Chris Ross

I'm wondering if it worked better because you were shooting through more water and closer to shooting through the same amount of water as you were filming the guests. slates and fins unless someone else is holding them are at a relatively close fixed distance.

Is this tested in air or in water? As I understand it the diopter power increases in air compared to water, so the focus point comes in closer. That combined with increased spacing may be enough that it focuses inside the lens. If you have not tried it in water perhaps do that first? If it is still an issue are there any alternative ports you could try? For example the 5502 port for 60mm macro in combination with a 1"extension. Looking online it seems FL ports are discontinued so you would be looking for second hand ports.

I also get the standard option for uploading an image both for a new post and as a reply like this - Win 11 with Firefox: You could always try downloading Firefox to see if a different browser helps. Did you try just clicking the page where you want to paste and just using Ctrl- V?

You probably don't want to do that unless the reduction ring is shaped correctly to concentrate the rays. Reduction rings tighten the beam, but if light is reflected off a white surface it tends to diffuse it a bit which spreads the beam. The reflector looks like it tightens the beam significantly and is relatively tall, the taller it is the tighter the beam. You might not want it that tight for wide angle work. I know I left my reduction rings on shooting grey nurse sharks with a fisheye and it seemed to help quite a bit with backscatter. Also you are trying to recover light from the edge of the beam, looking at some data for the retra strobe at 120°beam angle the light falloff in this region is 5 f stops. Doing some measurements on my Strobe it looks like the reduction rings restrict you to about a 90-100° beam angle. At 90 degrees the the light fall off is about 2 stops compared to the center and at 100° it 3 fstops. What does that mean there is not that much light in the outer portion of the beam to recover with a reflective inside surface to the reduction ring. - but that light is enough still to illuminate very closeby backscatter, which the reduction rings block so stop it being illuminated. so the short version of that is it seems to me there's not enough light in this part of the beam to be worth trying to recover at least on my Retras.

Agree, just because using the wrong lube gives you a problem doesn't mean that silicone is bad for o-rings. A great many housings use Silicone o-rings including Nauticam, Marelux, Sea and Sea, INON strobes - any coloured o-ring is going to be silicone. On the topic of dynamic seals, this is not insert and twist or piston style o-rings where you screw a cap on it refers to parts that are always in motion or regularly in motion, one example might be the shutter lever on Nauticam housing where the shaft rotates to activate, but even that is not really that dynamic, dynamic o-rings examples of dynamic o-rings where silicone might be a problem include hydraulic and pneumatic actuators, pump shaft seals and even scuba regulators that use a piston. On INON o-rings the secret is sufficient lube. Housings it's a mere breath of lube just to get it shiny. On INON o-rings where you are screwing on the lid, I'm a bit more generous, you can feedl the difference once you apply enough.

Wondering how you conclude Silicone o-rings are one of the worst? The only downside you might consider is the low tear strength which they mention, but that is only an issue for dynamic seals - this might include anything that has a rotating shaft on a housing, but if it's lubricated prperly this won't cause an issue. EPDM is probably a better choice than Buna-N as it is more resistant to sunlight. Both EPDM and silicone seem like reasonable choices for o-rings in UW photo gear to me.

I've never seen the need at least with macro, at night you can use max sysnc speed as you are not trying to include any ambient light. For wide angle, if there's some ambient light, a low powered light helps, you usually don't need a bright focus light, mine is 700 lumens and I've used a 350 lumen light quite successfully, that low it's quite unlikely to show up unless your ISO is very high or very long shutter speed.

The point of the MFO3 with 60mm for me is that if a larger subject comes by i can shoot it without backing way up. The 60mm works quite well for small stuff. The MFO3 gives about a 35-37mm macro, the 30mm is not a substitute as even though it is 1:1 this is achieved about 10mm from the port glass. I've used the Pany 30mm and while it's nice particularly with slightly larger subjects the practical limit IMO is about 0.5x as it gets hard to light if you get any closer. On my local dive site the size range is extreme, from the 400mm long weedy sea dragon down to 10mm nudis and tiny pygmy pipe horses. The pipe horses sway in the surge and for me anything shorter than the 60mm is too limiting on approach angles to shoot them with decent magnification. For me the 45mm is a similar argument, it gets 1:1 and working distance is a bit shorter but acceptable, but woerking distance gets too short with a diopter - but for me if I don't need one on the 60mm , I certainly don't on the 45mm. But you can add the MFO3 to the 45mm and get something like a 26mm close focus macro lens for even wider fields.

Thought it might possibly be a little long, the batteries though could probably be adapted as they are about 68mm long and the termination with pins could make attaching a cord to them somewhat easier than a battery pack?

Wondering if this item might be a good solution for extra power in a housing: https://www.rubbermonkey.com.au/SmallRig-3168B-NP-F-Battery-Adapter-Mount-Plate-Advanced-Edition It takes NP-F batteries widely used for video cameras and outputs up to 36W through the USB-C port. One of the smaller NP-F batteries like a 2000 - 3000 mAhr I think would fit in the bulge area above the hotshoe on many housings and would be a lot more future proof than any type of powerbank as the powerbanks appear and disappear regularly, while replacement NP-F batteries are widely available. This is an example of an NP-F battery: https://www.rubbermonkey.com.au/Jupio-NP-F550-Lithium-Ion-Battery-Pack-7-2V-2350mAh?fromCategoryId=271 It would be the ideal battery for a housing manufacturer to provide an extended battery life option I think.

That is a big lump of glass, 90mm diameter. 580 gr and $AUD2800 in round numbers. Keep in mind that very wide rectilinears produce weird perspective effects with the foreground objects looming very large.

Nice, the focus peaking shows it is sharper and the AF will work better with a sharper image - it should not be any better than the bare lens in air, but it shows the level of image degradation of a 60mm FF equiv macro lens through a flat port.

Is this at the wider angles available on the LX-10 zoom? As I understand things the MFO lenses are designed to compensate for diffraction problems of shooting through a flat port and this is deterioration of quality steadily getting worse as the angle of view increases. On 105mm macro lenses the effect is fairly minimal but noticeable on 50-60mm lenses (FF equivalent) and getting worse as you zoom out. It would make sense that macro lenses with a wider field would be helped more. Add to that there is less water to image through and things improve on both fronts.

You'll find a few people on here who are keen to try lenses that are not on the port charts, it's an interesting exercise and some people like the challenge and to try new things. Myself it's an exercise I know a bit about, but for me if it doesn't have AF and auto diaphragm I'm not that interested, apart from Nikonos lenses which are really only readily adaptable to a few specific systems I question if there is any possibility of significantly improved performance, at least as far as lenses behind a regular dome goes. If you search you might find some posts on specific lenses, popular topics include using Nauticam wet optics in other systems and alternative lenses not on the port chart for the wet lenses. There's also a lot of discussion about 3D printing zoom/focus gears for adapted lenses. I recall a classic I think triplet lens being talked about as well.

Welcome Joakim, hope you find the forum useful. Feel free to browse the forums, on you specific question there is a long thread which is likely relevant here: Have a good read and feel free to post follow up question in this topic or for different aspects open a new topic.