Chris Ross

Assume you have the lens and the dome? have you tried it out in the dome yet? I would suggest trying it before taking it UW as the 7" Nauticam has a fair bit of extension built in and the 9mm is a little shorter and has a wider angle of view than the 10-18mm. You can do this on land to see if it vignettes or not.

They both work but achieve different results. The fisheye has barrel distortion which has a distinctive look the center is bought forward big in the frame and the corners recede, so it draws attention to the subject. You just have to have a little care what is in the corners where larger objects distort - divers for example stretch out and look strange, so you have to place them in the frame properly and be aware from intrusions into the frame. They work quite well even in small domes. Rectilinears on the other hand have narrower fields where straight lines stay straight everywhere. Usually this is only important for subjects that contain straight lines like interiors of wrecks, though of course there are other applications. Very wide rectilinears have perspective issues. something in the foreground that is much closer appears a lot larger, one example I have seen is a divers arm reaching forward, the hand looks way too big for the body it is attached to. You can take advantage of that of course but you need to be aware of it. The 10mm Laowa lens caused quite a stir, it performed quite well but interest seemed to wane and people complained about difficulties dealing with the perspective issues. with it. The other issues is corners can be softer, though the newer close focusing rectilinear lenses perform better in this regard, but still need larger domes than fisheyes.

This is true for Nauticam, but most of the issues to my mind stem from the N85 port which IMO is too small. It becomes a lot simpler on Isotta who use a 102 mm port and you only need a simple and cheap 40mm extension with zoom knob to use the Canon lens and they have a zoom gear you can use directly. Combine that with the 4.5" glass dome and you have a nice compact system.

Yes selections can be tricky , I find for my purposes that absolutely clean selections are not vital in most cases and the ability to feather the mask hides a lot of faults. Usually I sharpen some in Capture One so the subject only needs a light lick of sharpening in the final jpeg and Noise reduction I rarely find necessary. I try not to use selections for independent processing - unless it is very subtle the selection stands out to my eyes. This is mainly around producing images for web use, printing requires some care in preparation, but most of that is covered by only printing my best frames. I used to sweat over processing, but I've come to learn that it's not worth my time trying to save an image- far better to work on one that is close to start with. It's so easy to suffer paralysis from over thinking the processing.

There is some great diving on the Australian east coast but it's very weather/swell dependent and the vis is up and down. IMO the very best access to diving is in Sydney, lots of dive sites just inside estuaries and shore accessible, particularly on the south side. There's also an active dive community who dive the shore sites regularly independently from dive shops who only run dives on weekends. Brisbane/Gold coast you need to travel to get to many sites there is basically one shore dive at the gold coast seaway. Near the gold coast there is Julian Rocks, 2km offshore from Byron Bay, cook island offshore from tweed heads where there is also the shore dive at the tweed river. Many of these are boat dives which will run to $170-$250 for a double dive. You can also dive off Stradbroke Island where there is a manta cleaning station (summer only). it's subject to currents and swell and vis is up and down. If you like Nudis, the Mooloolaba river has a shore dive with lots of them, Gary Cobb who runs the Nudibranch Central dives there and finds lots of nudis. I think diving is more accessible from the sunshine coast with a few dive operations running to reefs around that area. Further down the NSW coast you have excellent dive spots at the Solitary islands off Coffs Harbour and Fish Rock Cave offshore from SW Rocks . UW photo wise, a lot of the sites off the qld coast are wide angle sites, vis variable 5-20+m. Sydney a lot of macro sites, weedy sea dragons and other specialties. Vis varies from 2 up to an occasional 15-20m. My main experience is in Sydney, I've dived a few spots off the NSW coasts and once or twice did a day trip on the great Barrier Reef. A good resource is Michael McFadyen's website, he has descriptions of dive sites around Sydney and up and down the coast: https://www.michaelmcfadyenscuba.info/viewpage.php?page_id=1

Updating on this I went to Lembeh again, September 2025. Went with Divers lodge Lembeh again, as I said food/accommodation was nice, Most dive sites we were the only boat there, had one or two other dive boats at Nudi falls, other sites just us or another boat at an adjacent dive site. I was travelling solo, so they provided me a dedicated guide, on most dives I had one other couple with their guide on the dive boat and a couple of days two other couples. If you search you'll find my trip report. I had mostly no queues and good guiding. Their policy is one guide - two divers, I highly recommend it and I'll be going back at some point.

the base answer is the S&S specific lube, expensive but you know it works. Many people use Tribolube which is a perfluoro ether grease that is universal lube for all types of o-rings, available from engineering supply stores. The Blue S&S o-rings are silicone rubber and you need to avoid using actual silicone grease which will cause them to swell. Grease doesn't clean and moisturize your o-rings, it is purely a lubricant and you want just enough to have a sheen on the o-rings. You need a lube so the o-ring can slide in it's groove to compress against the housing which is what forms the seal, extra grease won't seal any better. For your ports they are twist and turn so the o-rings can benefit from a little more generous lube than the bare minimum as they can be very tight to turn otherwise. The main housing o-ring on your housing sits in a flat groove and technically doesn't need lube, but a bare sheen won't hurt. Ikelite has a similar o-ring and they advise against using lube, other manufacturers advise to lube the o-ring. Excess grease can pick up particles so using the bare mnimum on this type of o-ring helps. Give the housing a long soak after each dive session and then dry it off, you can use microfibre towels. I use a hand held air duster to blow water off. Work all your buttons to exchange trapped salt water, it can dry in the button and form salt crystals eventually. You should have a spare o-ring set on a trip, it's something I would change in your room or at home not on a crowded dive boat. Keep your grease, o-ring remover , and any cleaning supplies in a zip lock baggie to avoid picking up dust/grit/hair. I use foam tipped makeup applicators to wipe out the o-ring grooves. Be vary careful when disconnecting your sync cables you don't want to drip salt water into the connector. Blowing it off before unscrewing helps. You might want to consider a spare sync cable in your spares kit, they are known source of issues.

Looks like you've got everything you need to get started. You might want to consider seeing if you can get a vacuum system for the housing, the manual doesn't talk about it but it looks like there is an additional connection plug that is retained with a circlip on LH side front section.

I don't use a monitor in the water, but use one on land and I think it depends on how good your eyesight is. A 45° viewfinder, you can adjust the diopter to suit and see positively if things are in focus, the rear LCD I can't really tell, using a 5"shinobi on land I need 2x to judge sharp focus. The other issue is how the view renders on the monitor and if you can see all you need to see or if the tools get in the way of the viewfinder data like SS/ f-stop, ISO etc., I know on my OM-1 It's not ideal. You could try this out on land to see.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply Phil. Regarding the use of a 2x, I have not used it either but use the equivalent with a Canon 8-15 adapted to m43, which gives the same field of view flexibility without a teleconverter. In terms of FF rectilinear lens field of view and particularly the horizontal field of view which represents what size subject you can fit in your field you get the 180deg diagonal FF fisheye at 8mm and using a 2x you can zoom the equivalent of a 28mm lens on full frame. The WACP/WWL give you a 130° diagonal which has a horizontal field of around that of a 13-14mm lens and if you have the 28-60 behind it it reaches out to cover the field of a 35mm rectilinear. All of course with some mild barrel distortion. I haven't done the measurements for the Marelux lens, but it will be close to the WACP range. So all you lose out on is the 28-35mm equivalent range with this setup. Leaving aside the optical quality which is not an issue on m43 as there is no TC glass involved, this to me is superb flexibility and some people onsite are prepared to make this trade off, but that's a choice anyone considering this option needs to weigh-up for themselves.

Yes the adapter is a pain, the 55mm adapter will work, but it does involve loading the lens from the front and placing the port over it. Actually the easiest way to do it would with Isotta as they use a larger port and only need a standard extension with zoom gear. Doesn't help you with Nauticam of course. The thing to consider is that the N85 Zen100 works with the Olympus and Panasonic fisheyes, but you need to use the N120 version with the Tokina or Canon, which of course requires the adapter, but 34.7mm is too much extension. so there is no way to do both options with the same dome with Nauticam parts. I seem to recall that Wolfgang ( @Architeuthis ) obtained a custom 30mm N85-N120 adapter at some point from a European supplier which might be an option for you?

I used the Zen100 with the Panasonic 8mm fisheye it worked pretty well. This gallery was shot with the 8mm Panasonic and Zen DP100 dome- apart from 3 or 4 images. : https://aus-natural.com/Underwater/Rowley%20Shoals/index.html the 34.7mm has the advantage of working with the zoom knob on the adapter, it works but is a little slower than the housing zoom control when lenses are mated with the speedbooster version. You could also 3D print a gear to use with the housing zoom control. The 34.7 is unfortunately discontinued. If you can't find a second hand one you should be fine using a 55mm N85-N120, but I expect the zoom control won't be positioned properly for the Nauticam zoom gear, so likely will need a 3D printed gear, I use a custom 3D printed gear with my OM-1 and Canon 8-15. It would be a relatively simple matter to convert it to use on the Tokina lens. That system is very flexible, the Canon 8-15 is equivalent to an 8mm fisheye plus a 14-28mm FF equivalent rectilinear at least in terms of reach, very flexible setup that focuses down to the dome glass. I will say the rig gets rather heavy with the adapted Canon 8-15 and 140mm dome which I have. I expect the Tokina/Zen dome would be a bit lighter.

Wondering what you use your masking for? I still use my trusty old copy of Photoshop CS6 and never went to lightroom, To solve raw development I have Capture One which you can still buy outright and just upgrade when I get a new camera. I find the quick selection tool does a reasonable job if there's enough contrast and it doesn't need to be perfect for my purposes as 99% of the time I'm only selecting the subject to sharpen that and not the background. My other use of masking is for individually working on shadows/highlights and midtones and what I do requires so selection tools as I use luminosity masks which use the image itself to mask. The free Tony Kuyper tools do it perfectly, the download link is here: GoodLight.usLuminosity Masks—Get Ready to FlyOnce you start to understand luminosity masks, actions or a plugin can greatly speed the process of creating them making them much easier to use.I just make a darks/highlights or midtones curve layer and use curves to adjust individually, perfect to boost shadows or tame highlights and the midtones mask is perfect to do an S curve to boost contrast, seems like it has more control.

The wired connectors will work as long as you have a matching bulkhead. Not as convenient at optic fibre as they require maintenance of the o-rings and are prone to corrosion if not well cared for. Having said they will certainly work though quite possibly they will be restricted to manual flash only unless the housing comes with the YS converter for your camera, assuming again your strobes are TTL capable. Otherwise you would be looking for a third party TTL converter. There are several types of bulkhead connectors and I believe Canon TTL bulkheads are 6 pin. This won't stop you using the housing - just make sure you get the right hardware to avoid surprises. You will need to talk to a vendor to get the right combination of housing bulkhead, sync cable and if needed a TTL converter. For manual you only need the correct hot shoe cable.

There's no reason for it to be any different, certain lenses might achieve maximum field at something like 13mm and then zoom in a little, but these lenses achieve a 180deg circular image and a 180 deg diagonal field utilising the whole sensor at the other end In between it is vignetted but not a full circle. It's really only a zoom on APS-C between about 10mm and 14mm or so. At the moment if you want to use a TC to get the flexibility of zooming the Canon 8-15 remains the only game in town - it works due to the fact you have the back focus needed to use with a DSLR and you can use the Sony TC with the nose tucked inside the Metabones adapter. It will remain that way till someone releases a TC in Sony mount that doesn't have the nose and which allows you to attach to the lens.