Dave_Hicks

About back rolls - I lost my prescription mask doing a back roll with a camera on a high current site. That was a rough hour in the panga fretting about the ruined trip. Fortunately, someone came up at the end of the dive with my lost mask! I carabiner-ed my mask to my wet suit pull strap for the rest of the trip! Don't make my mistake.

Some sites you will visit might not have stellar visibility, and smaller creatures will be available and photogenic. You will at least want to be able to take some Close Focus Wide Angle if not actually mid-macro (ex. 60mm). Seahorses 10cm, Red Lip Batfish, Iguanas, etc. A 100mm macro would not be my priority.

I suggest losing the infill. Instead increase walls and perimeters until there are no voids in the sliced model. Walls are far stronger than infill. Long lines of filament are also stronger than layers, so consider printing orientation vs the expected stresses.

Consider boosting the strength of a ball mount by including a long M3 bolt inside the shaft and with a nut and washer tightened at the far end. Leave an opening on top of the ball to tighten the screw head.

If you want a padded cooler, get a super cheap one like the one below from Amazon @ $26. I've used a pair of similar bags for many years for all my local shore diving and car transport. I've taken them on trips, filling them with scuba gear in my suitcase, but I don't find them so useful on a boat. You don't need to move your camera around much and they get in the way on a zodiac/panga and the crew won't like/allow it. If you want a personal rinse, sure that's a useful function. But realistically, you just need to dip your camera after each dive for a few seconds. Do a better, longer, button pressing rinse at the end of the trip or end of the day at most.

A padded cooler will not be very useful on a liveaboard. And the boat rinse tank is fine to use. Just remember the tank is for rinsing, not dumping your camera and leaving it in there unattended.

I suggest wide angle on most dives, perhaps shoot macro on the third dive of the day when the sun is low. The MFO-1 is great for most macro subjects, and the SMC-3 will depend on your preferences. There is always something cool and tiny if you look hard enough. There are no dive guides at God's Pocket, so critter spotting is your job.

My experience with both 5300 and 6000 Nitecore batteries in the HF-1 and Maxi is that you will not be able to exhaust the capacity of these cells shooting photos. Video Lights are another story, but can't realistically shoot enough photos in 3 or 4 dives to exhaust the battery.

I don't recommend transporting a housing on flights with the camera installed. It is a risk to bend, fold, and mangle the alignment of the tray and controls. Depressed buttons can damage the camera body. I usually put my well padded viewfinder and optical cables inside the housing when packed. I travel with the housing loaded by car but not if the housing in in a suitcase or roller bag.

Thanks! Maybe in a few weeks. I am in Raja Ampat for another couple weeks.

Look into a Bambu P1s with AMS as the best cost effective option. If you buy without an AMS you will end up buying it later once you realize how useful it is.

I've been using something similar for a couple of years. It is remarkably effective in drying off housings and ports. I think I've shared the Amazon link about a dozen times to people that see it and want to buy. I should get a referral credit!

I made an MFO-1 hood that also fits the SMC diopters. I have not laid hands on an MFO-3 yet to see if its appropriate. https://makerworld.com/@awkward_swine/collections/16165730?appSharePlatform=copy

No strobes or arms sticking out. I did attach a single 12 inch arm with jumbo stix floats as a crossbar over the top of the housing to make it near neutral. Nauticam Z8 with 140mm dome and 8-15mm. I think a 1.4tc would be an improvement over what i did. Shooting 15mm & near 180degs was great for point blank whales and baitballs, but some more reach would have help for 75% of the subjects. I did very little duck diving and was annoyed by the one over-eager dude on our trip who did. I had to "remove" him from a bunch of photos he didn't ruin out right.

I have had fantastic service from Backscatter, especially with the first run of the flaky MF-1 strobe. They also went above and beyond expectations dealing with some Nauticam flash trigger issues. Retra is also very responsive and easy to deal with based on experience of several friends. I had an Inon 330 repaired maybe 5 years ago, no problems. In the past Ikelite service was very good. Recently the experience was not as good.

I load my camera with a 512gb CFExpress card and a 128gd SDcard. I have 10 of the SDcards (numbered) and rotate in a new one everyday as I import to the PC. Its an easy backup with close to zero effort. So all photos are on 2 memory cards and the PC during a trip. I usually have a backup drive as well if i chose to use it.

Be sure to buy the Intel CPU version. ARM is great for everything but Adobe apps.

You are exactly describing the reasons for my position on this issue. 😉

Two months ago Ikelite service charged my friend money and returned a broken and improperly assembled housing. And they would not even replace the broken hotshoe cable without an additional charge. Ikelite used to have fantastic customer service, but this experience puts that very much in question.

A friend bought a used Ikelite D850 and sent it straight to Ikelite to be serviced. It came back with broken hotshoe wiring and improperly installed spring push buttons that depressed camera controls. Unusable. I fixed it all up, but the aperture control and power button were nearly impossible to engage. I had D70 and D300 housings from Ikelite that served me well. When i got a full frame D800 i found that their port system just didn't work for those WA lenses due to vingetteing. This experience left me very unimpressed and shocked at the poor quality and service of the Ikelite brand these days. Either their quality has fallen or my expectations have gone up. Probably both.

That's a good reason. But not one that i need to be concerned about for my needs.

What is color? If 99% of PC and Phone users can only see sRGB, then i don't see the point. Why do i need to see colors that nobody else can? Artists, film makers, publishers can deal with this for their needs. The rest of us manage to cope with sRGB.

Nauticam just released a new housing for the Nikon Z5II that does not include the added width to seamlessly accommodate F-mount lenses. It's far more compact as a result and basically targeting newer Z-mount native users. One has to imagine that they will shift to Z-mount native housings for more models in the future as F-mount recedes farther into the past. EDIT - Looks like this shift is well underway. The Nauticam Z6III housing also uses this new more compact form factor. NA-Z5II Housing for Nikon Z5II Camera – Nauticam To enable F-mount they optionally offer adapted gears or a port body with integrated F-mount compatible gearing. (which is pretty crazy looking)

The Web runs on sRGB and many print shops work only in sRGB. For my needs of online display and creating large format (30 inch) prints, sRGB is the best choice. I personally don't see any need for an Adobe color space monitor or workflow.

I think this model is probably an identical display to my model, but it's been updated with a modern USB-C hub. Mine is USB-A only. (with HDMI and DP video inputs)