Chris Ross

Hi Russell, welcome to the forums, good to have you here. Good seeing another Aussie joining up.

I've merged the other thread on this lens over in General Chat with this thread.

Thanks, did you order the material from the US?, or is there an Australian distributor? Looks like a a $US40 block of foam would cost $US35 to post.

Definitely agree quite a bit of torque to twist the camera to point up. I think a block of foam underneath with a portion of the buoyancy will help - probably want less than half of the buoyancy underneath, so the natural attitude is still for the arms to want to remain at the top

It appears this is a stereographic projection fisheye so it is part way between a typical equisolid projection fisheye and a rectilinear lens. This explains why it is a 10mm focal length. See this plot from Bob Atkins: Link to website: https://bobatkins.com/photography/technical/field_of_view.html I plugged the numbers into the formula for a stereographic fisheye and 10mm comes out as 188.8° diagonal field. This table shows the focal length needed to achieve an 180° and 185° in each projection. FL for 180° field 185° Field Equisolid 15.25 14.95 Stereographic 10.8 10.34 Eqidistant 13.75 13.38 If the 10mm focal length is correct, I think that means the projection is between lines A & B on the plot, lenses won't necessarily exactly match the formula for the projections. Note that the same focal length gives different fields of view as the projections change. What does this mean for the images produced? Basically you lose some of the fisheye "pop" that comes from the subject appearing larger in the centre of the frame compared to the edges - basically less barrel distortion. It also means that the addition of a 1.4x has less zooming effect as the subject is relatively smaller in the centre where the 1.4x crops to. The Canon 8-15 on the other hand is about half way between the Equidistant and equisolid projections and has a field of 175° at 15mm focal length. and has fairly strong fisheye pop. The WACP on the other hand appears to be also close to stereographic projection based upon that formula getting closest to the reported field of view at full zoom when tuned to calculate the 130° diagonal field at minimum zoom.

The main advantage of foam is price plus the ability to fine tune buoyancy.. How durable is the blue robotics foam? I'm thinking I'd like to use some to balance out my wide angle rig placing it under the housing to counter the float arms above. But sitting the housings on the rocks around shore dive entry sites I'm guessing may cause problems?

Exactly the same reason why they will recycle more slowly than eneloops. Internal resistance is everything for getting a good recycle time on your strobes. Eneloops still remain your best option I think.

It Depends, the float collars for WWL are polystyrene but are high density version of foam. Some average polystyrene you find in a craft store likely would not be as strong.

There's a comparison table that was put together a couple of years back in lighting forum here: You could probably add to that, there is a google docs spreadsheet you can edit. Be good to post results in that pinned thread.

Inaturalist does a pretty decent job and even is it doesn't get it right it points you in the right direction I have found. I recall another forum member was developing an application for marine creature ID, a while back setup to work with a lightroom catalogue. this is the post:

Keep in mind that for the Z5II with Nauticam you need the ($500+) Nauticam N120 FTZ adapter which has its own zoom knob which engages with the F mount zoom gears. You could avoid this and use the housing zoom control by making the zoom gear 25mm longer. You still need the extra extension though and Nauticam don't make a 45mm ring it seems but you may already have extensions to make up what is required. I know I had the adapter mounted knob for my rig using a Canon 8-15 and I didn't really like it. The zoom control gears on the FTZ look like an improvement on the older style adapter mounted knobs though.

Interesting that you can't use Isotta on S&S. I see S&S has a Macro port 15: https://www.seaandsea.jp/product/port/macroport.html It seems this might be short enough to work with the 24-50 which is reported to be 75mm long in working position. If you could borrow a 24-50 you could try it out with your extension rings. to see how far it projects beyond the edge of the ring. Typically the dimension of a port is from the flange of the port to the inside of the glass. All they would need to do is make an extension ring of the right length it seems and looking at other lenses it seems it might be a 25mm extension ring. I would add that in terms of viewfinders, the Nauticam are superior, the new models were designed to deal with larger viewfinders used on mirrorless cameras which require a a greater angle of view to work well. I have the original Nauticam 45° and the corners are blurry on my OM-1 viewfinder. Not clear if you have an INON currently, if you do performance is probably similar on Z7 vs Z8. You can get adapters to use Nauticam viewfinders on Isotta housings.

Hi Ratna, welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy!

This post seems quite relevant: Red/green it seems gave you a chance of avoiding scrutiny but now they seem to be going all out.

Good analysis, I would suggest don't count on using your current fisheye dome with Nauticam, unless you can find a lug ring in stock somewhere. You seem to have a macroport in both systems? Or is that the port for the 24-50 On the WWL C it goes from slightly wider than your 14-30 to about 35-40mm equivalent while your 24-70 gets to 70mm of course. Whether it's a complete substitute depends upon whether you use the 40-70mm range on your 24-70 much. Other than that it is effectively a complete substitute for the 14-30 and big dome- unless of course you are a dedicated wreck diver and want trust rectilinear rendering for your wreck shots. As you mentioned there is some fisheye distortion in the WWL-C. I's also suggest asking about using the WWL-C on a flip as it only attaches by the Nauticam bayonet fitting. It's quite a hefty piece (though nowhere near as big a 9"dome) and I've only seen one post where they said they took it off and swapped it for diopter and even then they removed it and stored it in a pocket. which changes buoyancy of the rig. I expect using it on a flip is going to be an issue due to its size. As far as whether the WWL-C substitutes for a fisheye, it depends on what you are shooting, the FE is the choice for reef scenics for me at least. A left field option might be adding a Kenko 1.4x which requires 20mm more extension and that gets you out to the field of a 16mm rectilinear based on horizontal field of view.