water so far). It is important to know that their effect is stronger with WA lenses. If I zoom in to max. tele setting, then the final enlargement is smallest. As I zoom out to WA, I can get a much stronger enlargement but at an ever shorter working distance. This effect is quite dramatic in practice. There may be a „sweet spot“ of zoom setting and extension length for a given purpose, but you can only find out by trial and error I think.

null I’ve been hesitating for a while to post this trip here – UW-photography was not the prime focus here. But what the heck, it may be of interest to some. We had never done a liveaboard trip before and I thought that we should try something “easy” at first. The Vranjak is operating along the Dalamatian coast & archipelago in Croatia. There are very few liveaboards around there, we only met one other in the harbor once because of bad weather. So, wherever we were diving, we were the only boat on the site. That said, Croatia is not within the coral triangle, neither is it known for aggregations of Manta rays. But from southern Germany, the Cech republic and in particular Austria and Slovenia it is very easy to reach by car – and that may be a good compromise. Why is it an easy start for the boating experience? First of all, the sea is calm in between the numerous Croatian islands. Furthermore, the boat will stop in a harbor every evening, so the night is especially calm and you can also go for a stroll in the lovely villages or jump in for a swim close by. Here’s a view of Sali on the island of Dugi Otok: This was a diving trip but also sightseeing, and there were couples aboard with only one of them scuba-diving. We all really enjoyed the starry sky while anchoring for the night at a remote Kornati island. The boat is nice and we were comfortable but of course I have no point of comparison. The dive operation was fairly “hands off” – we had a briefing for each site, some security instructions on the first day but other than that were left to do as we wished. Fine for us (we dive together in the quarries at home as well) but for beginning divers I recommend inquiring about guides before reserving. The boat is often booked in full charter by travel agencies, which then sell the spaces on their trip. Some bring their own dive masters along, hence this can be different on a different trip (trips start on a Saturday and last for a week). It is by no means a photo-centric endeavor: No dedicated camera room, not a whole lot of extra space on the dive-deck and no rinse bucket for the rig – I could hose it down with freshwater, though. That said, I knew this before reserving, the crew was familiar with handing down a camera and they certainly made every effort to help me along. I have a M43 camera in a small polycarbonate housing, thus I do not need all that much space and it worked out well for me. So, what’s there to see? Croatia has a good number of wrecks and we dove the “Ledenik”, a former swimming fish-factory that capsized in 2008 on a calm day with no waves. Sometimes strange things happen in between these islands, and this incident even occurred magically to rest the boat at a perfect diving depth of max. some 20-ish meters deep. You can find different versions of the story on the web and I don’t know which one of those ended up in the insurance files… We were a bit limited by the weather and the captain could not always reach the best sites on the tour (Kornati islands tour). The zone between 10 and 30 meters depth is essentially sterile and the shallow areas are a mix of seagrass and rocks with some invertebrates but really not a lot of fish. null Deeper down (i.e. below 30 or even 35 meters), when we could get to the sites with vertical cliffs, life starts to re-appear: Gorgonians, sponges, and even some fish. The trip pairs quite nicely with an additional week on the Dalmatian coast, if you can spare the time. The Vranjak operates out of a smaller harbor right next to the ancient City of Zadar and if you hop a bit further south you can reach destinations like Trogir or Split. Here’s the “signature view” of downtown Zadar, at the site of where the forum was during the Roman period. Once again, this trip was not only about diving and rightfully so – I would not qualify the dives as “spectacular”, but not boring either. I suppose others on this forum can say a bit more about diving in Croatia. We thoroughly enjoyed the trip and I did get to take a few shots, both above and below the waterline. However, if you are looking for a die-hard photography trip, then this may not be a good fit for you.

I don’t know about Sony, but I have a set of extension rings for M43 (« automatic version ») and these simply relay the electronic contacts between camera and lens. Autofocus works with these in place, this is for contrast detection in my camera. I am not sure if phase detection would be affected, the lens of course behaves differently with the rings in place. Stabilization is another thing that will be affected. Maybe these are the right ones: https://www.ebay.de/itm/315234634623?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=707-127634-2357-0&ssspo=n6E8rvs7Qs-&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=mFg8uGCCQOC&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY It is definitely a compromise, but these rings can be found for dirt cheap as no-name products online (at least for M43). If it does work, then it’s a lot more affordable than a Zeiss lens. As the saying goes: Zeiss is nice but twice the price…

How about turning that 16-50 into a macro with a good old-fashioned extension ring? Should be cheap enough to try for video in dry-land and see whether it meets the requirements.

Don’t let the better be the enemy of the good enough, right? I have low needs for the moment and the AA are just perfect, make life easy. Yet I think Dave is right, Lithium Ion is the future. They are probably not necessary for some (many?) applications, but essential for others. The normal lamps (I.e. flashlights) are all 18650 or higher already. So it’ll be standardized and simple as well once everything is 18650. But flying could remain an issue. Who knows…

From a real amateur perspective: (Land)Photography has been my hobby since teenage days in the mid-80s , so naturally when I took up diving 5 years ago I wanted to bring some pictures back up. I started out with a cheap go-pro knock-off and thought I’d be shooting stills. But then I discovered that I was so occupied with gear &staying at a constant (well…) depth that I would never press the button at the right moment. So I started shooting constantly I.e. recording video. Obviously this was no good for anything other than extracting a mediocre still. Since then I have changed the setup to a small mirrorless and while it certainly can record movies, I have almost never tried that again. Good video footage requires REALLY good diving skills I think, something that only (semi)-pros or early-retired self-made millionaires can reach in a reasonably short time. But is there a market for the clips? If you live off your diving+ filming, you need to sell the clips. There is an established market like gallery prints or magazines for stills, nonetheless few diving photographers are able to live from just that. But video? I feel that there is a huge gaping hole between instagram and the BBC productions. And that makes it very difficult to grow past waving a GoPro around for souvenirs. I know that land-based videographers can make very good money by creating “reels” for influencers, but who will pay for the mating squids? In the absolutely stunning freediving iceberg movie by Alex B mentioned before, Anna being a professional perhaps this could be considered like filming an influencer. But I am not sure whether this is a for-profit production (they certainly deserve it) or barely recovering the costs of making it.

Is there really no one who tried Cabo Verde for diving yet? Asking this to bump up the topic just once. I guess I’ll apply for a Waterpixel travel grant to fill the void…

You can‘t be prepared for everything that could possibly swim by, unless your buddy carries a separate macro set-up while you shoot wide-angle. If you find a buddy like that, let me know. For macro shots, I use the kit-zoom with a wet diopter on a flip adapter. This is easy to switch, definitely my most flexible option and allows for shots at a larger field of view than the dedicated macro lenses. It is a compromise for quality at both scales - kit+ diopter is not as good as dedicated macro and kit + distance is not as good as an ultra-WA setup. But I don’t sell my photographs and „normal“ people care more for the subject and composition than the slight lack of contrast and sharpness. When I‘m down with the fish-eye I like to shoot CFWA but that close-up shot of rhinophores with buttery background-bokeh won’t happen. Once you‘re under water, you make the best of it with what you have. And on my last dive, I accidentally switched the file format to small&low res, no raw, so ended up with some nice compositions at 1280x720 with heavy smoothing. 😞 There‘s more than just a lens to ruin your day. I tell myself that a missed shot because of the wrong lens is rather a sign of better luck than anticipated for that dive. But I would voice some bad words if it wasn‘t for the regulator…

We are contemplating a vacation in the Capeverdian Islands (Cabo verde) next year. There is not all that much (useful) information about diving there on the net, so I thought I‘d ask around here. Does anyone have experience to share? Is the diving good, if so at which season, can you recommend a dive center, a hotel or anything else we might want to know? Or maybe you found a good website to consider for planning the trip? We are aware that the Atlantic is not the Red Sea, we visited the Azores and Madeira before & liked this a lot because of the combination of diving and above-water activities like hiking. It seems that Cabo Verde might be a logical „next step“, but maybe that is just our imagination.

The video is just plain amazing, no matter how many likes it got. 30 min with a 5 mm suit , wow. If one day we need to show movies to kids and explain what icebergs once were, I hope it will be this clip. But above all I hope things won‘t get that far, so you can continue to amaze us.

There are three flash modes (perhaps even more on the em-1) that you can set in the camera - manual, ttl and the proprietary rc-mode. Is the problem always there, or does it occur only with one of the settings? I vaguely remember reading that in rc-mode the number of pre-flashes is more than one and maybe even variable(not sure about the last). I always use manual mode @ 1/64 intensity on my epl-5 and have not had any issues with Sea&sea strobes (older than ys-2). So that will be very different on your setup - but maybe it can help to find the source of the problem?

I „only“ have the bare UWL-100 without a dome, so that is relatively compact and weight only about 700 g I think. Still, it‘s enough for not taking it off during the dive at all - so I „store“ it on the port - period. I also have a close-up lens for macro and that goes on a sort of flip-adapter, but mine will definitely not work for then wide-angle lens. As I said, it‘s a dedicated wide-angle setup once you put it on. Quite a good one, but a bit unwieldy. Just try it out and see how you like it. There is enough time for looking at used ones after your trip and indulge in GAS before the next one. I think that is what almost everyone does on this forum…

This was maybe a bit terse - your wfl-01 wetlens will certainly serve you well under water and should give you about 120 degrees field of view, which is good. You can also zoom in, which can be quite helpful. But I find shooting with the dome +fisheye is a much smaller and more maneuverable, in short enjoyable, setup under water than adding the uwl-100 to my flat port. Taking the wetlens off during the dive, storing it and putting it back on later is quite difficult. So, apart from the zoom function you will be diving with a dedicated wide-angle setup - and the fisheye lets you get even closer to things, unless they swim away (I‘ve mastered sponges and starfish so far). The nice thing about the fisheye lens is that you can also use it topside between the dives - the wfl-01 is definitely not something you will want to take on a hike. Thus, I recommend setting up a regular search here, on eBay, your favorite classifieds … and when a nice pen-housing size dome shows up (Inon also made one some time ago) try to get it for a good price. Then, the manual fisheyes can usually be found very cheap while a nice & affordable Lumix 8mm may require a bit more patience.

Hi Sacha, I recently sourced a used fisheye-dome for my epl-5 setup in an Olympus housing. AFAIK these were made by AOI and the ports are identical. If you can find a used AOI or Zen or Athena dome for a good price, I recommend getting that plus a used Lumix 8mm fisheye for wide-angle shots. You can also start off with the manual Samyang/Rokinon/Walimex 7.5 mm fisheye; it’s a compromise but I got mine for 60 € second hand. I have now taken my dome (Athena) on a trip and this is very compact and light-weight. I have an Inon UWL-100 wetlens as well (without the class dome) but this will likely stay at home next time as it’s feels heavier than the dome+lens I have.

A very entertaining thread indeed. Maybe there should be a fishing vest in the waterpixels store? The logo should be on the INside then …

My gut feeling is that one big driver behind the computational development was / is to make pics possible WITHOUT all the big and dedicated lenses and so on. To some extent the goal is replacing optics with software as much as possible. Taking this technology into mirrorless cameras is maybe counter-intuitive for these companies? And why bother, given the market size…

So Chip… now you have to finish the wine bottle every time?

Wow, Ben, this is all so thought- and beautiful… did you use chatGPT for this? Just kidding, but that’s what my kids would have done. I use my phone for messaging, occasionally to pay for parking. But I HATE taking pictures with it. Just doesn’t get me in the mood. However, some kid waving around his IPhone will likely make at least as good a shot than me with a real cam. Maybe smartphones will become the entry-drug into uw imaging, then eventually be replaced by a real camera in the hands? Alas, cameras are almost never made specifically for uw use, they are usually adapted. So, once they’re gone above, they’ll be gone beneath the waves soon after. But for the moment, we can still discuss and vividly disagree about (dis)advantages of some really heavy screw-on optical addition to our gear collection. And worry about the money it costs and WAF required. It doesn’t get any better, no? 😉

The iPhone sales numbers are almost scary, but Apple does not only develop the camera of that device - it is also a quite powerful computer with everything that goes along with this, in particular software development I suppose. Still, this is a huge advance in numbers over interchangeable lens cameras. I would not have expected this to be so large. I wonder if all the software-magic for the image processing can one day be applied to (raw) images taken with other cameras afterwards? In essence will Apple transfer this all to a photoshop equivalent? Perhaps they already did and I just don’t know about it…

Really nice video, thanks!

Did you need to polish the dome after this?

1) So how does it work under water with an MF lens? I think reasonably well. The biggest limitation is probably that the aperture cannot be changed during the dive. I have not taken it out for a lot of dives yet and will start with a picture from a „natural pool“. No tiles for meauring distortion, but a straight out-of-camera jpg, uncropped, with the front oft hat step quite close to the dome. Here I also used a single YS-27DX strobe (with diffusor) for extra light. null The following shot was taken freedivig with the rig (no strobe). The rock wall was reasonably parallel to the sensor plane: null I have no comparison to the Lumix or Olympus 8mm fisheyes, but to me this seems to limited more by visibility than the lens not „getting along“ with the dome. null Getting closer, the rock wall is imaged with at least decent quality. Newer bodies may give better rendering, crystal-clear water probably would have helped as well. But the viz not certainly not bad here. null This is an example of a (moderately) close focus wide angle shot. It is possible to get sharp images from about 15-20 cm to infinity. null And here is a split shot – certainly the waterline is not flat, but in this particular shot one could consider it a feature rather than a bug. It is possible to get the waterline crisp in focus, but then the topside background (Flores Island, Azores) becomes slightly blurred (aperture set at the click between f8 and f11). So, what about AF vs. MF? It’s still early, but I think I can get by with only two focus setting – my „home“ one (20 cm – infinity) and a „close focus“ one with ¾ of a turn on the zoom dial (I placed another mark there). This will then have everything in focus from about 5 cm away from the dome to about 1,5 m. Switching is possible but not fast – cleary, AF is better. I might in the future get a lumix 8mm lens, but maybe more for setting the aperture than the focus. That said, here’s a picture where MF is clearly too slow: null (1x YS-27DX strobe) Focus is perfect on the eyes … of the diver below the triggerfish (Mrs. K.). I am not sure the AF on my E-PL5 would have mastered this one either, though. The triggerfish was attacking the dome glass. IQ is good enough to identify the dive computer model on my wife’s wrist. Remember those? Here is the „making of“ that particular shot, just before the „Ouch!“: null The rig is quite compact, in particular in combination with the YS-27DX strobe. This, btw, is comparable in intensity and recycle time to the YS110a, but a bit more compact. The coverage of both (with difusers) is also comparable but that is based gut-feeling rather than testing. Finally, a shot from our local quarry (Echinger Weiher). The Samyang/Rokinon lens has received very favorable comments about its resistance to flares in top-side tests. I am not sure if this shot would be prone to flares with the Lumix fisheye, but it definitely was not a problem with my copy of the Rokinon lens. null (1x YS-27DX [left] and 1x YS-110a [right] for the foreground) Conclusion: Taking pictures with a fisheye is a lot of fun and not comparable in any was to what I have been using before (14-42 kit zoom with Inon UWL-H100 w/o dome, i.e. ~100° field of view). This was definitely worth the rather moderate investment. So far, the MF has not been a big issue – fish-eye lenses are very forgiving on that. That said, fast moving fish swimming up to the dome are not ideal. I may invest another ~300 € on a used Lumix 8mm fish-eye in the future, but dialing in a different aperture and getting the live view with the OPEN aperture are probably more important reasons for the upgrade than the AF.

1) Setting up the lens I could acquire the Athena fisheye dome port, desigend for the Lumix 8mm fisheye, in the classifieds locally. This port has a enough distance to the port hole on my housing (PT-EP05L) that it does not require any modification to the silly target light button. The other available fisheye ports for the Pen-housings (Zen and AOI) come a bit closer. There’s nothing specific about attaching the Samyang/Rokinon lens to the body, I am describing what I did to use MF in the housing (PT-EP05L) via the zoom dial. I acquired a Olympus zoom gear (seoncd hand) for the 14-42 mm kit-lens. A friend helped to machine this out and widen it such that it can be slipped onto the lens from the mount side. A small step machined in the rubber prevents the aperture-ring from turning at the same time as focus, but when I pinch the rubber at the gear level, I can change the aperture. This piece is not easy to modify without a machine shop (and even with), 3D-printing this part is likely another option. The lens is also usable with fix-focus setting and no focus control at all (see below). null (left side: widened piece, right side normal Olympus zoom gear) For setting the aperture, I painted a small white dot on side of the aperture ring, this can be seen from the mount together with the original red marking and the F-stop can thus be verified. My copy of the lens has its „sweet spot“ at f8 – f11, which is quite useful under water I think. The F-stop needs to be set before the lens is attached to the body and cannot be changed during the dive. null (towards the top – here, the white dot ist just a bit off to the right side from the red dot, this corresponds to the intermediate click between f8 and f11.) For the focus, I start with a „fix-focus“ setting that will result in a depth of field from about 20 cm (from the dome) to infinity with the aperture setting shown. That corresponds to this distance setting on my copy of the lens: null I placed some marks on the lens barrel to get this dialed in quickly. With the camera set up like this, I place it in the housing. I painted a white mark on the zoom ring, which I turn straight up before placing the camera inside. That way I can quickly return to my „home“ setting during the dive. nullnull In addition, the marks placed on the lens barrel can also be seen through the port just in case. I covered the white labels on the front of the lens with electrical tape to prevent reflections. null So how does this all work now? First a dry image: null (uncropped frame) There is a small amount of vignetting in my „home“ position. This lens is not perfectly centered; I am using an E-PL5 in the housing designed for the E-PL3 (very minor modifications necessary), but the centering is not better when I use an E-PL3 body (PM me if you want to see that). Once cropped, the image ends up at about 14 Mpix rather than 16 Mpix, the field of view is corresondingly reduced. By far the worst consequence, however, is that I cannot discuss corner sharpness in this forum ☹ !!! One way of dealing with the vignetting is to pretend shooting in full frame i.e. setting the camera to 3:2 ratio. The vignetting is almost completely gone then (will only affect the jpg, raw stays full sensor). When the lens is focused even closer, the front element moves out and this also reduces vignetting in close focus wide angle images. All things considered, vignetting is not a big problem and the other Pen fisheye domes (Zen, AOI) should have less vignetting. nullnull (vignetting cropped in 4:3 ratio) OK, so how much did it cost me? All prices second hand, including shipping. Athena dome: 130 € (really good deal I think, looks like new) Rokinon lens: 70 € Zoom gear: 23 € + 2 beers for widening it up In sum 225 € (not counting the housing and camera, these can be sourced for about the same price together) As you can tell, I don't know how to insert the images at their right place, but I hope it's useful as is.

I want to share information and images on using a MF fisheye lens for the M43 system through this post. This concerns the Samyang / Rokinon / Bower 7.5 mm f 3.5 lens – it is sold under these three brand names (at least) but as far as I know all of them are identical; mine happens to be a Rokinon. It is very slightly shorter than the Lumix 8mm fisheye and can focus close (9 cm from the sensor plane). While that should make it suitable behind a small dome, I could not find any details on its use under water on the internet. When I had a chance to source a fish-eye dome (Athena ~ 10 cm) for a good price, I decided to simply give it a try. I am using it in combination with the Olympus E-PL5 – certainly not a new camera, but the raw images might live up to the ones from the more recent E-PL10; both have a 16 Mpix sensor, though probably not the identical one. I did the „half-filled box“ already in a previous post on this forum when I found the Geomar-publication on this – you can look it up if you are interested; @DreiFish has meanwhile developed the approach to perfection, mine was very simple. The conclusion was that the dome should be a bit further out, but that is not desirable because of vignetting. I am now posting real-life pictures so that anyone interested can judge for him/herself. I have never used the Lumix or Olympus M43 fish-eye lenses, so I cannot say anything about relative strengths. There will be two posts follwoing this one: One for the technical setup and one for the first UW images I took with the lens. Maybe this can be helpful for someone.