RomiK

As well as Nauticam X6 replaces lenses. Different distortion so stitching can work out the housing thickness and also mainly much closer focus to be able to have virtual image produced by the housing in focus. It also means that above water nothing except of very very close to housing is somewhat in focus. Now Nauticam replacement lens is built into the housing, into their glass port. With X6 you get separate lenses. The pool samples show that up close Nauticam with X5 is much much sharper. In the distance it may be up to camera sensitivity as X6 shown better contrast and resolution from like 1M on. X6 will not and cannot fit in X5 housing but anyone having X5 housing may have little incentives to jump onto X6 if they have camera mounted on DPV. For me and placement on camera housing lighter X6 package makes more sense.

nono, there are stitches alright, just invisible. In 3:17 he holds cam on invisible stick in his left hand. So the stitches go right across the frame. They did really good job with this second gen of housing. Still very much different optically from Nauticam case as you can also see from my pool test. Nauticam top x6 bottom. This from 20cm.

One would think the story is clear but it is not :-) In short glass is glass and these are two different tools for different jobs. I am on my way to Maldives to see what the X6 is going to be about and on the meantime I am posting two lab shots. One at couple centimeters from the pad and one at like 60cm. This may not be the whole story as after Maldives I will have ocean samples from X5 in Pro and Nauticam cases and X6 in Pro case. And then we will see.

great! we will all be interested in your experiences with this one! As for myself I went with Wed5Pro in the meantime but again - it will be great to hear other monitors experiences.

Ah yes 🙈 sometimes my mind races ahead of fingers 🤣

Now THIS is going to be interesting! Insta360: uses special lenses to accommodate underwater use price around EUR180 PROS: probably thought of underwater use also after working with Nauticam to accommodate their X5 experiment (I should know :-) ) CONS: can't use it above water for like zodiac rides, before/after dive clips etc., does only 8k50 Osmo360 II similar large dome design as Insta360 does not use special lenses BUT claims optical convex port (whatever that means) and minimum stitching distance of 1m priced at about EUR70 (500HKD plus taxes...) PROS: can use it topside AND underwater, does 8K60 CONS: we have no idea WHEN it will be available and what that optical convex mean and what will be image quality Both have 10bit and both shoot LOG so I say we will be in for a treat for documentation and instagram purposes. It will NOT replace latest 4k action cams, their footage is still miles better then any of those two 360 wonders. Nauticam NA-X5 will still probably keep optical crown, can't really replace glass with plastic for sharpness and micro contrast but also it is heavy and really not meant to be placed on camera housing. Excited! Which one will you choose? PS you can see demo of NA-X5 results in low light and pure video mode on my YouTube channel. When I compared that with Malpelo footage (similar light conditions but plastic PRO case) the results the glass dome produced were really much better. https://youtu.be/PPfFBkMplRw?si=fGmbi80gbbGhquGP

That (replaceable) lenses is actually a good thing. It means that when they designed the underwater use was in mind and it wasn't just an afterthought. With Nauticam housing your lenses get replaced too although they are like built into the housing :-). This and low light performance differences made me to order one. And if it comes till next Friday I put it to test in Maldives :-)

Stationary in current - holding me wedged between the rocks - keeping distance swimming in parallel - guiding me :-) It all depends on shooting style. If someone (like Mustard) is using viewfinder exclusively then he is not getting into these situations because if there is no viewfinder position there is no framing and no shot. Then of course they can swear by BBF as they would rarely get into one hand or extended hands awkward angle situations. But for me I find myself doing gymnastics or sprinting underwater and so using BBF is impractical. Like try to catch up with this guy and frame the shot using viewfinder... and no he was not coming to me to check me out 😆

guys ( @Architeuthis @Clifton ) , I am able bodied right hand male with Nauticam housing. So I am not talking about left handed big hands small hands... I am talking about situations where I keep my camera extended in one (right) hand and using external monitor (forget viewfinder or built in monitor for these situations) I am framing and executing the shot. Now think through how you hold your Nauticam housing and where your back button lever is and imagine holding the grip, using back button lever and executing shutter at the same time. Not going to happen. And besides since camera is moving respective to subject all the time one has to rely on C-AF anyway. Then all BBF issue is a moot point. At least in my humble opinion.

BBF is quite a disadvantage in awkward angle situations. With external monitor help my eye and hands can frame the shot. But human hand ergonomics just don't agree with housings BBF buttons. So as a rule I do not use it.

During an underwater WB research I was scouring my archives and something struck my eyes - I was seeing similar images from GH5S I was using previously and A1 I am using now. And so I took two images from the same location and tried to play with these. And what can I say - I see little - like none - difference between 12Mpix from lowly micro4/3 Panasonics and glorified full frame 48mpix Sony A1 sensors. Like dynamic range, colors, sensitivity, noise... Yes they do have different IQ as how to measure interpret RGB gains for white balance but after processing they can look remarkably similar. I was always thrilled what I was getting from that little m4/3 dual gain sensor but after switching to A1 I just didn't play with them. But now it seems if I use supersize feature of Lightroom I am getting identical images. The Leica glass is SHARP! And I only had lowly acrylic dome for it. Unlike the glass 180 I have for Sony. Anyway see for yourselves. This bow of Salem Express is photographed at about 25m depth. Part of splatting project. 300% crops

Let's see... until we get that thing under water we won't know. Analyzing metadata of raw stills from my GH5S and Sony A1 I found that both will get their max RGB gains a bit differently yet they can provide comparable pictures. Like RGB gains for GH5S / A1 for one scene are R = 5.90 / 8.81 G = 1.00 / 1.00 B = 1.28 / 1.01 and for the rest of similar 20-30m depth images it was similar so it was probably max for both cameras. And (not surprisingly) 10-bit log footage gave more or less similar outputs (I have to do video about this). So back to FX5 CWB it depends on how will they identify neutral target and whether they will into account other parts of scene or not. Algorithms. And lastly how will that (presumably different from A7R6) sensor intelligence be able to interpret extreme R gains required in greater depths? Perhaps @Alex_Mustard could provide some ambient extreme CWB A7R6 image for download for meta analysis?

Here the moment reviewer describes new CWB process, it is 44:54 mark

So I think that quote below sums it up perfectly Options are not a must, they are to be selected from based on needs. Slog3 has the largest color space from profiles offered on Sony cameras and so it is indispensable if: shooting ambient light with CWB and/or planning on HDR delivery Because it has the largest color space it offers largest room for color correction and unifying color look of multiple clips. It is advisable to shoot not fixed ETTR (+1.7 etc.) but to shoot based on waveforms as high as you can. Noise lives in shadows they say and with this approach it will become a non issue even at ISO32000 (max for my A1) which in Slog3 corresponds to like ISO 8000 in standard profile. But if you shoot with artificial lights with AWB then above mentioned doesn't mean that much except of it protects your highlights a bit more. But you could also expose for the highlights (think of reflections) and see what shadows will do. I must say after I switched to Davinci from FCPX my slog footage started to look much better. Now only figure out bullet proof HDR delivery for social networks. What you see on my instagram is often not what I see on my monitor as I try to deliver in Dolby Vision (insta doesn't take HDR10+ as YT does) and often it (i) fails :-) But when it doesn't it is awesome.

Guys, my question about CWB of FX5 wasn't as much about the mechanical process and how to hold the card (although that play role too) as about how and from what camera calculates it. Right now from brief mentions I found (and silly me there was FX5 in showroom near me couple days ago) it looks as if it calculates WB from the entire scene. Pretty much like Canon as recently as R5 did it from capturing the photo. Unlike your A7SIIIs and my A1 and somebody else's FX3s and R5iis where you have square box that you simply point at the middle of your white cards. So imagine 25m depth, colors disappeared, you have your white slate in the frame together with some white corrals in the back and now camera needs to calculate the RGB gains and how is it going to decide... Yes, shooting raw has greater flexibility but as you know from shooting raw images, which have far more flexibility than raw video, if you start on bad footing you are not going to catch it in post. Like shooting ambient in 25m on AWB good luck then in Lightroom... And so in cinema OS on fx6 you are supposed to zoom in and fill the frame with that slate. Which is like impossible with wide angle lens unless you carry a sail underwater :-) But FX5 presumably does not require that and analyze whole scene so that comes back to Canon's way of doing things in the past and its accuracy and challenges. And I am not even bringing out the fact that at depths we are at extended unpublished WB territories where cameras somehow calculate RGB gains but then only say "above 9900K" and "red max" 🤣