Chris Ross

The canon is the sharper of the two, but both are sharp lenses. The 10mm lockout is based on using on APS-C. I imagine designing a custom lockout would be quite a feat.

Agree, makes life a lot easier this way, new o-rings do make a difference. Putting the short arm on attached to the handles and the long arm attached to the strobe generally allows the strobe to sit on the ground when folded into an "M", seems like that should be neater and more stable. The ikelites are good strobes but there's other more compact lighter options available these days.

You mean this shackle: NauticamLong Multi-purpose (MP) Clamp ~with ShackleIn addition to being a clamp for attaching two 1" standard ball mounts together, the MP Clamp also features an additional socket equipped with a removable shackle for attachment of lanyards or other aThe shaft is about 4.5mm diameter. If it fell off I assume it unscrewed? If so get your self a shackle key to tighten the screw: https://www.whitworths.com.au/riley-mini-shackle-key-screwdriver the slot on the end slides over the tab on eh shackle allowing you tighten it up, once you do that it won't go anywhere. Should be able to buy something similar from a ship's chandler.

The Canon 8-15 can lock out so it won't zoom below 10mm which can help stop you going too far. From reports I've heard the 8-15 is the sharper lens compared to the 8-15 so likely will perform as good or better with a 1.4x.

Don't need the rear screen UW, most models have a programmable time that it will display the shot you just took through the EVF and you can instantly get back to live view with a half press of shutter. So it flashes up the photo taken and you can very quickly see if the strobes hit etc. all without taking your eye from the viewfinder. Mine is programmed to show the previous shot for 1/2 second, enough to see the strobes went off and were bright enough. You hit the review button for a closer look. I use the EVF for WA and macro. If you use a 45° viewfinder you have an adjustable diopter - don't know what your eyesight is like but if you use reading glasses I find the rear screen pretty useless as I can't focus on it properly. I don't need glasses yet to be able to read computer and gauges etc, but telling if a pic is sharp or not isn't easy on the screen but straight forward on the EVF.

Black water is a special use case I would think, focusing on transparent highly mobile critters is a particular challenge and camera/lens sets that don't AF well may also not do so well with the MFO3. I would want direct experience for the particular camera/lens combo if the MFO3 was being purchased purely for blackwater. I would guess that if the bare lens combo works well for AF, the MFO3 would have a fighting chance?? In theory shifting the lens to focusing at non macro distances when using the MFO3 should help, but if the base lens/camera isn't great it might not work miracles.

I was in Lembeh last year and I just used the 60mm and MFO3 and I think I had half a dozen subjects where I thought I might have needed more magnification. The 60mm on m43 at max magnification covers a frame that is 17mm across which is quite small, easily suitable for 10mm long subjects. If you want more magnification the CMC-2 covers a frame 10mm across at 33mm working distance. The CMC-1 gets to 8mm across at 22mm working distance. To me even the 33mm working distance is difficult to light well and I recall quite a few posts expressing that the CMC-2 was the more useful option because of this. The CMC-2 is about a +10 as I recall. I did however find plenty of subjects where the MFO3 was useful, larger frogfish, scorpionfish, rhinopias, pipefish, octopus, mantis shrimp and also every site has lots of anemonefish of many different species - I can't swim past them. Even subjects that you could get away with the 60mm benefit as you get in so much closer when using the MFO3 making backscatter control easier. My Lembeh trip report is here:

I expect it would work fine, fisheyes are not that sensitive to dome size, however the 230mm dome is not a fisheye dome and needs to have the lens positioned further into the dome to avoid vignetting so is not as optimally placed as it is in the 140mm dome, however again fisheyes don't seem that sensitive to this - there is some degradation in the corners but relatively minor by all accounts. The second issue is that the big dome can't get quite as close to the subject for CFWA to the subject will appear somewhat smaller - the difference might not seem like much but the subject size in frame is quite a bit smaller.

Unfortunately I don't think I would be holding my breath waiting for the new INON, they discontinued the Z330 strobe in early 2023. They popped up showing a prototype over a year ago and since then crickets. We're spoiled for choice currently with strobes with lots of options. The INON Z series strobes were great strobes, quite reliable, and I understand why you might want them. You could consider a new pair of S220 strobes now, apparently quite powerful and nearly a match for you YS-D2, but otherwise there's lot's to choose from. Of course having said this they might announce the new strobe next week, but doesn't seem likely.

The Canon 60mm macro is an APS-C lens and using it on an APS-C system should be decent and gives you 90mm focal length which is +/- a standard macro lens for an APS-C system, while the 90 mm is 135mm equivalent and in my mind a bit long for an APS-C system unless you are shooting mostly very small things. I don't recall but I'm guessing you shoot APS-C Sony? Assuming APS-C Sony, to make it more difficult to work out what to do, I expect you could use the MFO3 on the 60mm lens as well, I know it certainly works well with my 60mm olympus macro lens and gives you a decently wide view which would be better if you are shooting weedy sea dragon (400mm long ) size critters if you expect to encounter critters in this size range. You would of course need to check it will work - Nauticam have remove dthe EF-s 60mm from their port chart, but the Nikon 60mm macro is listed on the that chart as working with the MFO3 so I expect it probably should work as long as the flat port fits well. You could check for vignetting on land. It might also work with the Zeiss 50mm macro which has a few fans on this site as I recall, but again you'd need to check for vignetting. Having said all that the big attraction for me is carrying a wider view with you when shooting macro.

Parasitic copepod of the family Pennellidae, Cardiodectes sp., possibly Cardiodectes bertrandi. I got the ID from a Facebook group called ID please (Marine creature identification) on a photo of mine I posted there, which is pretty good at getting IDs

If you can't get fresh water, use salt water, what you are trying to avoid is the water drying on the housing. Leave a little water in to carry off and back to your accommodation and give it a proper rinse there. I think the water gets pretty salty in some of the onboard rinse tanks I've seen on dive boats.

which is even worse, 300 dpi on the web means absolutely nothing, pixel dimensions is all that is required.

Do you actually need to full frame would be my first question, depending on what lenses you want to use it can be significantly more $ and also heavier and bulkier making travel more difficult. Rectilinear wides, depending on which particular model work best in large 230mm domes, some of the new ones are OK in the 180mm domes. In ikelite you have basically an 8"dome and a 6"dome which works with some systems only and some have caveats in use. If you went m43 your lenses are significantly smaller and cheaper and in general work quite well with smaller domes. For me a big attraction is using the Canon 8-15 adapted to get full fisheye through to a 28mm FF equivalent reach. You can do something similar with an 8-15 on an APS-C sensor , but reach is a little less - very versatile setup for wide angle work.

Seems like if you get the boosters with the strobe there is a deal, $100 more gets you the boosters and two four cell battery chargers. I don't have the Pro max, just the lower power pure model, my current usage is the standard 4 cell configuration for local diving - go out for a single long dive locally and use the boosters when I'm on a trip. Cheaper than buying them later on.