Kamaros

Ultimately, if you prefer shooting one over the other, you should go with the one you like more. If you don't have a preference, I'd be biased towards macro. As others have mentioned, it's easier to travel with a macro setup than a big dome port, and you'll probably appreciate the advantages of full frame mirrorless over DX SLR when shooting macro. Aside from that, Sony doesn't have a native fisheye lens yet, so it's arguably a little more future proof to buy a native 90mm macro lens that's less likely to be replaced soon than Canon 8-15mm fisheye + adapter that might become less desirable if Sony ever releases their own fisheye (or if you ever decide to splurge on a FCP). If you also do any topside photography, a factor that might encourage you to start with wide-angle instead is that common rectilinear wide-angle options like the Tamron 17-28mm also have broad applicability above water, while fisheye and macro lenses are considered pretty niche and have better alternatives for most other use cases (eg. 85mm f/1.4 or f/1.8 is generally preferred over the 90mm macro for most situations unless you need close-focus capability).

Are you looking at the right o-rings? $16 USD for a pack of 10 (Backscatter, Bluewater Photo, etc) sounds like the cheapest purchase related to this hobby you might ever make 😛

The Caribbean is well-covered because Humann/DeLoach had a dedicated Reef Coral Identification book for that region, and I think some of the Red Sea books cover corals as well, but coverage is lacking for other regions. For example, most of the books for the Pacific specialize in covering fish or nudibranchs (at least, that's what their names suggest; I didn't actually look at the table of contents for each book to confirm), and the one Reef Creature book (which I own) is pretty limited - there's only one page on reef-building corals, one page on gorgonians, two pages on sponges, etc.

I have a Cinebags Grouper XL that I use for transporting my rig when diving locally. I also found it useful last year when I was on a photo workshop in La Paz where we were schlepping our gear between a hotel and our boat every day, and where the boat's camera table was too small to fit everyone's gear. I used to carry a "minimum viable setup" (camera, housing, viewfinder, vacuum system, one lens + port, strobes and cables, a pair of clamps to mount the strobes directly onto the housing, batteries and chargers for all the above) in a ThinkTank Airport Commuter backpack which I could just barely squeeze under airplane seats if I took out my laptop and headphones and shoved them in my seat pocket. It wasn't very comfortable and always felt like I had a brick pressed against the small of my back, so I've decided to try switching over to a hiking bag with a camera insert. I haven't tried flying with it yet, but I've picked up a Decathlon Quechua MH500 40L backpack (based on recommendations from this megathread) and a Lowepro Gearup Camera Box XXL II which seems to fit snuggly. Here's a sample loadout for the A7RV + Nikon 60mm macro on Monster adapter as an example. I'm waiting on Backscatter to get the FCP and 10mm extension ring back in-stock to see if other lens + port combinations will fit the insert. Here's the backpack with the insert loaded. I don't actually know if this would fit under and airplane seat, but in the worst case I could probably take the insert out and use it as my personal item, then try to shove the empty backpack (which flattens down reasonably well) into an overhead bin like you might do with a jacket. I also didn't bother to unscrew the mounting balls on the housing here, which could be removed to decrease the required depth by another inch or so. Aside from the backpack with the minimum viable rig, I like the Tenba Roadie Air Case Roller 21 as a carry-on roller for all the other gear that doesn't fit in my bag - it's rugged like a hard case, but looks like a normal roller bag instead of screaming "STEAL ME" like a Pelican case. I'm also a fan of the internal organizer pockets, which I stash things like my remaining arm clamps, spare cables/batteries, etc into.

This was more of a general question about identifying corals and sponges from wherever I decide to travel to, not a request to identify something in a specific image. Of course, there's the option of posting here for help with a particular species, but I was hoping someone might have resources to make this more self-serve.

Does the 140mm dome actually provide better image quality than the 230mm for fisheye lenses? Is that just in the center, or does "larger is better" still apply to corners in this case?

I think the dome (and consequently, the size of the hard cover) are bigger on the WACP-C than the WWL. At the very least, I haven't had any issues operating the pinch lock mechanism with my dry gloves (Showa CS720 smurf gloves with Fourth Element xerotherm glove liners).

Before I sold mine, I used to just take the hard cover with me on the dive. Both the pockets on my drysuit as well as my tech shorts were large enough to comfortably fit the cover, with ample space to also fit a DSMB and pocket snorkel. Honestly, I've been rather wary of neoprene covers ever since one of them caused a scratch on my 140mm dome - some particulate got trapped between the dome and the cover when exiting a shore dive and scraped against the glass the next time I tried to take the cover off.

Has anyone tried the Saga Trio diopter with the Sony 90mm macro lens? I recently switched from a D850 to an A7RV and found that if I tried to reuse some of the ports I already had (Nauticam 35.5mm N100-N120 adapter + N120 extension ring 20 + N120 Macro Port 60), the 90mm was fine on its own, but resulted in significant vignetting if I tried to use the Saga Trio on top of it. That port combination is 10.5mm longer than the N100 Macro Port 105 recommended by Nauticam's port charts, so I was wondering if anyone had tried this combination with the recommended 105mm port to see if it would fix the vignetting, or if I would be forced to switch to smaller diopters with this lens.

Rear-curtain sync: - Good to have as a default setting when NOT deliberately trying to do blur shots because fast moving subjects might still result in some motion blur, in which case rear-curtain will result in a more natural trail behind the subject - Also good for deliberately blurred shots where there isn't necessarily a single direction of motion, such as schools of fish that aren't moving together, or something like a juvenile sweetlips with erratic motion - The downside of using rear-curtain sync is that you're at the mercy of the subjects' movement, so you don't have much control over where the final image of the subjects frozen by your strobes will be in the frame Front-curtain sync: - Generally preferred for shots where you're deliberately trying to introduce blur by panning your camera in the same direction the subject is moving, but at a higher speed than the subject (sometimes referred to as "accelerated panning" shots). This is because your strobes freeze the subject in the position they were in when you initially press the shutter button, giving you more control over the final composition. - The downside of front-curtain sync is that you'll end up with unnatural looking motion trails ahead of the subject if you don't pan fast enough, or if you forget to switch back to rear-curtain sync for non-panning shots

I'd also consider chucking all your clamps into a ziplock bag and applying some WD-40.

Unfortunately, I don't think you can do this with an A7RIV. Sony added a new setting called "Full Time DMF" to the A7RV which I don't believe is available on their older cameras that allows you to switch to manual focus at any time and on any focus mode by turning the focus ring. On the A7RIV, I think you only have access to the dedicated DMF focus mode (basically AF-S with the ability to manually focus), so it can't be used with AF-C or tracking.

I was there in February. While it's possible to get some close encounters, you'll want some additional reach most of the time. I think the 8-15mm is a reasonable choice, but may still require some cropping to fill the frame with some subjects. I think your partner will struggle with just the 8mm, particularly for skittish subjects like sharks. The WWL is just about perfect for Socorro (in fact, I personally shot exclusively with the WACP-C + 28-70 when I went, which actually has less zoom range than the 14-42). I don't shoot video so I'm not really qualified to comment on that front, but many subjects were frequently out of strobe range so I'm not sure more powerful video lights would make a difference in most cases.

Yes, I find the dust and scratches filter is generally a good solution for open water backgrounds, but doesn't work very well for backscatter sitting on top of any surfaces with details you'd like to preserve since it tends to blur everything underneath as well. The reason I was excited to discover Retouch4Me Dust was that it does a better job at leaving underlying details untouched. I think it's still best paired with some masking to prevent false positives from being removed, as well as some additional spot removal for any backscatter it failed to identify, but overall it seems a lot faster than the alternative for certain shots.

Here's an example of a shot of a giant moray (and not quite in focus bluestreak cleaner wrasse) taken at a much closer distance: This is what it looks like after applying all 3 filters again (though I think just the medium dirt filter probably would've been enough on this one). As you can see even without zooming in, the software incorrectly removed some false positives, such as the white around the pupil and some of the natural patterning on the moray: Here are before and after crops of the top part of the moray. Sharpness and detail has generally remained unchanged, but as mentioned before, some of the moray's spots were lightened and the white ring around the pupil was removed erroneously: It seems to do a better job when it comes to removing backscatter from out-of-focus areas, like in the before and after of the top left portion of the image: If I was editing this photo seriously, I'd probably try to use a layer mask that selects the background + the lighter parts of the moray using some sort of luminosity mask to preserve the moray's spots, and then also paint the pupil ring back in (or at least, I would if I knew how to create a luminosity mask in Photoshop...)