bvanant

I am looking for a circular fisheye for an OM-1. The 7-artisans 4 mm looks interesting, has anyone shot it underwater? thanks Bill

Mine arrived yesterday. Playing on land. Diving next weekend. Bill

It will likely work fine. There is no magic in the valve, but if you flood I suspect Nauticam will say it was the valve's fault Bill

Get the MF. No optical concentration and the LED is very weak. Bill

Looks like this is the Scubalamp mini strobe shown at DEMA. Surprised that it doesn't speak RC mode for olympus Bill

My take is that there are levels of video and that short (10 seconds like) clips are much more interesting to divers and certainly for non-divers. We do lots of live aboard trips and everyone seems to enjoy a clip much more than a single photo and that I think is the way the world is headed. As for completed longer (3-5 or longer) videos they are clearly much more work (20 minutes of clips for a minute of video) and editing is much more painful but the results can be amazing. More importantly from any scientific view, video can get you things like behavior that you can not get with a photo. My wife is a talented videographer (she has all the talent in the family) and she gave a talk at the international polychaete conference. Many scientists who specialize in worms were astounded and many said "that's not what we thought they did" after seeing footage. One issue is that you can't put a video on the wall for a 10 second perusal, getting someone to sit for 4 minutes to see a video can be a chore. Bill

We were recently in Lembeh with a group that were only interested in competitions. Show them a hairy frogfish and they swim away trying to find a "unique" view of something even more unusual. Before that we were in Edinburgh and saw the World Wildlife results. To me the Judges picks were terrible but the viewer's choices were much more interesting. Guess that means that I really don't understand "art" (not that I want to) Bill

I have the AOI OM-1 housing, previously I had the Isotta for the EM1-III. Both are good housings, but the AOI is like $1000 cheaper and has built in vacuum and LED trigger. For Isotta you will need some other method to trigger strobes and a separate vacuum system. The Isotta is MUCH prettier (cool Ferrari red) but in over 650 dives the AOI has been bulletproof and does the things a housing should do (it keeps the water out and lets you get to all the controls). I have long understood that my photos are not important to anyone but me and $1000 is 5 local dive trips or a few days at a resort. On liveaboards of course I have camera/housing envy. The guy with the $10K Canon R5d/Nauticam/EMWL systems get all the love but while I have camera envy, I don't have photo envy. The AOI/OM-1 is "better" than I am so using it well is what I worry about. null

Thanks Chris, I was writing something very similar but you beat me to it. Bill

Well if they actually do it, it would be nice. We were in Komodo over Christmas and the rangers came over to collect the park fee but didn't do anything to the illegal fishing boats 30 meters away. We also did Raja this trip and there was lots of bleaching in the North. Bill

Lovely Bill

For the EVF vs LCD, I think one big variable is the refresh rate of the two screens. Jim Kasson has some quantitative data here (https://blog.kasson.com/the-last-word/sony-a7rii-battery-draw-with-evf-and-lcd/) for Sony. Bill

Actually I was thinking of Brownian motion, of relatively small but reflective particles. Certainly particles can move on the order of a few cm/s. If the particle moves enough rotationally then you might guess that it will have different reflectivity for different orientations. But remember I did say it was BS.😁 Bill

High speed sync could theoretically reduce backscatter depending on many things. HSS works by using a bunch of very short pulses. If the particles that cause the backscatter move between the HSS pulses then you could imagine that BS (that's what this is by the way) might be reduced. In practice in a BW dive in quite snotty conditions, not much reduction in backscatter. Bill

I think in the last few years, their main business was bike lights, not underwater. We had their video housings which were awesome and still use the Solas all the time. Sorry to see them go. Bill

https://oceanity.com.au/articles/view/understanding-flat-port-and-dome-port-theory will get you started. The diopter shortens the minimum focus length for your virtual image. https://www.uwphotographyguide.com/dome-port-optics#:~:text=A %2B4 diopter is the,B%26W diopters are highly rated. has more info. Bill

I can attest to the utility of the AOI housings. Mine for the OM-1 has been on 500+ dives and works flawlessly. Bill

i think it will only be useful in Photoshop, I don't think it works in ACR.

alternately you can buy the Backscatter one for their macro lens for gopro. It is a little stick that tells you how close to get. If it were me, I wouldn't try to print a 67 mm thread, just buy a $4 67 mm step up or step down ring and put the framer arms on that. Bill

Well the backscatter reviews (notice that they rate backscatter strobes quite highly), talks about beam quality (High output, wide width, beam shape) but no so much about quality of that beam. In any case still waiting for photos demonstrating a noticeable difference. Bill

I understand the physics and color temp bits, but I am still trying to SEE similar photos with different light quality. Of course if light quality is purely subjective (which I suspect) then your light quality might indeed be directly proportional to how much you spend. If light quality is all about color temp and water clarity then again it is subjective since if you dive in clear water your photos look better. I hear the term softness a lot as well and that I think could be measured (light intensity as a f(distance) but haven't seen how that correlates to the real UW world. Bill

guessing you can't find it. BVA

Thanks Bill

Chris: What port are you using for the 8-15. Bill