Barmaglot

The SeaFrogs version of Vivid Leak Sentinel has never been advertised for sale anywhere that I've seen, but if you email info@vividhousings.com, Miso will hook you up.

I would be a bit wary of adapted lenses on A7R II; the autofocus performance with adapters on Sony bodies that old is somewhat iffy.

They are threaded in, but I'm not sure of the kind of threads - perhaps M6.

Was the Metabones adapter in green or advanced mode? Their documentation says that the advanced mode is limited to a 'small central PDAF area', whereas green mode uses the 'full PDAF area of the sensor'.

This is the port in question, right? https://seafrogs.com.hk/collections/flat-macro-ports-for-sea-frogs-housings/products/flat-short-port-for-sony-fe-28-60mm-f4-5-6-lens-autofocus-only-zoom-gear-included As I recall, it was initially released with the A7C housing, but the camera positioning with regard to port opening should be the same between different housings. On the other hand, this is SeaFrogs, so it's not a given. Have you tried contacting their support about the poor fit of the port/lens combination?

I know; the WWL-1 targets 28mm FF-equivalent lenses - that is to say, it should not vignette at 28mm on FF, 19mm on APS-C, or 14mm on M43. My own wet lens, the AOI UWL-09F, targets the same 28mm FL, and with 16-50mm lens behind it, it loses vignetting at 19mm. The severe vignetting that you experience indicates that either the SeaFrogs 28-60mm port fits badly, leaving too much space between the lens front element and the port glass, or there is some other issue with the lens placement, such as a wet mate adapter (flip/swing/etc).

That vignetting is rather odd; I recall users of older SeaFrogs housings (things like M43 with 14-42mm) report normal performance. I use an APS-C 16-50mm with AOI UWL-09F, which targets the same 28mm FL as the WWL-1, and vignetting goes away at 19mm, just as expected. The 28-60mm should not vignette with the WWL-1 at all. Are you using it on bare port, or is there some sort of adapter in the way?

D-Pro is a manual-only strobe, so TTL is irrelevant. You could use the Nauticam manual trigger, but the Turtle is slightly cheaper.

You can use a Weefine WFL09S/Kraken KRL09S; it's very similar to MWL-1 but costs half as much.

Wetpixel.com is owned and operated by Adam Hanlon. In addition to the website and forum, Adam organized and sold diving trips. Last year, this business of his went under - he took a bunch of people's money and didn't actually organize the trips that he sold. Since then, he has completely disappeared. Wetpixel.com itself is no longer open to registration by new users, the content is not available unless you're logged in with a pre-existing account, and when Adam stops paying the registration and hosting fees, it is going to disappear. WHOIS lists the domain expiration date as May 14th 2024, so that is a possible cutoff point. Waterpixels.net was created as a way to preserve the community following this incident.

@christophe chellapermal recently reported being underwhelmed with Z8's autofocus (on blackwater dives - probably the most challenging scenario for AF underwater) compared to D500.

Preliminary review: https://theunderwaterclub.com/backscatter-hybrid-flash-preliminary-review Looks like they're indeed quite powerful. Considering that a Retra Pro Max with a supercharger is $1780, i.e literally twice the price of this, this makes the Retras a very tough sell.

Weefine's TG-6 housing comes with with an additional battery, but it's easy to see how much extra bulk this adds, especially to a small camera: null

I use the reflectors on blackwater dives. I have the strobes at 3 and 9 o'clock positions, facing somewhat inward, maybe about 45 degrees. I get some backscatter, but not a lot.

It's still a lot of power to dump into a very small package - this is how YS-D2s ended up blowing their bulbs all the time, and this strobe claims something like 3x the power. All-metal designs like the Retras and Seacams are generally better at conducting away heat, contributing to their better reliability. This one exacerbates the challenge by putting a bunch of LEDs and their associated circuitry into an already cramped housing. I'm not saying this kind of challenge is insurmountable, but it can't be easy.

GN40 at 120 degrees coverage sounds somewhat suspect, but running the numbers at battery capacity (2x5300mAh) vs number of flashes (375), or battery discharge current (2x20A) vs recycle time (2.17s) gives a full power flash rating of around 400 W⋅s, which is like, the biggest ever in an underwater flash? It's quite heavy at 1.1kg all-up in air, but still - this is a hefty claim. If true, I wonder how well it will handle the heat - it's hard to tell from photos alone, but the casing appears to be plastic rather than metal.

Nauticam used to offer it as an option for some cameras, but they discontinued it - maybe there wasn't enough demand, or maybe a supply chain issue. If you're using a Nauticam housing for your a6400, you might be able to find one of those power packs on the used market.

Sounds like it is set to advanced mode. Use the Metabones utility to switch it to green mode, and you should get C-AF, but you will lose video AF entirely.

Huh, that's odd... I've used a 7Artisans 7.5mm fisheye with the same dome, and while focusing was somewhat annoying (I padded out the focus ring with double-sided tape and used a 16-50mm zoom gear to focus), it was possible. Looking at specs, now, yeah... the 7Artisans 7.5mm lens is listed with 15cm minimum focus distance, whereas Samyang 8mm specs 30cm - that can certainly impair its function in small domes. Being a fisheye lens, you can't use a diopter either. Obviously no one has tested it in water before offering it for sale, although it might be okay for surf photography uses. Still not as silly as the optical bulkheads on their FX30 housing though.

They do seem to at least test for vignetting, as in some cases they note focal length limitation, but otherwise, yeah, they're not too concerned with proper lens positioning. Still, for a 180 degree fisheye lens, using a hemispherical dome, 'edge of vignetting' is pretty much the proper positioning. What exactly did you use that wouldn't focus at all? The only thing I've run into even remotely similar is 16-50mm lens with 4" dome - it works at shorter focal lengths, but fails to focus when zoomed in, as the dome is too small; the virtual image that it generates is too close for the camera for the lens to focus when using a longer focal length. Did you try to use a lens with a long minimum focus distance behind a similarly small dome?

I just looked through various Nauticam port charts, and it appears that the 8-15mm is gone from most of them - weird. Isotta is more helpful though. For Sony cameras with Canon 8-15mm, they spec a 40mm extension for bare lens, and 60mm for lens + TC. They also spec a 50mm extension for Sony 28mm prime with fisheye converter. Other wide-angle lenses, like the various flavors of Sony 16-35mm require longer extensions. On the SeaFrogs side, 8" dome port V.8 lists 28mm f/2 with fisheye converter as compatible, so it is probably close to Isotta's 50mm extension in terms of dome positioning, while V.9 and V.10 target various 16-35mm lenses and are likely too long. It's very unlikely to be an exact match, but it's probably in the ballpark. Fisheye lenses are generally somewhat tolerant of slight misalignments in dome positioning, so a bare 8-15mm has a good chance of working with it, but if the extension is slightly too long, it may vignette. If it does, then adding a teleconverter (make sure to use the latest version from Kenko) should lengthen the lens enough to get rid of the vignetting and give you a useful zoom range. In any case, you will most likely have to make your own zoom gear, as SeaFrogs support the Nikon 8-15mm (with Z6/Z7 housings) but not the Canon one. If you want, I can share a zoom gear that I made for Tokina 10-17mm on SeaFrogs A6700 in TinkerCAD - it should be the same as their plastic A7 series housings on the gear engagement side; you just need to tweak the height and internal diameter to fit the Canon 8-15mm. Edit: On the other hand, the SeaFrogs V.8 dome is also listed as compatible with Sony 10-18mm APS-C lens, which, on Isotta's charts, is listed as needing just 20mm of extension, which gives you an idea of SeaFeogs' level of precision there. Still, if the extension is too short, with a fisheye lens you might not even notice, and if it does become an issue, you can add a 23mm extension ring.

EF mount flange focal distance is 44mm, whereas E mount is 18mm, so the Metabones adapter fills the difference at 26mm.

Interesting - it looks like SeaFrogs offer a port and zoom gear for a 70-200 F4, although they don't specify whether it's a 1st or 2nd generation lens. Looking at wayback machine, this listing appeared quite recently, so it's likely to be the 2nd gen one, and the 4" diameter front element suggests that it should have the full zoom range without vignetting. I have to admit I'm kinda curious as to how it would perform... but not US$2000 level of curious.

I don't have a Divevolk housing to try and answer your first question, but as for the second, these crossbars are available on Aliexpress, example: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32934231664.html

Looks like third time was indeed the charm - now both ends appear to have a snug but not overly tight fit. As an added bonus, it turns out that if I use my old short macro port (originally meant for 16-50mm kit lens or 30mm macro) instead of the 4-inch dome, I get an absolutely perfect fit with the Canon EF-S 60mm macro lens: null This opens up the possibility of using the 60mm with wet lenses, such as attaching the UWL-09F to widen its field of view a bit for larger subjects on blackwater dives. Time to progress to the waterproof print iteration.