Floris Bennema

On 11/7/2024 at 11:51 PM, Chris Ross said:

I have to agree, I can do 3-4 dives on my INON Z-240s - admittedly its shooting m43, so mostly f8 so not as demanding, but they do the job.  I don't need a strobe to have a video quality light so that's not important for me.  Dealing with 16 batteries is obviously time consuming but totally manageable.  There's certainly applications where you want more power, but not for everyone.

I agree there's different qualities in batteries, especially worrying is the cheap Li-ion, people will buy them from the cheapest online source they can find.  all it will take is one bad incident with a cheap Li-ion to make air travel more difficult.

Not to mention the danger on the wooden liveaboards..

Not a good place to go as a photographer. Of course, diving with all these hammerheads must be fantastic and you have the opportunity to make some amazing shots. Yet the bigger the group, ther less the divemaster will be inclined to wait for to optimise your shot.

I often dive with some friends that have no camera. Not ideal, but they understand that I take my time. I had some bad  experiences on trips with diveguides that just swam on in front and didn't look back. In such a case it's nice when there are more photographers, you look at each other and think 'let him go'..  Not a good idea in strong currents, of course.  It's amazing how some diveguides are so unaware of their clients.

On 11/26/2024 at 6:29 AM, Fabian said:

What do you guys think about the pricing?Looking at the price: might be fair from a time saving perspective, but comparing it to star removal plug-ins for astrophotography, I feel it's a bit of overcharging.

 

And that's not all, as Loic35 said "It seems that $179.95 is the introductory price (Dema) valid until November 29th.

I think it's to high for a plugin, it stopped me from buying. From now on I have a new challenge, flash with perfect strobe positions to be able to compete.

It's more pragmatic to just use the strobearms to improve the buoyancy. If that not enough, you could add buoyancy arms. If you often dive without strobes, check first how your set feels without floats. And don't be too concerened about small changes in uw-weight.

13 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

You don't need an app to do that for you, just process a copy and copy it in as a new layer and mask it, simple enough to do in Photoshop.

Ok, I am a PS illiterate, normally LR is more than enough for me.

1 hour ago, Dave_Hicks said:

I don't know how much customization they did with StarExterminator to remake it into BackscatterExterminator, but StarNet++ works pretty darn well on UW photos as is. 

 

 

 

Just compared BackscatterXTerminator with the 3x cheaper (hey, I am Dutch!) StarXTerminator, from the same developer. StarXTerminator mostly gave a result halfway the original image and BXT. Only on very dark parts the results were more or less the same. Another advantage of BXT is that it produces an extra layer that allows you to bring back parts (like whiskers) that were wrongly removed. Like to compare StarNet++ one day.

Although it says you need a NVIDIA Graphic card on your computer I tried a trial version on my Windows laptop with Intel Iris Xe Graphics. It works, about 3 minutes for a 20 Mb image.

9 hours ago, RomiK said:

This example shows scenario where camera focuses on the bubbles hence they are sharp and also exposure reflects that. In the other examples camera was focusing on subjects in the water hence the bubbles were unfocused if this explanation makes sense 

It's clear, I get your point. I can imagine you get frustrated!

I never had this focussing issue, probably because my lens (Panasonic 14-42 on Olympus 5 III) can't focus closer than 10 cm from it's front. Strange enough, I neither have ýour' dark dots on my photos. Light ones I have, but not at the same place in successive photos. So I think that's something in the water or reflection from the sun.

2 hours ago, RomiK said:

@Floris Bennema - and here is a good example of what @ChipBPhoto mentioned. This happens in my experience with WWL1 rarely so far but it could and does happen.

 

RoniK, I don't understand that you ascribe dark spots in the previous post to bubbles and the light spots in this one. Note that in this photo there's also a dark one. Anyhow, so few, easy to remove in Lightroom.

I don't understand these complaints on WWL-1 bubbles. I use the lens for over 5 years and only experienced bubbles before the bayonet mount came out. Rolling from a boat I keep my camera in front of me so the water flows in rather smoothly and never take the lens off. Or jump, camera up in the air. No issue for me. Do  those who have isuues use the bayonet mount?

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I prefer a hand strap on the side of the shutter release. Not sure if it's possible on a AIO housing.

23 hours ago, Troporobo said:

I don’t understand this at all.  I use a 60mm lens on m4/3 with a flat port and it will focus just fine at any distance from macro to infinity.  I don’t see any “aberrations” either.  What am I missing?  

The minimum focus distance of the 60mm lens is 19cm. For this reason I only use it in clear water.

On 9/26/2024 at 11:11 PM, Dave_Hicks said:

 I have seen a few friends diving without the cap by mistake. That is really fun to point out to your buddy at 60feet under! 😧

 

BTW, i had the o-ring go loose on my pressure valve after a number of years. Be sure to check it and replace if it shows wear.

Brrr, remenber there's near vacuum on the other side ..

1 hour ago, Dave_Hicks said:

Probably not.

 

The cap is a secondary seal. 

I heard at a Nauticam service that the red knob  will be pressed under presure at depth.

Talking about vacuum caps, I once had a small leakage in my Nauticam housing and suspected I didn't tighten the cap firm enough. Could that be the cause of the leakage?

Brilliant!

I used an Olympus 14-42 kitlens with my Olympus behind a WWL-1. This lens is so vunerable that I always took a second one with me. It saved me two trips already. As secondhand prices of this lens are rising, I recently switched to a Panasonic kitlens for this purpose.

Also I bring along an internal flash that may replace my flash trigger. Not that I had bad experiences with the flash trigger, but I had the flash already and it is very small anyhow.

Unlike ChipBPhoto I don't have a spare Nauticam Vacuum pump. At least with my Olympus housing I can suck out the air with my mouth .. if needed.

I looked at sidemount solutions. The problem is you need a camera on each side.

I like a minimum of lines etc. Therefore I use a thin short rope as on a hand-held (!) camera to avoid losing the camera.

In more challenging situations, like when I am expect to shoot up a SMB, I use a longer laynard, waiting for use on a D-ring.  The lanyard I construct myself, most carabiners are to narrow to attach to a strobe arm and are quiet heavy. So I use the cheapest aluminium climbing carabiners I can get and fixate them to a rather thick rope.

However, I  have to make a new one, my previous lanyard lies on a liveboard in Indonesia..

The Nauticam housing for the Olympus EM-5 III without handles and ports is 17 x 16 x 9 cm. Hump for flash included.

Just a very practical answer.

I love the 0 to 5 star system in Lightroom. After a trip I remove the worst shots and then give  the images the amount of stars I think they reserve. Mostly I'll only process the images that got 2 stars or more. Now it's easy to pick out a selection to show others, depending of the trip I'll show the 3+ or 4+ images. Once ready it's also easy to decide which images a suitable for my website or social media. 

The star-value  of a selected image can be changed by just typing in a number. 

The great advantage is that is so flexible. Often I change the amount of stars an image gets in hindsight, sometimes years laster.  Selecting the best images from multiple trips at once is easy as well. For instance, now I see that overall I have 47 5-stars and from my Asian trips 22, presenting them is just two clicks away. No, believe it or not, I am not sponsored by Adbode 🙂

Just found your question 🙂.  

I have an original Meyer Optik Görlitz Trioplan 50mm on my Olympus 5III.  I use it with a MEKE 10mm Expansion Tube Ring and an Exacta–m4/3 mount, the combintion extends nearly 7 cm from the body. At f/8 it focusses from 18 to 30 cm off the top of the lens, depending of the position of the focus ring . The DOF is shallow then, just some cm's.

Although I created a zoomring  for my Naticam , I did not use it under water yet.

Here's an example above water.

Although it will be a bit of chalenge to focus underwater, I think it can be nice addition. 

If yo pull your strobes back the light spreads out earlier relatively to the camera. Reducing the dark areas effect of slightly angling out.  

If you angle the strobes out so that only two particles are lit in the second case, the 'dark areas' will have the same size as in the first case. The benefit of the pull back is nicely explained in Seewolf's "Getankenexperiment"

22 hours ago, ChipBPhoto said:

I too use the warmer diffusers in blue water.  Do you also set your camera to 4600, auto, or other?

I always leave it to auto. According to ChrisH explanation that does the trick.