Chris Ross

Alex Mustard did a video on the the choice between 32 and 40° versions. You should be able to find it on the underwater photography show channel. The short version is Alex thought he would prefer the higher magnification 32° version but ended up liking the wider 40° version as it was easier to see all of the information, search for the video to see the details. As Dave says you could also look for an old version 45° viewfinder and use the EVF shrink function to save some money the corners might be a bit soft in that but it's usable.

That one looks like the original 45° viewfinder, the difference between the two versions is the nosepiece that fits into the housing. This is the manual which shows the difference, one of which is the 32203 has alignment pins while the 32205 has a flat section cutout. Your looks ike a 32205: https://www.nauticam.cn/upload/portal/20190124/201901241132017209.pdf When you say it's too short what exactly do you mean? Does the nose go in the viewfinder hole far enough to fit the retaining o-ring? If not you need a different nosepiece. I believe this collar adapter is what you would need to turn your 32205 into a 32203: NauticamViewfinder Collar Adaptor for 32204 (from A153408) and 32...Allows for the 45/º viewfinders to be adapted from MIL to DSLR housings. Instruction Manual PDF DownloadAgain you would need to confirm this with Nauticam or a dealer. If someone can confirm they are using a 32203 on a Z8 housing this seems to be what you would need to adapt it.

The Canon is known for being a very sharp lens plus I had a chance to buy the $$$ N85-N120 adapter and the 8-15 lens locally second hand and also picked up the Metabones second hand. Plus I wasn't that keen on using the Metabones speed booster that is used with the 10-17 due to the optics involved though it is reported to work well. I would suggest it is much more straight forward to implement this with Isotta housings. Mainly because they use a larger B102 port compared to the small Nauticam N85 port. I haven't tried but I think you could mount the camera/lens from the back rather than needing to remove the port and lens to remove the camera, particularly if you remove the hood. It's quite the assembly task and I bought the USB-C bulkhead to charge the battery and download images when on a trip so I didn’t need to disassemble it all every day. It's also considerably cheaper (approx $2500 less based on Backscatter pricing) Also the 34.7mm N85-N120 adapter I use is discontinued, you could probably use a N85 - N120 50 or 47mm adapter with a 20mm extension, but I suspect the zoom knob would not mate up correctly and you would need to print the zoom gear I use, the design is listed on the forum. This post outlines the parts list for an 8-15 in Isotta:

Thanks, but I'm not a lightroom user.

The close focus of the Pentax lens is 450mm, meaning that it won't perform well and may not even focus UW with a small dome. The adapter with that big bump may also be an issue depedning on how much room is available inside the housing.

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: