eocean-eu

Ikelite maikes also one USB-C bulkhead. It has the advantage of having on both end a female usb-c plug which means you can connect whatever cable USB you like inside the housing and fits any M16 port (including those Nauticam housing that can not accomodate the angled USB-C plug... BUT it's not watertight so if the watertight cap is compromised, it will flood the housing. It is about the same price as the Nauticam bulkhead. I have one installed on my NA-GH5.

I was recently in a similar situation except I saw a TG6 slowly ascending and drifting in the current in front of me. It still took 2 mins for the owner to realize he lost his tg camera. What if I haven't happened to be nearby... The boat was moored and nobody watching the surface. It would have been probably lost for good. From what I read and saw in the field, one common point with many lost camera seems to be the weird habit of people simply clipping their rig to their BC. Many people think it's a safe practice and this is also what some photo/course teach. At some point, for various conscious or inconscous) reasons, a diver may release his/her hands off the camera thinking the camera is safe and at that moment, the underwater magic can happen, (probably the same one that apparently unties knots). While I have the capability to clip things in case of emergency ascent, I never clip my gear so I have to keep my hands on it all the time and I haven't lost anything from small action cams to big equipment.

For action cam itself, no but Some people assumes a floating camera is easier to find when lost at sea or during a dive. It depends on many things but personally I think things lost, sitting on the bottom on a dive site are easier to find than a floating and drifting dot at the surface. If you have big lights, arms, a tray and your action cam, it can weight a lot and be painful on wrists on the long run.

I simply use basic electric tape most of the time (laziness) but you can also use heat shrink tube or insulating spray (best option since this is what people use in the FPV drone world). It's possible that PCBs are already insulated but I haven't checked and there are a few manufacturers with slightly different PCBs.

Nikon finally addressing the HDMI blackout issue when shooting video in this release is a really welcome update... and I confirm it works :)

Personnally, I've been using DIY FPV HDMI cables. It's cheap, compact, easily replaceable available on Aliexpress, Amazon. You just need to properly insulate the PCB for the HDMI plugs. No soldering required. I've been using that on my GH5s and Z8 for years without issues. Those ribbon cables are also present inside some UW monitors like the Weefine WED-5 and WED-7 and also Gopro housings from Hugyfot.

"Upscaling" is some sort of fancy extrapolation: it creates additional information from existing information but this is radically different than a sensor that would actually capture the missing information. Some people might not notice that because their attention is focused on something/one in the center of the frame but there might be something unusual if one looks at the fine details in the corners or when action is fast. One thing also is that quality of Youtube streams that makes comparison a bit hard but since most people publish their things online on FB, Instagram or YT, sometimes even without the most appropriate encoding parameters, that makes many video look "acceptable". Rendered files before upload would probably useful to watch. I've seen a review between the Insta X5 and Ace Pro 2. 4K X5 is close to the Ace Pro and it's sometimes hard to tell the difference. When the math are done with the same coverage, the Ace Pro is still winning but the gap is small. About geometry, it's possible that something is wrong or there is a step missing in insta360 studio for the new model. The first generations of Gopro before the 3 had dome housings and the resulting quality underwater was extremely bad untill someone started to make housing with flat port. The OSMO360 is terrible underwater because there is no housing and the 360 lens is simply made for air and not water therefore all the optic is messed up. But there is also one thing. It's inherently different watching a video and watching a photo, those cameras are made for action and the brain will focus where the image is sharp and may not notice the corners. There is a comparison between the pro and non-pro housing underwater: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS0EI9In7yw. I was a bit disappointed by the near lack of differences on the sharpness in the corner and front. The big benefits is the loss of flares.

I think those housings probably have a magnet in the housing that triggers the dive mode like in some other housing. 360° video and resolution has always been a tricky and confusing story in regards to sharpness and video definition. Most people don't do the math of the number of pixels used for each degree of coverage and this value is actually key to understand sharpness. As you did, if you compare the number of pixels by degree of coverage for a 360 camera and a regular action camera, the sharpness of the 360° is always bad at the same 2D resolution. For reframing/tracking a moving subject, those camera are good with usable results in HD. For 4K work, it's starts to be suboptimal and of course, it won't be usuable for any macro work.

You did what needed to be done. I was probably not clear enough If you increase your color temperature in the white balance settings, the resulting image will go warmer. On the opposite, it will go colder at lower K... This is a bit confusing because this is the opposite of how Kelvin works for light source with lower values meaning warmer color and higher colder ones. But it's all about compensation for the camera which is why this is inverted. I am attaching a picture made with my trusty GH5s in a pool playing with the Kelvin settings for white balance. The external light is the sodium light from the pool and is constant accross my experiment. If you have a "daylight" Kelvin value for your divelight in blue water, your actual kelvin value from the light is actually higher which might results in the camera more in reddish tone. To compensate for this, as you did, lowering the K is the way to go.

Be aware that kelvin value from the light underwater is a starting point to set your camera but not the right value in most case as the light coming straight from the video light will be filtered by the water on its way to the subject and then the reflected portion will be filtered again by the water on its way to camera sensor. So if you are diving in blue water with a daylight kelvin value for your light, shining a subject 1m away, your light actually travels 2m of blue water and will hit your sensor with a bluer tone. You might want to decrease your kelvin value if you can set it on your camera to compensate for the bluish pattern of light.

The website works good on my end. My luggage during my last flight was pretty compressed and I broke the pair of exciter filters I had (Ikelite ones). They are made of a dark blue plastic filter and a dichroic filter made of glass which is expensive and fragile. I haven't found a cheap source for dichroic filters. On the camera end, you need a yellow filter like the Tiffen Yellow 12 to remove the blue cast from the filter or blue/uv lights.

As an early EMWL user, I can definitely tell these disappear with a shade. Those are easily visible with the 100 and 130° lenses.

I think it's an interesting camera but yet not perfect. The lack of button is not necessarily a problem for underwater use. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera was also very low on buttons as everything was more or less controlled by the touchscreen but yet it had a Nauticam housing. The real interest for me is the big screen and the relatively compact package in comparison to Z8 / Z9. But the most important to me is not the camera itself but the fact Nikon has been making lots of effort recently into video and is bringing here its first video-centric camera even not perfect. This goes as well for the recent Z 24-70 lens F2.8 with internal zoom which is definitely aimed at videographers.

The WED-7 Pro has definitely a flip option that can be assigned to a F button. The comment on the EWML is true when someone is not using the relay but it is also handy to be able to flip the monitor for HDMI cable management. Mine is by flipped but I have to press the function button to flip the screen after power on. WED-5 Pro has a port to upload LUTs. I am trying to find the manual online.

There is a new monitor from Weefine, the WED-5 PRO that has just been released last week. In short, it replaces the small WED-5 with more nits, added functions (peaking, luts, etc...) and a completely new cable that seems heavy duty with a big cable gland. As this cable is connected on the left side of the housing, it might be in the way of the nearest arm on some setup but the cable itself looks very strong I don't have the numbers in memory but it looks slightly heavier than WED-5 both over and underwater and around the size of the WED-5. It runs on a bigger battery. Overal, it feels to be a new nice addition.