RomiK

If you haven't had chance to visit and dive this iconic shipwreck now you can. In 2023 I took about 550 pictures of it with the aim to create a panorama. Which I did and it was a painful process in photoshop. And there were major problems with parallaxes of items on superstructure. Fast forward to 2026 and AI powered 3DGS allowed me to reuse these images and look what is the result. So now have to come back (actually coming next week) to take more imagery of the superstructure part which is always in shade. And hope for the best :-). In the meantime enjoy this preview. https://superspl.at/scene/23b971fc

Ok, so this is a platform where we sought CC - constructive criticism :-) right? So please dont hate me :-): OMG THIS IS TERRIBLE DESIGN!! The drag on that thing must be insane! Plus I cant imagine doing angle shots with the buoyancy distribution like this either. So that was the ugly part and now the constructive part :-) A good balanced rig which does not fight should have all major mass elements neutrally buoyuant in all directions if possible. The camera, the monitor, the lights. The Lights - Keldan sells - and it may be possible to make your own - buoyancy collars. I did this for my wife's phone rig but the designs are numerous. Then the camera - and the monitor as these kinds - unlike these in (nauticam) housings which are neutral (or even positive) - they are negative 300-750g - so we need to compensate them as a whole. And so what is the purpose of these rails anyway? To achieve posterior balance during capture to limit up and down wobble which these short body long nose rigs are prone to. To achieve this we dont need to add weights. We need to add neutrally buoyant MASS. It is the velocity of the mass which will make rig stable in that direction. Side to side wobble we manage with handles but up/down? Yes that's what adding mass along longitudal axis will do. The housing with the dome port should be front light - less with glass or more with acrylic. So what is the best way to counter this without adding extra weight? Place your monitor on the port behind the handles axis yes? If you still need balance weight after this which I suppose you do depending on the monitor weight and really want the rails then I recommend to focus on my bracket above and the rail - it is carbon fiber 15mm from the video rigs and they also do aluminium. These weighs next to nothing in the water so if you 3D print (or just use a strong plastic plate) a base plate underneath the camera and attach the rails to that plate underneath your cameta you get the suport structure to which ends you can further add floats or weights as needed and achieve desired longitudinal stability. All that with minimum amount of added weight so you dont have to compensate it with these insane floaties. What could also help to make the body/monitor combo neutral would be a buoyancy plate attached to the monitor as some monitors are very heavy. This one above is weefine which is like -300g but some of them ale like -750g which would be better to address with plate. Because without it the monitor weight up top will fight at angles. I have seen monitors mounted in the back - like Nauticam mount they sell - but I find this problematic as it obscure access to buttons so when changing frame rates of CWB or anything its just not the best. Yet another food for thought is that by using a monopod or handle attached to lens port collar you will get desired stability as the up/down wobble is mainly caused by location of housing handles at the lateral axis of housing and so by spreading the two control points - your hands - longitudinally will eliminate this problem - provided you dont need to operate zoom ring during the shot. Good luck in solving the never ending (for me anyway) buoyancy puzzle :-)

This is a follow up to report above which I am leaving as is for demonstration purposes even though I made mistake. Always read manuals :-). After adjusting 360Studio to recommended settings - which were Dive Case mode OFF (I already had AI stitching ON) I made another look at the test footage. The stitching improved. It is not seamless by far but at least it is almost tolerable. Still Insta360 case Pro stitching is far more invisible mainly in the blue. At the close distance the stitchings are almost on par - simply they are visible. The main problem with Nauticam stitching in the blue is a divide in exposure. This is going to be an issue in confined spaces with only one half of housing facing the lightened area. What's definitely an issue with Nauticam is a nasty flare coming from spot light sources. Basically if you will be in the group with someone with lights on - beware. Here is side by side test footage (adjusted as much as the amount of time I wanted to give it) And some sample screenshots with updated settings

It's going to be nice camera for sure. I would still wait for some reviews for overheating and low light performance before ordering. Especially after being kinda burned by ordering new product from another reputable brand we all like and use 🤣 And for those waiting for 8k here are screenshots from another camera with 1.1 inch sensor (action6 - yes, pixel size 1.2 vs 1.6 microns to be fair) taken in less than perfect light conditions over at Malpelo. The noise is staggering. Switching to 4k and pixel binning enabled low light mode and it was ok-ish but the 8k was unwatchable. 8K samples (just for noise demo) and 4k low light As there is no new breakthrough in sensor development and quad bayer is a quad bayer I would expect new gopro perfomance to be about the same. What's gonna be more important in my opinion is whether they will allow multiple custom video modes to be created (aspect ration, low light, 4k120, 8k30 etc and mode switching available through side button like DJI has. And startup times. In my memory Hero12 sucked in this department.

As this topic is cross platform I am posting link to respective forum also here and please comment in that forum not here:

As this topic is cross platform I am posting link to respective forum also here and please comment in that forum not here:

... and the news are good and bad. Like life just can't be simple... The good news is the sharpness at certain focal length is just awesome. Like miles ahead of a 360 Pro dome. All sample screenshots - the active type is yellow in thumbnails names. The bad news is the seam. I am hoping that there is some work going on with Insta360 and nauticam which would fix the issue but for now the seam is soooo visible and inaccurate. Basically unusable if the shot includes short - medium distance (and that's where sharpness excels the most). So it seems the main strength of this product are 180 shots for documentary reasons as long as these shots originate on one of two spheres. Just dont even think of having invisible seam for in between footage. For like wide angle shots without close subject or in another words infinity shots I would say the results are comparable from what I see. Mind you this is a poorly lit pool so we shall see what results are we going to get from reef shots with abundance of light but it could be similar. So no big difference. and the bad seam for subject 2m away you can judge yourselves... And lastly another ugly child is the lamp projection. You can see where my lamp was so do your own caculations as to where the housing was when it projected this So all in all not what I expected from Nauticam. I expected water contact optics - their solution is their own dry optics in a custom shape glass dome. I expected excellent invisible seam due to 190 claimed angle and the seam is quite visible and even at the distance. And for now I leave aside that ugly dome light projection... So even though the 180 quality is quite good the question which needs to be asked is why would they release such inferior product for a 360 degrees camera. I was expecting they would put their awsome water contact optics on it and not their own version of dry optics in a glass dome... This ugly child has quite a potential to tarnish otherwise great reputation so in their shoes I would probably take it off the market and come back with something that works rather than keep selling this inferior product further. What do you think?

Thank you! Would you be able to find similar pictures 7-14 and 8-15 demonstrating the difference in projection? 7-14 images in that thread look supernice and uniform across the frame and the direct comparison with 8-15 would help even better. Nothing artistic, just pictures like the one with sand in 7-14 thread. Thanks!

8-15 is equisolid and 7-14 equidistant projection lenses AI says that compression at the edges is moderate for 7-14 and significant for 8-15 Would anyone have comparable samples what it would do underwater to see?

Has anyone experimented with Canons VR dual fisheye underwater or the new 7-14 for VR180 videos underwater?

Fotocore MR6 is based on Feelworld LUT6 while the newer MR5.5 on LUT5 monitor where MR5.5 has custom firmware overlay with a bit diminished brightness in lieu of battery longevity. So for features and menus refer to respective Feelworld models. I am pretty certain Kraken 5.5 v2 is based on the same Feelworld 5.5 Compared to Weefine WED5Pro they offer choice of HDR input which should not be misinterpreted as the Atomos HDR built in tone mapping of LOG signals. Basically if you decide to shoot HLG which many cameras offer you good to go. For LOG HDR preview you need to build custom LUT. Many UW photographers will atest that the evil lies in cables longevity and solution and from that perspective WED5Pro seems to have the most robust solution. Frustrated with Atomos/Nauticam UI I ordered recently WED5Pro and bought Feelworld5.5 to create and make sure it could be created custom LOG->HDR tone mapping LUT. BUT - here is (one of the) catch(es) - Feelworld (and I suspect Weefines too) wave monitor is not transparent and it shows waves WITH LUT applied. Unlike Atomos which shows clean HDMI. As we use LUT only for preview to actually be able to see highly lit low contrast scenes when pushing LOG exposure to the right it poses challenge of its own to properly expose. Also I like Atomos HDR mapping better than my custom LUT :-) So that's that :-) any monitor you choose will be miles better than the rear camera BUT get ready use 15l or doubles as standard as your drag and air consumption underwater will go one direction - UP 🤣

I think it’s going to be good (the quality out of it). Definitely for social media. Look at my new reel at Instagram with Galapagos sharks lunacy 🤣 and that was morning and shadow dive so even in night mode I couldn’t expect wonders. Now for Apple vision and alike we need 16k output but in good light even this should be bearable. Happy Easter!

It’s on the way :-) Now I will get lesson on how my theory meets reality 🤣. The theory - ‘active’ glass with 190deg ‘must’ be sharp and ‘must’ provide Stitch free image. The reality - we shall see… 🤣 My theory behind this housing is that someone important made them do it as one off and so they decided to make a product out of it 🤣 Or they made deal with 360 that X6 with 10bit gonna be the same form factor. Otherwise I am screwed 🤣

yes these action cameras are getting ridiculously good. Paired with good optics and light they provide excellent results. Where they suffer is inability to tune in custom white balance so at 15m the reds are simply not there and low light situations where they will get grainy and mushy really quickly. So it depends on use case. Having said that I got my wife Action6 with AOI housing and UWL-03Pro for upcoming Malpelo trip. And I am sensing i will be borrowing a lot of her footage😅 (my A1 is mostly in photo mode)

I am actually stoked by this one from Nauticam... so much so I've ordered one and hoping to get it for my March Malpelo trip (probably not going to happen unless my source do some wizardry 🧚 I was one of the early adopters of this on X5 back in May last year only to be disappointed. Virtual image projected by that standard dome was incompatible with the camera. Fast forward to November and Pro version of the dome coupled with updated camera firmware produced kind of nice results even in dark murky waters of norwegian fjords and orcas. So when I noticed this week nauticam made water corrected optics version I crossed my fingers and knowing what their WACP can do I've went for it. The camera X5 is OK especially in HDR but the optics were missing. So now let's see if it's going to be good for immersive VR360 content - at least for phones.

Oh! I've see that one (video) and after skip browsing it part of me just wanted to puke 🤮🤣 and part LOL🤣. In part by that girl presenting and in part by content what she was presenting 🤣 and in part by the samples she was presenting. I just refrained from commenting as one part I learned about these kind of YTbers channels is that there is no point in arguing about the light with the blinds and stupid 🤣 @Davide DB spot on definition of cinematic meaning 🤣. It reminds me of the days when A7SIII was released and unless you run 10x slomo in a sunset with 1.4 aperture you weren't 'cinematic' 🤣.

Nice! When were you? We were in July last year. Our cuda dive was a bit late in the day so not much to show, light was not enough 🤷

yeah, 8-15 without TC is a beauty... sharpness and microcontrast are TOP!

you're welcomed. Have you decided on monitor yet? Curious.

oopsie ... was on an orca trip back then and didnt check back... not wanting to be seen as ignorant 🙈 no worries about heat damage again, camera will switch itself off well ahead of such problem even with temp set to HIGH as for the monitor - using it achieves 2 goals. One is "heat from lcd screen operation elimination" - you can leave screen off in both 'clean hdmi' and 'control display' and second is the battery longevity as LCD does consume energy. But even with this I can overheat the camera - especially when I keep recording after pressing wrong lever (you know that rocker lever one for recording and the other side for focus) I leave camera recording for many minutes accidentally 🙈🤣 (and i have no idea since I am not looking at the camera at all, I am only using clean HDMI on monitor which doesnt show controls) 🤣

Nice! I have a pygmy or two for you to compare :-) (WACP-C) I went the other way. It helped that I already had 8-15 and TC2x so it didn't hurt that much just having 140mm glass and port extension lying around these days (and waiting for the right opportunity :-) Jokes aside my decision was influenced not so much by picture quality rather then by my use case - I do both on the same dive, photo and video and in video department metabones is just not there as far as the focus goes. I also think that - surprisingly to me - at the long end the WACP-C/28-60 was a tad sharper than 8-15/TC. (While the same 28-60 paired with WWL-1B was really disappointing). But all in all each use case is different and I can totally see that the desire for extreme - and flexible - wide angle would present this 8-15/TC as the best option. Thanks for report! Cheers.

awesome report and pics! definitely on our list!

This may not be understandable at first but as someone who has to travel to dive i would say - save money and travel light. In my world it means get nauticam housing with 30mm port + WACP-C + new 105 macro + 100mm new macro lens + 28-60 for wacp-c + (perhaps) sony TC2x - and you will be set for foreseeable future for everything from lembeh creatures to big ocean stuff like Socorro mantas etc. For both photo and video. Just stay away from adapted stuff - looks nice on paper but in reality unless you have it lying around not worth the headache. Image shot with WACP-C at 60mm on A1 (yes its a crop but you have 50MP too so what...)

Thank you guys. Orcas are nicknamed as 'pandas of the sea' and it well describes them. They are completely harmless toward human being, they literally shove you away on their way to food. The bigger problem are humpbacks who always crash the party from down below - open their mouth, eat the ball, make the splash and the story start again :-). I happened to be in the splash zone of one of these and THAT's an adrenaline!🤣

1.1 crop A1 vs 1.5 crop A7R5 in 4k120?