DreiFish

Thanks Phil. I think there's a place for both quick-and-dirty land tests that are easily repeatable to isolate some characteristics of the gear and field tests to really understand what the implications of those characteristics are in terms of the results you can achieve.

Perhaps below observation from Backscatter's HF-1 flash manual may help? I think it may be a setting issue on the A7R V. Note: For HSS use, Sony cameras must have the Shutter type be mechanical and e-front curtain shutter (if offered as an option) must be off. If these menu settings are not made banding may appear in the image, which will worsen with faster shutter speeds. This setting is not specific to the Hybrid Flash, this is for any Sony camera being used with a HSS compatible flash. Please see your Sony camera instruction manual for more details.

I think the comparison should be between the FCP and a fisheye zoom like the Canon 8-15mm + 2x TC behind a 140mm dome port. Not with a fixed focal length fisheye or one of the less extreme wet optics like WACP-1/2/C or WWL-1/C. Comparing the FCP to the 8-15 fisheye + TC, it's not at all clear to me that the FCP has any versatility advantages at all. The 8-15 + 2x TC covers similar range, perhaps with better image quality, and certainly with better depth of field. It's smaller and lighter, too. Only thing missing is a 1st-party zoom ring for this combination from Nauticam or other housing suppliers (AFAIK). So you have to determine the right port extension (70mm on Nauticam n120 I think) and make a custom zoom gear. But the end result is.. better, and much cheaper?

Sure... but less time is required if starting from an already decent starting point. And given how thin the codecs are on these cameras, a bad initial white balance is going to make it exceedingly hard to produce pleasing results even with color grading.

I took the time to read through the manual (available for download from Backscatter's article)while waiting for my HF-1 to arrive (getting kinda excited here... ) and noticed a few interesting tidbits not mentioned in the review article or video: Dimensions 1140g in air, -250g negative in water (with batteries) 94mm diameter, 162mm length HSS Note: Super FP/HSS reduces flash output compared to regular shooting. Only use it for close-up shooting. The flash will diminish the faster the shutter speed is set. Note: The Hybrid Flash has one output power in HSS mode. Changing the shutter speed to dial in the flash exposure is the recommended method for altering the flash in the image. Note: For HSS use, Sony cameras must have the Shutter type be mechanical and e-front curtain shutter (if offered as an option) must be off. If these menu settings are not made banding may appear in the image, which will worsen with faster shutter speeds. This setting is not specific to the Hybrid Flash, this is for any Sony camera being used with a HSS compatible flash. Please see your Sony camera instruction manual for more details. Pro Tip: If you primarily shoot in TTL flash mode it is recommended to use the SC mode (rather than HSS mode) on the Hybrid Flash to do HSS as there are no changes needed to switch from normal TTL operation to HSS operation. Remote Lighting Control (REM) Note: It is possible to use a Mini Flash 2 as a main flash to send signals to a Hybrid Flash or to receive signals from a remote strobe from a Hybrid Flash. Since there are only 7 power levels on a Mini Flash 2 and 12 power levels on a Hybrid Flash, only the top 7 power levels will be able to be used in remote operation when combining a Mini Flash 2 with a Hybrid Flash.

Not sure I agree with this.. even with a 180mm dome, the 14-35 is floaty at the front (if paired with a magnifying viewfinder), throwing the whole camera trim out of wack. You have to fight its tendency to turn nose up throughout the dive. That's simply not an issue with the wet optics. They're heavy out of the water, but in the water, they're only slightly negative, and they trim out much better, especially paired with a magnified viewfinder.

And just for comparison, putting the same Canon RF 14-35 behind the Nauticam WACP-1 and shooting at 24-28mm. Clearly not rectilinear anymore, but the corners are slight barrel distortion near the edges of the frame are slightly more pleasing to my eye, at least for shooting people.

Some examples of the extreme distortion you get when putting a subject too close to the edge of the frame at 14mm. The 10mm would only exacerbate that I imagine.

Ok, I'll bite. I haven't shot with the Canon RF 14-35 a lot, but I've done a few dives with it. Frankly, I find it a challenging perspective to shoot with (I definitely am much more comfortable with the 8-15mm fisheye), but I can . When shooting people (and I imagine other subjects), you have to be careful to keep them in the middle of the image. Anything too close to the edges becomes heavily distorted because of the extreme perspective. Here's a few samples at 14mm, between F13 and F16. Nothing I'd call inspirational, but at least it gives a flavor. I do prefer the rendering of straight lines inside wreck interiors. (keep in mind I was shooting it with a 30mm extension and 180mm dome, which Nauticam recommends a 40mm extension for. With the right extension and a 230mm dome, there may be some improvements in the corner image quality.

Open box, never used in water, only to run some tests on land to satisfy my curiosity. Comes with all the original accessories and box, so it's like getting a new strobe at a significant discount. If you're curious what the strobe can do, I've provided a balanced review with the test data here. $500 or best offer.

In my continuing set of strobe tests, I've now measured the Backscatter MF-2 strobes. Results (with the Inon S-220 as a comparison): And here is the beam pattern. Very narrow with no diffuser, but surprisingly wide with a diffuser. Above, the 2nd image with the diffuser is exposed brighter exposure to showcase beam spread and hotspotting. Here it is normalized at F22 ISO 100 so you can see just how much light you lose by using the diffuser. First image is the MF-2, second image is the Inon S-220 with its diffuser. Observations Color temperature is very close to daylight with the diffuser, and warmer than most other strobes even without the diffuser Beam coverage is very narrow without the diffuser -- really only suitable for macro With the diffuser, you could use these strobes for wide angle shots in a pinch, but you're losing 1 2/3 stops of light, so they're only GN8 strobes. Backscatter uses a pretty thick diffuser to make the very narrow beam wide. Comparing like for like with the Inon S-220s, they're a full 2 stops less bright with a diffuser. In HSS mode, you lose 1 2/3 stop of light at 1/250s and the situation only worsens if shooting at higher shutter speeds like 1/500, where you lose 2 2/3 stops of light. Recycling times are nothing to write home about at 12fps and 6fps, but you can shoot 3fps at the highest power of all strobes tested (matched with the Supe D-Pro, and 1/3 stop higher than the Marelux Apollo 3.) Overall, nice strobe for macro that can shoot wide angle in a pinch with the diffuser, but is much less bright than the INON s-220 and doesn't recycle as fast for 6fps or 12fps shooting.

The whole reason for CRI measurements is that the LEDs used in video lights don't produce the same full spectrum of colors found in halogen bulbs or sunlight. So the higher the CRI, the more 'natural' the light appears. LEDs have historically been very bright in some parts of the spectrum, but produced very little in other parts, like the reds. Strobes with their zenon tubes don't have this issue. All zenon strobes are essentially CRI 100. That's my understanding at least. Happy to be corrected and learn something new.

Probably there's some individual variance on what you consider "fine," but I've shot the GH5 on hundreds of dives, and my experience aligns with Dadide's. Yes, you can white balance to 100feet depths, but the results are anything but 'accurate". The internal white balance limitations don't allow you to get a neutral result right out of camera. You might be able to achieve something more aesthetically pleasing by color grading in post, but that's a significant time investment with its own limitations compared to what Canon cameras have been achieving for decades and Sony's more recent models since the A7S III can also now do.

Great idea! Could we broaden the topic at least and highlight some beautiful images taken with other extreme wide angle lenses, like those that can read 11 or 10mm focal length? There haven't been many such lenses around, but there are a few. It would be educational to see some of the results that can be achieved at such extreme focal length for inspiration and education.

Wow, Nikon definitely pulled out all the stops with this one. Though the dynamic range performance is a bit disappointing. I really hope that the introduction of RAW video recording in this and the recent GH7 push Sony and Canon to also include it in some of their upcoming mid-range (and, in Sony's case, even flagship) bodies!

I think it's useful when comparison shopping to understand what you get by paying 2x-3x the price. So this technical analysis is useful for me for that purpose, and may be useful to others also to identify the right strobe for more esoteric/individual needs (like size, color temperature, recycling times, etc). I really wish we could get similar numbers on some of the more expensive strobes like the Seacam 160Ds, OneUWs, and Hartenberger 270. So we can understand what we get for the 2-3x price uptick.

Depths between 10-20(30) meters, I would say. Most cameras are pretty reasonable with white balance down to 10m. And that was my experience as well with the GH5 -- it was fine down to about 12m or so, with or without a red filter. It's past that that the different manufacturer's implementation starts to materially differentiate.

While it's always healthy to be a bit skeptical of any content put out there by marketing departments and their influencer ecosystem, I do think that some of the comparison videos, especially the one from Aquatic linked above, do show stark contrasts in how well the Ace360 Pro and the DJI Action 4 handle white balance at depth. He also references his experiences with the GoPro quite extensively. White balance is one of the -- if not the -- key performance characteristics one should look for in an action camera (or any other camera) intended for use for shooting video underwater. Any improvements in this area are definitely welcomed!

I finished my testing (except for continuous fire mode -- still waiting on new flash trigger to determine highest GN at which you can shoot 6fps continuously). It's a pretty quirky strobe to be honest. Powerful, but quirky. Here are the measured numbers: Observations: The optical sensor requires a lot of power to trigger. It doesn't work with Nauticam's manual trigger, regardless of the fiber optic cable I used. I was only able to get it to work with a UW Technics trigger (not all the time) and a Seafrog flash trigger (manual, brand agnostic and works in most housings ) that I use as a cheap backup The flash power progression is just weird. It's a manual strobe, and only has 9 power settings, but the power progression is not at all linear, which makes it hard to use. Settings 8 and 7 serve limited purpose, as they only go down .1 stop each from full power. You have to dial down all the way to 5 to reduce strobe power in half, and from there the next two clicks each drop one full stop or more. This makes it basically impossible in my view to get fine tuned settings . You can think of it as a strobe with only 5 real power settings, and each is one stop apart. That would take some getting used to and doesn't get you the same fine-grained control that pretty much every other strobe gives. Flash sync speed is 1/300s at full power, which is ok, but not great. The good news is that by dialing down to setting 6, you only lose 1/3 stop of output, but the flash duration more than halves to 1/800s. So.. it's both a slow strobe at full power, and a fast strobe at 1/3 stop below full power. Not bad. Recycling times for 3 fps (limit for the Seafrogs trigger) is very good. You can shoot 3 fps at GN 12.6, which is better than the Marelux Apollo 3, YS-D3 and Inon S-220. That's promising. I'm waiting to test 6fps and 12fps, but the manufacturer advertises that you can only achieve 10fps at the lowest setting, which is the worst result of the bunch. I'll update once I test more. So overall, I think this strobe is priced just about right.. it's not so expensive, and has some obvious pluses (decent power, wide, even beam, short flash duration, good recycling times, good battery capacity -- it's a proprietary Lithium Ion battery pack made up of 3 18650 batteries, just like the Marelux Apollo 3. Downsides include manual only, weak optical slave sensor, compromised dial to control power output, and inconsistent high speed shooting performance. I'll be putting mine up for sale if someone wants to snag one at a discount. Basically brand new in its original box with all the materials. Never used in water -- just for these tests. $500 OBO.

Not if what you're trying to do is reduce ambient light, and especially reduce it in proportion to the amount of strobe light (which is what you try to do in a wide angle sunburst scenario #2 that Chris described.) On most cameras, you can't go below ISO 100 natively. Even if you can (Nikon likes to use ISO 64 base on its higher-level cameras), it also reduces strobe power by the same amount as the ambient light. This is not to say, as Phil correctly points out, that HSS is useless. It does have its uses in some edge cases, more common in macro than wide angle shooting. It is, indeed, a tool in the arsenal. But you shouldn't think of it as negating the advantages of a camera that can achieve a higher native flash sync speed. A higher native flash sync speed is also a tool in the arsenal that can make getting certain shots (sunball shots, primarily) a bit easier in challenging conditions.

Exactly this. The main gains from HSS come in scenario #2, where you're shooting macro at wide apertures (in bright ambient light) and want to use a faster shutter speed to block out ambient light and darken the background. The benefit for scenario #1 (wide angle sunburst) is simply not there, at least not at narrow apertures between F13-F16 as you would have to use on full frame, because you already need to operate your flash at or near maximum power, and making the flash pulse in HSS mode will inevitably reduce its power. I've tested this empirically by shooting the Marelux Apollo 3s at 1/200s in both normal (manual) mode and HSS mode using the Canon R6 II, which has a max flash sync speed of 1/200s in mechanical shutter mode (1/250s in electronic first curtain). The HSS mode is 2/3 of a stop less flash output. So with the Sony example, the A7R V at 1/250s F11 lets say will have a 2/3 stop disadvantage in terms of clamping down ambient light compared to the A1 shooting the same scene at 1/400s F11 using the same strobes. If you try to combat this by putting the A7R V in HSS mode and matching the settings of the A1 (1/400s F11), not only will you get less flash power on your foreground subject than you would with the A1, but you probably will get less flash illumination than if you had stuck to normal mode at 1/250s. This is true even with relatively short flash duration strobes like the Apollo 3s (1/350s flash duration). The place where HSS might be useful for wide angle is if you're shooting at very wide apertures like F4 or F5.6 (on m4/3s or with a wet optic like the WACP-1 or WACP-2 on full frame) in shallow, very bright ambient light conditions and you absolutely need to close the shutter speed down to 1/500s or 1/1000s to get the deeper background exposure you're after. Here, you should still have plenty of flash power even at ISO 100, so you can afford to sacrifice some to HSS. Using HSS for typical wide angle shooting scenarios where you're at F8 or narrower aperture doesn't benefit you in any way It's in fact counterproductive. There are still advantages to having cameras with higher native flash sync speeds. Though perhaps limited benefit to ones that have flash sync speeds above 1/600s like the Sony A9 Mark III, because to my knowledge there's no strobes with a flash duration at full power shorter than 1/600s.

From the specs and reviews, it looks like a nice, very capable camera. Almost makes me wish I'd stuck with m4/3 instead of moving to full frame... but actually the size and weight difference is not so much with the right lenses and dome choices, and you do get an image quality improvement on full frame. One very important question for video is how the GH7 handles white balance at depth. My old GH4 was pretty bad, the GH5 only ok. Has Panasonic caught up, or is it still behind Canon and Sony in this area?

I've finally gotten around to testing the INON S-220, and the results really surprised me. Despite its size, it's a really capable wide angle strobe that can (almost) keep up with the likes of the Sea & Sea YS-D3 and even best (coming close to the Marelux Apollo 3) it when it comes to continuous shooting. Color Temperature: 6400k (no diffuser); 6100k (soft diffuser); 5350k (4600k filter) Flash Duration: 1/350s full power; 1/640s at half power; 1/1000s at quarter power Flash Power (measured in air) and compared to the Marelux Apollo 3 and Sea & Sea YS-D3 So as you can see, it's only about 2/3 stop less bright than the YS-D3 with no diffuser, and similar in power with its soft diffuser as the YS-D3 with the dome diffuser. Flash recycling is also impressive -- it can shoot continuous action at higher power outputs than the YS-D3, and almost as well as the Marelux Apollo 3. The interesting thing is that the flash seems to fire before the capacitor fully recharges, so when shooting in continuous mode, you get 2-3 shots near full power, then the power gradually tapers down 2/3 of a stop or so and stabilizes, which means the pictures are still usable. I measured the power output at the end of a series of 20 shots in the table below. Had I used the first shot in the series, it would be even higher. Finally, the beam pattern. Here it is, first with no diffuser, then soft diffuser, and then with the 4600k filter. The 4600k filter doesn't really diffuse the light at all, so it's not, IMO, a good option for wide angle shooting. And here is the YS-D3 without diffuser and with flat diffuser for comparison. To me, there's not a lot of difference between the Inon S-220 with soft diffuser and the YS-D3 with flat diffuser.

Nicholas Remy's review has a detailed section addressing the depth of field issue. It's definitely less than with a fisheye lens. https://theunderwaterclub.com/blog/nauticam-fisheye-conversion-port-fcp-field-review/

I have the D-Pro. I started testing it, but only got half-way because of some issues with my flash trigger (waiting on a replacement). Anyway, I can share a few technical details: 1. Flash duration at full power is 1/300s. So.. not fast, but adequate. 2. Color temperature unmodified is 6400k 3. Guide number (in air) is GN20. 4. Beam is nice, wide, without hotspots (as you would expect from a circular flash tube strobe). Here's a photo, and next two are the YS-D3 (dome diffuser, also GN20) and Marelux Apollo 3 (no diffuser, GN29)