RomiK

There is a lot of emphasis put on price point which in grand scheme of things .... won't make much difference... The real importance I think is the pack reliability, usability, how fast it charges and so on... Personally I think they should have made two versions for latest and previous gens so they would use that empty space inside the strobes and stick out less. They mill them out of aluminium one by one anyway. This design with this center of gravity will make the strobes quite "ass heavy", in some situations it's gonna tilt the nose up. But at the end it's the company calling the shots and only market will prove them right or wrong, eh?

I am (was🤣) happy with 8xAA supercharger on my Retra Pro Xs. I carried extra 8xAA and 2x 4-bay chargers. And 4 ports power brick. It is (used to be 🤣) part of battery hygiene to have 8AA batteries in a charger and every other dive or third dive to change one strobe's pack and never had problem with power in 4 dives per day scenario. Now thinking I could save travel weight and space on two chargers and 16xAA and charge only overnight is quite appealing. Yes it's 🤑🤑🤑 especially since I already have superchargers but still it's only money for added convenience and then there is that YOLO syndrome 🤣.

I've touched on that earlier in this thread - FCP is not a fish eye lens. It's a fish eye distortion element put in front of a rectilinear lens. So the DOF is going to be lower than the pure fisheye. So as such it will offer blend of subject pulling like fish eye lens coupled with subject isolation of rectilinear solution. So I'd say it's just a tool for some - subject oriented - type of imagery which like @Alex_Mustard prefers (who I guess was somewhat involved in its development) but it's not a tool for other type of imagery. Off course one can only debate it's usefulness and versatility for private arsenal of tools given its cost and mass concerns but for rental circuits - should there be some 🙂 - might be great... And it seems to be excellent tool for it's purpose nevertheless 👏

Yes, it's the same. The TC optical element protrudes out so it won't fit in.

My thinking is that with tele (macro) lenses the focus plane is much less curvy than with wide angle lenses. And so the effect of closing down the aperture with macro lens will be much less pronounced than that with wide angle. In another angle the focus plane filling the sensor will be shape of globe with wide angle while just a sliver of it with macro. And therefore the effect of aperture relative to relative size of DOF will be limited.

@Alex_Mustard thanks for pointing at your FCP images 🙏 Would you be able to post test shots showing distortions at various zoom levels? I am sure there must be some 🙂. I am impressed with sharpness @Sergio images shown at full res at the focal level and I am not too concerned about overall DOF. So I may succumb to YOLO syndrome 😂. Although I wonder whether the whole new system of Canon R7 coupled with 8-15 wouldn’t provide similar results at about the same price to me 😂 (already have 8-15)

So I am (just thinking out loud, not that I would have anything to back it up with) that unlike fisheye lens that is built to project reality on the sensor in a certain way which by nature brings large DOF the FCP compresses the virtual image in a fisheye like manner but this image is further interpreted by rectilinear lens (and not very good at that - kit lens) with its own corrections and then projected onto the sensor which may result in shallower DOF? first image is from Oly EM1II with 8mm fisheye I was testing for friend of mine and the other three are WWL-1B at widest all with lower aperture values. The Oly was right at the anemone.

So it seems at lower aperture numbers FCP offers some kind of separation - first image the diver in the background not sharp, the gorgonias in the middle tack sharp and the foreground blurry... But where it's sharp it's tack sharp! 👍 Very dangerous situtation here! 🤑🤑🤣

… and luckily WWL-1B is a bayonet only so now there is no excuse … 😂

WWL-1B is not that heavy UW, it's like negative 100ish grams so even if it would slip away it would graciously 🤣 slide down and not drop like a stone. Plus has a really big shade to hold comfortably. I would be questioning need for 180 fisheye in the first place. Yes it may offer immersive images but unless the subject is a shark at feeding station the immersive factor is minuscule compared to 130 at wide angle in my eyes. Yes, in a probe form the EMWL160 is amazing, I am thinking of adding - replacing - to my EMWL130 🤑🤑🤑. But in a dome form factor one can't get close enough in a good angle to subject unless it's a whale 🤣 It would be interesting to see a screenshot of Lightroom metadata browser showing the range of focal lengths counts from keeper images taken by 8-15 with 1.4x Kenko. I dare to say we might see higher numbers towards 15mm end 🙂 Plus the distortion ... great for some appalling boring for others 🤷‍♂️ Unless it's a dedicated dive I think WWL is more versatile. Here samples from last week at 28mm i.e. 130deg.

... and I have 8-15 sitting home (together with other Canon L glass) and thinking 'why on earth did I not do Canon route for UW and bought into A1 system'🙈... oh wait, R7 wasn't available 2 years back and R5 was overheating back then... 🙈 never mind that A1 overheats too... although at 4k120 in 30C water ... but still 🙈 Back to 8-15 on Sony - I think it's not worth it with adapters insufficiencies... 28-60+WWL1 will get you there much better. And for dives where you can expect unexpected the 20-70 in 180mm glass is ultimate portable choice IMHO.

I put together first and 5th image out of these published. The first claims to be from inon 🤷‍♀️

Sony indeed output exactly what sensor offers. Clean 16:9 for videos and 3:2 for stills. Off course you would have to opt for clean HDMI and have your controls on the camera screen. If you want to see controls then sony outputs its rear screen exactly as you see it - which is useful for some and not for others.

I dunno but I wouldn't overthink it... In quote I put together non-diffused S220 (first) and Apollo (second) and they seem very similar to me... I might even prefer S220 to Apollo... The fly built in diffuser of Inon is brilliant I think.

My wife and I cabin luggage. 2x10ish kg 50x40x20 + 2 personal items Laptop bag carries - camera body - 28-60 + 90mm lenses - EMWL - laptop duh 😂 Housing by itself as a personal item my wife carries Blue suitcase - WWL-1B - Shinobi monitor and housing - 2 flat ports for the lenses - 2 Retra Pro X + superchargers - Retra LSD - dive computer - batteries Red suitcase - 3x Weefine Smartfocus 10000 - Divevolk Seatouch 4Max with floats - 4000 lumens dive light - 2x Nauticam 200/70 and 300/50 float arms The rest like clamps and hardware and floats goes into dive bags checked. The idea is that should the shxx hit the fan whether at check in of gate we could have Red suitcase or it’s content checked and split electronics and optics among ourselves. If I would travel myself I would have had extra checked bag for hardware, video lights and monitor as I dive sidemount and my bare dive bag is 18kg. But if I would go on single cylinder the bag would be 15kg (one reg and lighter wing) and the rest of my photo gear would fit in.

It's just a tool the filters and it has its use case depending on artistic taste of the author... there is no right or wrong really... I might use blue filter for this image but not for this image as there is no way I could recover colors of clarion fish... same dive... and since things happen so quickly I hate changing the equipment on the fly... so each tool has its own use case

The answer would be no and for explanation we can reach physics. What makes color as perception by human eye? A surface reflection of the light which reaches it. No reflection - black. Total reflection - white. In simple terms. So if the filter blocks red portion of the light then this red won’t reach the surface which in turn will not reflect it. No filter or processing in the camera will change this as there is nothing to recover. The surface does not emit light. It only reflects what comes on it. No red in means no red out. By using the blue filter you get more uniform - but bland - foreground and background. Which is fine for some applications and not for others. Backscatter.com example visualizes this nicely.

I would say there no such thing as free lunch in UW photography 😁 The cool filters will not bring reds - the opposite they will block them. So in theory when you push reds in post the closest to you part of image won’t get ‘red hot’ and the color expression of the image will get more uniform. It also means though that you can forget about real reds and the image will be kind of - without RED. If it makes sense.

This may be just a theory and thought from previous YSD2/3 current Retra Pro X owner - the small rectangular bulbs of Inons Z and alike will produce more concentrated beam of light and although the published angle parameters might be the same it is still a point source. And reflections are just simple function of angles. Whereas circular tube will disperse light under wider variety of angles and therefore less light may fall on backscatter in angles that matter. Just a thought trying to find some logic in things we all hate 🙂

Guys, before things get personal why don't you agree on definition of red perhaps? There is RED, middle red and not so much red? Perhaps depending on the distance? Perhaps one red is good for one and not good for the other?🤷‍♂️😁

HaHa so funny your picture is great as the fish is coming onto you in the formation while the OP claiming know it all and harassing people thinking otherwise shows pictures (in the other thread) where either fish is running away from him or he is successfully braking the formation 🤣🤣 so much for understanding the fish 🤣🤣

Oh hello, I thought I’ve got a privilege of being on your ignore list 🤦‍♀️ I wasn’t talking about Retra Pro Max in my post. You may want to take a class of cognitive reading especially before insulting other people by telling them to take physics. I was talking about strobes without diffusers. From some reason the max version has diffused glass from what I see while the previous generation Pro X has a clear glass. now you take physics and read something about photons travel from the concentrated light source - a bulb - vs traveling through the diffuser. You may get surprised.

Haha funny I share exactly the same experience! I too switched from YSD2 and YSD3 to Retra Pro X 2 years ago and boy oh boy what a difference! Much more pleasing light! FWIW I think that other factors make or break the photo than the power itself. For like large landscape like fish shoal etc definitely something that pierces the water without diffuser will provide clearer better results. Cheers