DreiFish

Is there a link to the full specs? The recycling time improvement is a bit disappointing. Has anyone measured what the new Retras are capable of in terms of high speed recycling for action shots? What power do you need to be at to get 3, 5, 6, 10fps?

On the lists of things to test when I have time again, probably in 2 weeks when I'm back from Mexico. Might. be a bit tricky to measure. I believe Interceptor 121 did this for the Nauticam Sony housings at some point? If so, it would be easy to estimate adding 35mm (for the n100-n120 port adapter) to that. How else would I measure that? I have a caliper.. I guess I could do lens mount to front of housing with that or a ruler and add the manufacturer's flange distance. Do housing manufacturers share this information anywhere? It's not on OpticalBench yet. This is what I've pulled so far from OpticalBench. And from housing manufacturers documentation. All tests were done at F13 for consistency and expediency (otherwise I had to adjust the strobe power to take a series at different apertures. Took too long 🙂. I may do some expanded testing later at different apertures. For instance, the RF14-35 did clean up a bit in the corners at F16, but lost center resolution. I have the WWL-C and RF 24-50 I will eventually test as well. Yes, corrected.

Finally, the RF 15-30. 15mm, F13, ISO 100. With the 180mm dome, it needs a similar extension to the RF14-35, just slightly shorter. Here it is at 30mm, 40mm, and 50mm. At 50mm it already vignettes, but the entrance pupil has already been moved forward past the center of curvature. 40mm puts the entrance pupil behind center of curvature. At 40mm it is a bit closer to the correct placement than the RF14-35. This lens probably also needs a 230mm dome, but 45mm should be about right with the 180mm dome and shouldn't vignette much. (Incidently, Nauticam recommends 30mm, which is clearly wrong. 40mm is better) Center and corner crops at 40mm. Center resolution is not as good as the RF14-35 or Laowa 10mm, probably because the lens itself is not as good, but on par with the RF16.. Corner is better than the Laowa 10mm, RF16 and RF 14-35 though.

Now the RF 14-35 F4 L zoom, at 14mm. All pictures again at F13, ISO 100. The lens sits too far back from the center of curvature with the 180mm dome. Here it is with a 30mm, 40mm (what Nauticam recommends for 180mm dome), and 50mm extension. Even 50mm is slightly too short, but already at this point it's vignetting heavily. I think this lens needs to be used with a 230mm dome, the 180mm doesn't have enough field of view. Best compromise if you're set on using it with the 180mm dome would be a 45mm extension I guess, but you might get vignetting even then. 100% crops from the center and corner with 40mm extension. The center is a bit better than the RF16 prime but not as good as the Laowa. The corner is much better than the Laowa but kinda on par with the RF16 prime (which is behind a 140mm dome)

Contrast with the Laowa 10. With no extension, it vignets slightly, but it's only the dome shade (which was designed with the more limited vertical field of view of a fisheye lens in mind). If you remove the shade, you should be able to get the full field of view. I tried also with a 20mm extension, but that produced very significant vignetting inside the port. Notice the lines are almost straight above the water. Just sligtly smaller. Basically, you would get perfect placement with a 2mm extension. Maybe a 10mm extension could work, but then the entry pupil would be too far back of the center of curvature of the dome, so image quality would likely not improve. Center resolution is better than the RF 16mm prime or the EF 8-15, but the corners.. well, they're pretty bad.

Now, the RF 16mm prime. All shots at F13, ISO 100. Unfortunately, this lens is not great for underwater. Nauticam recommends no extension at all, and I tried that with the 140mm dome. But because the lens is so short, the entry pupil is quite a bit further than where the lens sits even with no extension rings, and there's no way to improve it. Center resolution is not bad. Corner (or, really, more like edge resolution) is not as good.

I wanted to test to see the correct port extension for various wide angle lenses with the 140mm fisheye dome and 180mm wide angle dome for the Nauticam N120 full frame system. I also wanted to compare resolution of the different lenses and how the position of the lens and the size of the dome impacted the resolution. Lenses tested: Canon EF 8-15mm Fisheye Zoom Canon EF 8-15mm Fisheye Zoom + 2x TC Canon RF 14-35F4 L Zoom Canon RF 15-30 Zoom Canon RF 16mm Prime Laowa 10mm Prime All tests done with the Canon R5C. Here's the test rig setup -- a chessboard to see if the straight lines continue straight above the water (to determine if port extension is too long or too short), with some paper bills glued to it to eyeball resolution. I haven't gone through all the photos yet, but already some interesting findings. 1. EF 8-15mm zoom needs something like a 35mm extension with the 140mm dome, not the 30mm extension recommended by Nauticam. Here's the first image at 30mm, and the second at 40mm. You can see 30mm puts the entry pupil in front of the center of curvature of the dome, while the 40mm extension puts it slightly behind, and vignettes as a result. Here are the same images de-fished to highlight the effect. Look at the above-water portion. If the entry pupil is exactly in the center of curvature of the dome, the lines should continue straight above water. If it's too far forward, the above water portion appears smaller. If too far back, it appears bigger. 40mm extension is almost correct, so I'd guess 37-38mm is what would be perfect. Of course, the problem is (as shown above) that it vignettes, and removing the dome shade wouldn't fix the issue. It vignettes on the inside of the dome. A 35mm extension thus might be the best compromise -- or 38mm with a wider port, like Marelux's 125mm diameter ports. The incorrect placement of the entry pupil doesn't have much of an effect on the center sharpness (30mm on left, 40mm on right). Microcontrast might be a bit better though with the 40mm extension. But there is a noticable improvement with the longer port when it comes to the corners. More to come.

Can’t fit the R5 body in an R6Ii housing unfortunately. Not even close.

Thanks Chris!

Are the version II extension rings backwards compatible with the original extension rings? (n120)? Can you mix and match them? I'm thinking of getting a 25mm extension ring to complement my 20. 30, and 40mm rings to be able to fine tune port length in 5mm increments from 20-95mm. . But I recently purchased the Nauticam Extension Ring 10 Version II and I can't seem to get it to work with any of the other original rings and dome ports I have. Is that an issue unique to the 10mm extension ring? Common to all Version II rings? Or am I just doing it wrong?

Basically, I'd interpret those results (similar to Interceptor121's conclusions in this 2013 post) to conclude that the Magic filter is nothing more than a 1 1/2 strength CTO filter (orange filter, which filters out blue light), whereas the UR PRO is a combination of a slightly stronger CTO filter (perhaps a CTO 2) combined with a minusgreen (magenta) filter since it also filters out some of the greens. My hypothesis is that you can get a very similar result to the UR PRO filter by taking a Magic Filter and stacking it with a 1/8 or 1/4 or maybe 1/2 minusgreen filter to it. Or, indeed, if just working with Lee or Rosco gels, you could replicate the attenuation properties of the UR PRO filter by stacking the appropriate strength CTO and Minusgreen gels. I ordered some Minusgreen gels from B&H Photo Video that should arrive later this week and I have CTO gels on hand. I also have Magic and UR Pro filters lying around somewhere in my closet. Time permitting, I can try to validate my hypothesis with some test data later in the week. Other random observations: You can test the color temperature of the Backscatter 4300 torch just as you did -- by illuminating a white target and taking the measurement in lightroom. Looks like it's actually closer to 5000k than 6000k, which is good. The brownish color cast the UR Pro produces (rendering green as brown) is probably what makes it aesthetically appealing. It eliminates unnatural color cast from skin tones and sand, which makes the whole image appear more neutral (if desaturated) and natural. I actually try for a similar end result when processing my photos in Lightroom by desaturating the aqua channel and shifting the hue of green towards yellow-brown.

Thanks David! I guess I could stretch the budget a bit to the Bamboo X1 Carbon also if there's a point. It's currently on sale for $1049.

Thanks for the input, Isaac! Sounds like FDM may be the way to go, at least for initial learning curve, and consider resin later down the line. Are there any FDM printers you (or others) would recommend to start out with, especially with the mindset that it should have the flexibility to print materials that can be waterproof? Budget is $1000. Another thought -- how about adding SLS technology to the comparison? Is it the best of both worlds for the use cases outlined in original post? Or would an SLS printer be completely out of budget and thus not worth considering? (I just found out I have access to a CNC machine at work -- no idea about 3d printers -- so maybe I'll stick with with FDM for now and buy some time on our CNC machines for more interesting metal or derlin projects once I have the design worked out)

Hi, I'm a noob when it comes to 3d printing, but considering purchasing my first printer to make various parts like zoom gears, ports/port extensions, and floats. From reading through some of the threads here, there seems to be a theme that making anything that needs to be waterproof like ports/port extensions and floats require quite a bit of experimentation to identify right printing material and settings for FDM printers. My question is whether going down the SLA resin-based printing route eliminates this concern? Are resin-based prints inherently better at resisting water intrusion and achieving better structural resistance to water pressure?

Well.. .life interfered (newborn)and I got lazy. I don't do as much diving these days and the prospect of investing the time to film a meaningful sequence and edit it is a bit daunting 🙂 So yes, mostly taking photos these days. There's something satisfying about getting a single 'wow' shot rather than trying to splice together something that tells a story. Probably I'll return to video some day, but for now enjoying wide angle photography very much.