makar0n

On 3/6/2026 at 12:25 PM, bghazzal said:

On a related note, this post showed up on my social media feed today:

"Has anyone else had problems bringing camera gear into Bali? I’ve done it dozens of times but last night they pulled me aside jn customs and told me I was only allowed one personal camera below $500! They eventually let me go, but I’m still unclear on the rules, on what was going on, or what to do next time."

Let's hope this is a one-off attempt by a greedy agent and doesn't become a pattern in Indonesia as well...

I've been coming to Bali (Amed) for years now, (now more or less living here), never had an issue. Similarly never heard about anybody else experiencing this, including folks coming over with fancy stuff like RED cameras.

Looks like another firmware update has just been released for OM1 Mk1:

[ OM-1 ]

Firmware 1.8 for OM1 just hit the deck:

[ OM-1 ]

On 9/12/2025 at 11:19 AM, Chris Ross said:

It comes up after you click around a few different links, not straight away, I just tried again and it seems to come up when I click on the generic excitation filters box. this is what I get:

Cloudflare thing is nothing unusual, a lot of websites use that to filter out bot traffic. Sometimes this triggers when you click too fast ;]

Windows dunno, I am not using Defender (SEP here), hence never seen it.

As for the filters +1 for what @bvanant said - I have tried multiple "cheap" ones, complete waste of money. But the ones from firedivegear deliver. And get TIffen 12 or BW (if only I could remember the number) filters for camera - one is more greenish one does excite more orange, like stone fish. Blue light matters as well. It is all about the wavelength baby.

I can recommend checking out Horst Grunz website:

https://www.uni-due.de/members/grunz/

Also attached is a PDF of various filters testing he did.

FluoreszenzFilterFinalUSApdf.pdf

9 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

Thanks, my OM-1 weighed in at 610 gr with battery and two cards, so seems my scale is close to right and agrees with data. It does prove one thing though that a m43 system is significantly lighter than even Sony full frame - the OM-1 system is only 60% of the weight of the Sony. So the camera size and weight doesn't have as much influence as you might think, the weight of lenses and accessories does add up.

Probably the main thing that has cured me from the wretched disease - once I add strobes, lights, all small accessories, laptop and other crap that cannot be carried in the hold, then I am on 12-14kg already. With the "generous" 7kg hand baggage allowances airlines have nowadays that already means one sneaky check in with a giant puppy eyes and a smile as wide as a river. Adding another 4-5kg (or more, since ofc you need WACP and not WWL then) is just nope.

Handling is no better - as it is heavier and bigger size wise, getting on/off a rib with swell, or diving in a current and dragging extra cylinders is just no way Jose.

And another important aspect - my skills are nowhere near maxing out m4/3 capabilities. Getting FF at 3x the price (say for a1) would make barely any difference, kinda 80% of the cost for 20% of the quality situation...except here it would be more like few % max unless I would start suffering from a pixel peeping fetish. Better spend the funds on actual diving and practice using what I have. Sure for some real pro's out there this might make sense from a commercial point of view, but how many of those are out there? And they can usually take a better picture with a some basic compact (as in old, bottom of the barell etc, there are some real good choices out there too!) than most of us with a FF I suspect 🤣

So I am keeping my fingers crossed for OM System ;)

6 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

Are these Nauticam housings? I just stuck my Nauticam OM-1 housing on the scale with 60mm macro port and 45° viewfinder installed and it's weight was 2.9 kg. No camera inside. Similarly my OM-1 bare camera with battery is 610 gr on my scale. Are those weights for bare camera or do they include lenses etc?

So "Housing" column refers to not just the body housing but also all "general" ports and stuff one would need to carry i.e. say macro/standard/WA/fisheye. "Camera" would be body + lenses corresponding to the ports choices in the "Housing" column. And "System" would be a sum of both.

Basically my idea was to figure out how much crap I would need to carry travel wise and how does it compare to others. Strobes/arms/focus lights etc are excluded, and so are gadgets like viewfinders.

There is also a separate table listing "System" values for each config.

Each tab (Macro/Standard/WA/Fisheye) has a setup listed for each camera so lens, port, extensions, diopters and whatcha not for each config (so you can also edit and have the main table update on its own, well unless you insert things possibly, formulas are rather simple). Nauticam part numbers are also there. Of course this was based on my assumptions, there could be a better lens choices for some etc. And no wet lenses are included, so a bit outdated to some degree.

All data refers to Nauticam, since they carried all the housings. Note that these are based on whatever I could find on the internet back then, did not have every part to actually weight it (Ha maybe this is an idea - all Waterpixies could contribute and we would have a nice shared Excel with all possible configs and actual weights...). For bodies I suspect some are w/battery, some without. OM1 seems without at 520g, though official weight is 599g with.

Planned to add Aquatica but never really properly started on this one.

Do not be afraid to open the Excel 😂

On 9/8/2025 at 12:41 AM, d2b said:

It would be more work, but also more interesting, to put together a size+weight comparison of housing+body+lens+port.

There you go. Did that a while ago, before I was permanently cured from the Full Frame disease. All will depend on the lens/port mostly, albeit housings tend to be heavier as well.

Example below, full spreadsheet attached. A few basic formulas so you can update data on Macro, Standard, WA and Fisheye tabs and the main tables will magically auto update. It has pricing tables too, though numbers there are rather few years out of date.

weight.xlsx

On 9/4/2025 at 1:04 PM, CaolIla said:

Thank you @makar0n for the transaction and fast delivery. of the FS: Inon LF1300-EWf Focus Light 1300 lumen + Mounts - BRAND NEW - Classifieds - WaterPixels

All fine

Thank YOU! It was a pleasure - glad that the light found a good home :)

3 hours ago, CaolIla said:

Thank you @makar0n I got the pakage all is ok.

Perfect, enjoy the light :)

And of course jam is always first, then the cream. Don't you dare to do it any different.

Aaaand sold to the gentleman wearing a beret and holding a baguette 😉

1 hour ago, TimG said:

Yes, but what has that got to do with it, eh?

Have a great time! Where in Indo are you going? If it's anywhere near Triton Bay, could you look out for my torch. You know what it looks like.

Aaach yes, it is never enough xD

Thanks! Heading to Amed I am afraid...a little bit far, unless perhaps I manage catch some currents going in that direction. Might take a few days though.

1 hour ago, TimG said:

Wise. I’ve got no diving planned till next year. Dammit.

Didn't you just come back from a trip?

Don't complain, last time I went diving was in November... I am not getting out of the water, even If i have to sleep there, once I get to Indonesia next month ;)

2 minutes ago, CaolIla said:

I'll take not the risk... we make the deal ;)

Deal it is then :)

Just now, CaolIla said:

I'll make a MP this evening for the details

Perfect, I will await the message.

15 hours ago, CaolIla said:

Hi @makar0n

For 250€ (inc shipping) I'll take it

This is an discontinued model (I don't know why) but it will probably fit in the modification of my setup. I want to try no idea if I'll use it.. but I want to test.

Make it 255 and we have a deal ;) That is If you are happy with the bpost shipping to a locker (pickup point). Double checked again and there is tracking indeed. The insurance is actually extra but I think I can live with another few Euros out of my pocket.

Otherwise I guess I just need to wait for @TimG to lose his one again... shouldn't take long 😂

Spoke to my Belgian mate as well, he runs a retro camera restoration/repair business (because why use a modern camera when you can have a 100 years old one instead), and he has advised me against using Mondial for anything even remotely valuable. So that one is out.

3 hours ago, TimG said:

Darn, I bought the same one only a few weeks ago having lost mine in Raja.

Almost... if only I was not so lazy and it didn't take me months to finally decide what to do about it. Guess having to recently book 3x 23kg bags has helped me to make up my mind xD

1 hour ago, CaolIla said:

@makar0n
What the price shipped in France ;)

UPS, small package, 15,46 + 10,00 for insurance.

Since you are in ze France, I could try to use Mondial Relay - seems about 9.25 (w/ Insurance) if locker, or 17.25 if house. Dunno about it though, seems their delivery "quality" varies. But then most of the couriers nowadays are taking a p**s anyways.

EDIT:

Seems bpost somehow has different rules for ze France. Instead of the usual "let me quote you 3x anybody else's price and force to bring the package to the post office for us to look it and over and complain otherwise you cannot get the insurance online because Belgium", they actually seem ok to France:

-locker + insurance 11,75 (possibly no tracking, unsure)

-house + insurance + tracking 19.90

Well sadly my focus light is for sale....and it has not even been used once. As I am now going into different diving paths, camera often does not come with me (yes I know, oh horror), plus when traveling I am already at 60kg plus of dive gear...hence diving without focus light at all.

Bought in 2022 from uwcamerastore.com/onderwaterhuis.nl, invoice is available on demand. Neither light, nor any other parts were even in the water, just sat there in the box gathering dust. Light has a "Shutter-linked AUTO OFF" feature - switches momentarily off when it detects strobe flash.

Bundle consist of:

-Inon LF1300 LED Focus light + accessories - grease, dome, red filter and hand strap

-Inon Light Holder LF for Tripod - light mount, can be used directly on tripods or in the combination with the below for standard ball mounts

-Inon Z Adapter MV 1/4-20 UNC - can be used with the above to mount the light on standard ball mounts (i.e. clamp style)

-3 Panasonic 2700mah 3HGAE/BF1 batteries

Ideal price would be around 250 Euro + shipping but this certainly can be negotiable.

Light is currently in Belgium (Brussels), pickup is welcome if you are around, otherwise shipping via UPS (Belgian Post is a complete nightmare). I can also bring it to Indonesia (Amed) for example, if you happen to be there - after 17th of September though.

Payment via PayPal "as friends" ideally ("normal" is also possible for well established members as long as they cover the fees), or a bank transfer. No, I do not accept Apple giftcards, Western Union or whatever the latest scams use.

DAN.

On 7/13/2025 at 12:25 AM, Kristin said:

I'm brand new to YT and just looked at a video I put up there. When I view it on YT, it's crappy. When I view the file on my laptop, it looks fine. Can anyone tell me what I've done wrong? I went to YT because I just wanted an easy place to pop videos to share with friends/family, but I'd like them to look good! Thanks
https://youtu.be/hyr6ihGUlJs

All those streaming companies cut their costs by lowering quality and aggressive lossy compression - bandwidth costs money, less you download the more profit to them. Reason I do not bother with any movie streaming services (apart from the fact that you also then own nothing) - if a movie on such takes 20GB, meanwhile the same movie, in the same resolution but on Blu-Ray, takes 50GB, then something is amiss. And it's quality.

Depending on the original upload you can set any resolution you want - i.e. your video only goes to 1080p, but for other ones, like one about my favorite Zeus fishie by @Davide DB, 4K.

If you do not see the "Settings" option, install "Enhancer for YouTube" plugin. And naturally use Firefox ;)

Enhancer for YouTube™ – Get this...

Speaking of the "mark read" thingie:
Since a few days, the main forum page does not somehow seem to register read or not, i.e.
This is how "General" looks (as an example):

Meanwhile once I open it, I can see topics I have not read (bold) and ones I did (not so bold)



It feels like by default, the latest topic is always in bold on the main page, regardless read or not (or whether it had new replies since)

1 minute ago, CaolIla said:

just ordered 32 Eneloop pro on Amazon 4€20 / piece

In line with my other (bad) joke:

How to say you are using Retra strobes without saying it 😂

On 7/8/2025 at 5:29 PM, Muellema said:

May be I bought fake ones, but anyway the behaviour of the Pros especially during charging where very strange compared to the white ones used the same charger. Some took a very, very long time (10h) to charge some got very hot. Tried to analyze but no clue what happen as they did`nt show the same behaviour at any times.

About the same experience, batteries are rather definitely originals. Maybe not 10h, but some visibly do take way longer than others. Worse, I have noticed a funny behavior of the strobe on some rare occasions - sometimes it flashed a bit "less" or took longer to be ready than the other. The only other time I've seen such behavior was when I've accidentally mixed some old and new Eneloops, i.e. what I call, batteries were "uneven".

Everything was fine at the beginning but the older Pro's got, the more visible the charging issue became.

I do not think there is anything inherently wrong with Pro's - in my opinion these are just designed for a different purpose really - heavy usage during a short period of time, i.e. few hundred charges during a 1-1.5 years max. Meanwhile I suspect, at least based on my example, these would get maybe few tens of charges during a year, and be used for way longer, where they start to degrade much more than non-Pro ones.

Either way, I am going back to normal Eneloops, especially after reading @bvanant actual testing experience. In fact just had BK-3MCDE/8HH pack delivered ;)

15 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

The biggest problem is there are so many junk enclosures out there. I did find this active cooled one which claims to be very quiet:

Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD...

None of the specs though mention anything about DRAM or SLC- cache?

I usually buy Samsung storage for my SSDs, was supposed to be the "best" a few years back but haven't researched recently. My internal HDD on my desktop tower is a Samsung 4TB SSD 2.5"form factor, but I'm still using a spinning backup drive in an external enclosure. I'm thinking about what I'll update it with down the track??

But back to the OP, any SSD with a 200MB/sec card and good reader will eat a system using a spinning HDD plugged into a laptop I would think.

As @Yorkie88 has noted, DRAM/SLC-Cache refers to the actual NVMe drive, not the enclosure.

DRAM cache, to quote WD paper "(...) dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) was routinely included as a cache for SSDs and to improve drive performance. The DRAM served as cache for writing data to the drive, and for storing the mapping tables that keep record of the location of the data on the SSD to allow access to the data."

Kind of a super fast memory that proves very helpful when reading/writing to the drive, especially when dealing with lots of smaller files (i.e. "random"), by often caching the frequently accessed data. Nowadays, there is also another tech emerging, often replacing DRAM, called HMB, which uses host computer RAM memory instead of a built-in one.

Mechanical HDD's include similar caching too, but usually much smaller, say 64-512 MB.

As for SLC cache - SSD/NVMe drives use NAND memory to actually store the data. There are currently 4 major types, as below:

SLC being the fastest and having most endurance (i.e. how much data you can write to it before it starts to degrade), but also limited by capacity (i.e. requiring more cells for the same capacity of the drive), hence ending up being the most expensive. Some early SSDs used that, but its pretty non-existent in consumer space nowadays, with all companies moving first to MLC, and now to TLC - slower, reliable enough, and most importantly cheaper.

SLC (or pseudo SLC) cache helps to mitigate the fact that drives use slower TLC based NAND memory, one that would not allow for example for writes at 5000 MB/s. In other words, when you are writing to an NVMe drive, you are actually writing to a very fast SLC cache (provided one exists), and that cache in turn then "distributes" it to a much slower TLC NAND that the NVMe drive is using to store data. Larger the cache, the better, as this means you can write much larger data sizes without losing performance due to writing directly to the TLC NAND.

There is an interesting graph in TechPowerUp review of Samsung 990 Pro, which supposedly comes with 226GB of pseudo-SLC cache, that illustrates this:

TechPowerUp - Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB Review

Tester attempted to fill the drive completely (in one go, i.e. 2TB being written in one operation), note how around 190-200 GB, speeds dropped drastically from just under 5000 MB/s to "just" 1400 MB/s. Reason? The fast SLC cache was filled (and because the write was ongoing and more data coming, it could not "distribute" the data to TLC fast enough to make itself free/available again) and now the data is being written directly to the slower TLC NAND. Hence the bigger SLC cache the better, though of course one in here would be more than enough moving few tens of GB of pictures for example.

Nowadays, price difference between DRAM/HMB/SLC-cache-less drives and those that have these is not that big, hence frankly I would not bother with those, unless really on the budget.

Good choices are generally (a few major brands, there is of course way more):

Samsung 990 Pro

TeamGroup MP44

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus

Seagate Firecuda 530R

WD Black SN850X

I would not bother with PCIe 5.0 drives, these are an overkill even for a desktop PCs, not to mention external storage, where you would not be even able to get PCIe 5.0 speeds due to USB/Thunderbolt limitations. PCIe 4.0 is more than enough.

There is a very good database at TechPowerUp, with detailed specs, and often accompanying reviews, including performance in various workflows (photos included)

SSD Specs Database - TechPowerUp

As for enclosures - yeah, LOTS of garbage out there - plastic, crappy controllers, poor thermal pads, barely any contact area. I generally stick to the below:

Sabrent

SilverStone

Icy Dock (also known as Raidsonic)

Akasa

Lindy

Speaking of SilverStone, I had a further look at their latest 40Gbps USB4 offering, MS12-40, and it is actually enclosure with an active cooling aka fan. Seems they have added it. Quite pricey though, probably due to being USB4.

Budget wise Sabrent has quite a good choice (EC-NVME), and to be honest 10Gbps is often more than enough - that will translate to theoretical 1250MB/s (around 1000MB/s in real life), and will do for a normal photo workflow. There are also 20Gbps enclosures out there (like the original MS12), if you need something faster but not yet USB4 speeds. Note that the "amazing" MacBooks will not support that - speed will drop to 10Gbps. These do only 10 or 40. If using a PC these are fine, provided your USB-C port is 3.2 Gen 2x2 or USB4.

Now I will stop boring everybody and go dream about some nudis. Or a pile of burning Macbooks ;)

And since I cannot resist (yes, yes, I am a horrible human being) :

7 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

(...) I've always used external enclosures, preferably with fan cooling and they are generally reliable.

How to say "I'am living in Australia" without actually saying it 😂

Now (bad) jokes aside, most of NVMe enclosures rely on passive cooling, i.e. enclosure acting as a heatsink. As long as it's semi decent (aluminum and not too much plastic, good thermal pad and large contact area), this is usually enough for a normal usage. Might of course wary in very hot climates, but again, most NVMe drives are rated up to 70 degrees before they start to throttle.

There are very few passive cooling enclosures that are really designed well enough to handle full on, constant maximum use of the NVMe drive. But then again, such usage is rather extreme, and is not going to happen by just copying or editing a few pictures.

Example would be SilverStone MS12/MS12-40G.

Enclosures with active cooling aka fan, can be a better choice in some cases, as active cooling will always be superior, but come at the cost of being quite bulkier, and possibly nosier (small fan).

Example would be Icy Box IB-1922MF-C32.

Much more important performance wise is not to go for bottom of the barrel DRAM/SLC-cache-less NVMe drives - that will hurt you much more when writing a lot.

26 minutes ago, TimG said:

(..)I use it as my main photo storage attached to..... [look away, makar0n]...... a Mac Studio. (..)

Blasphemy! Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean!

27 minutes ago, TimG said:

One thing I did find and that was new to me, is that you have to pick the right USB-C cable to make sure you get the best possible speed. I thought they were all just two plugs and a cable. Seems they ain't. What works best (for me, anyway) is a 20GB/s cable.

Yeah, USB-C ones are a bit magical, not just a simple cable :)

I am normally using Club3D ones (they also make very good Display Port and HDMI cables) - solid and most importantly USB-IF certified. Quality gets even more important when you are planning to use these as power as well, and shoving 240W through, or to run an external monitor.

Example below, USB4, 40Gbps, 240W, 8K60Hz

https://www.club-3d.com/en/detail/2600/usb4_gen3x2_type_c_bi_directional_usb_if_certified_cable_8k60hz_data_40gbps_pd_240w(48v-5a)_epr_m-m_1m_-_3.28ft/

Even marked as working with Apple. Oh horror 🤣

There is also a crazier one, 80Gbps, 240W, 8K240Hz version:

https://www.club-3d.com/en/detail/2675/usb_80gbps_certified_240w_4k540hz_type_cr_1.2m_-_3.94ft_black_cable/