Davide DB

Wow terrific tutorials! Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask! You want to arrive prepared for your blackwater. You're a guy who does his homework 😄

I don't have much experience with gopros a few family vacations apart. As I said I started using them as video traps for trouts. We have several GP11s a couple of old GP5s. Well I have to tell you that two GP5/GP11s placed side by side in murky water 1 meter deep on a tripod eventually have less image difference than you would expect between 6 generations of cameras. We need 50p and so the GP5 films in 2.7K@50p and the GP11 films in 4K @50p with the GoPro Labs FW and bitrate at maximum. Yet once I rescale the 2.7K to 4K with Topaz or Resolve and apply color grading, you struggle to see the difference between the two. Of course the GP11's stabilization is impressive but for my use on the tripod I keep it off to save battery. What I find really annoying in water is the distortion/loss of quality at the corners despite using the linear FOV. That's why I was interested in the wet lens. Don't get me wrong, probably under ideal conditions there is a world of difference but under less than ideal conditions the small sensor struggles even after all these years.

Truly a remarkable career. You are perfect for this community even though you are from the matrix 😄 Welcome aboard!!!

We list here all the 3D printing projects for our toys that have been made or tested by our members. Given the huge amount of 3D printed projects on the net that often do not yield the desired results, we will add here only the working and tested projects. Housings Nauticam NA-Z7 Housing Conversion for Nikon Z6/Z7 II Plugs & Connectors Fibre Optic Cables? Make your own.... Fiberglass Connector Fisheye Fix S100 Fiber optic connector attachment Connector for 3 mm inner diameter POF fiber optic cable Floating Arms Float arm construction in 3D printing Zoom and Focus Gears Adapter for Nauticam focus gears for the Canon 8-15mm and the Tokina 10-17mm fisheyes for use on MFT with 1x glassless adapter Nauticam Zoom Gear for Nikon 16-35mm lens (see also this post) Nauticam Zoom Gear for Nikon 24-50mm Z lens (see also this post) Nauticam Zoom Gear for Panasonic Lumix G Vario 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II ASPH Mega O.I.S. Canon 8-15 on Nauticam OM-1 Zoom gear using housing control Nauticam Zoom Gear for the Sony 28-60 in a Nauticam N100 housing Strobes Snoot for Inon Z330 (small version) Snoot with a diaphragm for a Retra flash Diffuser for Inon Z330 strobe Backscatter MF-1 and MF-2 strobe power knob modification Modular Bumper and Macro Reduction Ring system for Backscatter HF-1 strobes Tripods flexitray adaptor with integrated Swiss arca plate Caps Nauticam N120 Housing Male Cap Nauticam N120 Port Female Cap 67mm Cap with a Nauticam Logo Nauticam N100 Port Female Cover (Rear Port Cap) Semi Hard Port Cover for Nauticam 180mm Dome Nauticam WWL-1 lens back cap Hood and cap for Nauticam MFO-1, SMC and CMC lenses Other Parts NP-F Battery Holder Holder for Nauticam Hand Pump for Vacuum Valve Action Cam Mount for Long Clamp Carbonarm 1" Ball Mount for Suunto EON Core - Dive Computer Keldan 4 battery case

Which model?

please, don't tell me you are the guy who designed that 12-35 mm zoom gear 🙃 Jokes apart, it would be nice having a post here with all open sourced zoom and focus gears that have been proven to work. A list of links on Thingiverse or other platforms accompanied with some notes from our members...

I wouldn't be so extreme but certainly getting one that works is not an easy thing to do. For my WWL I am forced to use a Panasonic 14-42 mm. An EOL piece of plastic that can be found used even for 80 euros. The nauticam zoom gear costs twice as much as the lens. There is clearly something wrong with it 🙂

I'm with Dave. Years ago I printed, through a friend, a zoom gear for the Lumix 12-35 mm taken from Thingiverse. It was on its third revision with several positive comments. On land it looked ok but in the housing it got stuck several times ruining two dives for me. The wrong movement even managed to move the camera body out of the housing plate. Some buttons pressed themselves and the camera frozen. I tried printing it with different materials and then threw it away. Effectively looking back at the original Nauticam they were like night and day. Nevertheless I think the original gears are a real steal and finally I bought two gears from https://www.deepshots.co.uk/pages/deepshots-gear-information They used to print them for different brands while now I see they have them for Olympus and Lumix only. If you are lucky to find the model for your lens, they are a great compromise. They don't cost a kidney and work great.

Wow! Looking forward to see some underwater photos of the Highlands Ciao

A smart solution 😄

I discovered later that a Norwegian biologist is conducting a citizen science campaign on these critters.

On December 30, I took the last dive of the year and ended 2023 on a high note by filming this very special creature swimming under the boat in 10 meters of water. I'm in Tuscany, Italy, in the Mediterranean sea. Initially I had misidentified it by mistaking it for a Siphonophore but then, thanks to the report of a biologist I found out that it is a very rare salp. Helicosalpa virgula. Species within the genus Helicosalpa are pelagic tunicates with keg-shaped solitary zooids and aggregate zooids in chains (not whorls). They are also among the most rarely collected salps, with most observations from subtropic and tropic regions. Pictures and videos of live, aggregate helicosalp species in situ is rare. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341934517_Encounters_with_the_rare_genus_Helicosalpa_Chordata_Thaliacea_Salpida_using_citizen_science_data Sea temperatures are rising. 2023 was terrible for us, and 2024 does not bode well. The temperature at the bottom is 14 degrees Celsius, which is normal for these places, but in the first few meters we still have a small thermocline of a couple of degrees. As a result, the surface water is murky because of sediment brought in by streams and rains, and there is very good visibility at the bottom, typical of the summer months. However, even in not the best visibility, it was worth filming this alien 😄

First data of 2024. We're gonna need a bigger Y axis. More than 90 percent of the heat absorbed by our planet ends up in the oceans. This is easily observed by the surface temperature of the oceans, shown in this figure. Shown here is the surface temperature of the oceans measured between latitudes 60 north and 60 south. We note that ocean temperature today is higher than 20 or 40 years ago (lighter lines on the graph). Its variation depends on seasonal phenomena but also on ocean mechanisms that last several years, such as the ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) oscillation, which, in the two extremes called El Niño and La Niña leads to warmer or colder ocean temperatures, respectively. But annual climate change is leading to more intense El Niño phenomena, as seen in the 2023 line, which is almost half a degree higher than "normal" temperatures (indicated by the gray region around the mean)! Source: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ Text: https://chpdb.it/_climate_dash/index.php#sst_NS60 Some Italian scientists have created this Climate Change dashboard updated daily automatically and in Italian. The data comment on themselves but it is easy to translate the rest with Google.

That article terrified me. Moisture aside, I keep the lenses to grow mushrooms perfectly 😄 Do any of you use silica gel bags in your lens drawers?

Yep. IMHO too expensive. I've put a desiderata on Abebooks and I'm confident to find it shortly below 20 euro 😉

Because of the popularity of blackwater diving, I suggest you this beautiful photo book. Quoting from the author Erich Hoyt website: When people hear the word “migration,” they think of animals that move from a feeding area to a breeding area and back each year. But the greatest migration on Earth happens twice every night. The movement is largely vertical and performed by plankton followed by predatory fish, squid, octopus and other species that have acquired a taste for plankton. The migration starts deep in the waters of the ocean at sunset. As they move, the plankton nibble on plant plankton and other tasty morsels in the water and, eventually, some on each other. The feeding ends just before dawn when the plankton retreat to the depths of the ocean to hide during the day until the next evening, when they migrate back up the water column. In Planktonia, Erich Hoyt invites readers to dive into the dazzling nighttime ocean. Countless microscopic plankton — larval creatures such as ornate ghost pipefish, left-handed hermit crabs and bony-eared assfish — ascend to the upper waters to feed, returning to the depths before sunrise. These tiny planktonic creatures are delicate and beautiful; some look terrifying; and most look nothing like the creatures they will become as adults. This great vertical migration attracts larger adult creatures, too, from the solitary 6-inch (15 cm) bigfin reef squid and the fierce and hungry 6 1/2 foot (2 m) female blanket octopus, which is up to 40,000 times heavier than her male mate. Everyone comes here for the midnight feast, and they are all ravenously hungry. The book can be bought online on many stores.

We are happy to have you among us. Welcome!

Looking forward to see some video from your partner. Judging by social media, it seems that blackwater has become a real fashion. By now, photographs are everywhere. Given the number of people practising them around the world, their contribution to science by identifying new species or unknown larval forms should not be overlooked.

Hi Ann, Welcome aboard!

I'm happy you join us!

Hi Andy, welcome onboard! North UK dive sites? Tell us more. Is it seasonal diving?

It seems perfect for the intended use and good for blackwater too. Really good price.

Were you tethered?

I don't know how exactly they do it in places where blackwater is a business. I've read several reports but devil is in the details. If I were to do one with friends, I would hang the line with lights from a large, well-marked floating buoy and leave the boat free to follow the buoy. Or if I wanted to hang the lighted line from the boat, I would have to use a floating anchor that would hold it to travel with the current.