Chris Ross

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.

No reason it won't work for you, just check out how you plan to trigger your strobes - can you optically trigger with this housing or is it cables? You mention S&S strobes - just be aware the older S&S strobes are known to be difficult to trigger optically - specifically the YS-D2 model need a good strong trigger.

I'm sure it would work fine, you just need to work out the correct extension.

Drying the lens can prove difficult, depending on your boat. I advocate putting the wet cover back on and leaving it there, covering with towel etc to prevent it drying completely. It stays on till you get back and you can give your housing a soak. Obviously don't leave it on overnight just till you get back to shore or to a rinse tank where you can give it a soak. I take a foldable cooler with me to protect the housing on the boat and at the end of the day it becomes my personal soak tank. The stains are caused by the water droplets evaporating and drying out. My treatment is a soak then use my air duster to blow all the water off the ports and housing.

This is true, though of course MP is not the full story, the sensor can be tuned differently to optimise noise versus dynamic range etc. at different sensor sizes. I'm sure there is some compositional benefit to framing the image when the the part you are cropping out is not visible as happens when you zoom, probably allows you to fine tune your distance from subject as it's too easy not to get close enough with a fisheye and perhaps this would be less apparent if judging the shot from the full frame.

Don't know how long ago it was purchased, but seems like a lemon, I would be putting the hard word on them for a replacement.

I would think no problem to fit into an N100 port, the OD of the Canon 8-15 is listed as 78.5 while the ID of my N85-N120 adapter is 77mm, so It is only just short of fitting through my N85 system. The Canon lens is 225gr more than the Sony, but for situation it's moot as you can't use the 2x TC with the Sony lens. This won't change until/if someone produces a quality 2x TC without a protruding nose. There is probably some weight saving with a pure N100 setup - you could replace the N100-N120 with a 35mm extension but I expect the N100 dome is very similar weight. I'm just playing modifying the zoom gear I had printed to use the main housing zoom control on my OM-1 housing and it occurs to me that an N100 housing for the OM-1 would solve a lot of issues and would also allow Nauticam to streamline their range of ports. The N85 port is just a little too small for many of the interesting m43 lenses.

You can certainly use the MFO-3 it comes with an m67 adapter to allow it to work on any m67 port. The basic option would be screw it on when you need, but I expect you'd be a lot happier with a flip adapter or some sort of bayonet system - I'm not certain but the pics of the flat port look like it should take the Nauticam bayonet adapter but you would need to check the adapter will fit over the lip of the port. If that works, the SMC with a Bayonet ring should also work. Whether it works will depend on how wide the lip is on the end of the port is (where the M67 thread is) as the Nauticam adapter fits over the lip as it screws on.

Just stumbled across a post from Alex Mustard, posting some photos taken with the new Retra pure II strobe. I have the Pure strobes which are 70 Ws rated and use a slightly smaller diameter circular flash tube which gets more of the strobe light entering a snoot. Here's a link to the post on Facebook: Alex Mustard Pure II Apparently shipping Nov 23. said to be their lightest strobe. Here is the info on Retra's website: Retra Pure II

You would get a 180 diagonal frame same as at 14mm at about 9.5mm zoom on APS-C and the zoom equivalent would be a bit closer at 14mm compared to using a 1.4x TC. Whether it's a bad idea or not - hard to say, it's not a bad idea but maybe is of limited benefit. It can help with framing the subject but you might just as well crop in post. If the ability to zoom helps you compose better then perhaps yes it will work well for you.

There are a number of issues. First the SONY TC won't mount to the Sony fisheye, second issue is that the Kenko don't make a TC for Sony E mount. The Laowa lens in E mount has the same issues. I can't see it taking a SONY converter due to the extended nose making it impossible to mount. The Canon 8-15 has the advantage of being designed for a camera with 44mm flange distance - this gives plenty of room to install an AF converter. With the 8-15 you can get a Kenko 1.4x or 2x and mount to the Metabones though the performance of the 2x is reported to be not great. The interesting part for SONY users is that the Sony e mount 2x works very well with the 8-15 in conjunction with the metabones adapter and it really only does this because of the fact it has a long back focus as it is designed for a DSLR. The downside is the Canon 8-15 is no longer made so you need to buy it second hand. I think with the Canon 8-15 the message is enjoy it while it lasts, in the current state of play with all mirror-less cameras in the future adapting lenses will become a thing of the past and we will eventually lose the ability to have a fisheye zoom option unless Tokina or someone comes up with a new 10-17 or similar. The short flange distance of the mirrorless lenses will make it difficult to adapt any of them or use them with coverters unless Kenko extends their range of converters.

I use Capture One for initial RAW processing and selection then an old copy of PS CS6. Essential features to me - it needs a levels tool, masking must be straight forward. I would like to be able to soft proof images and need to be able to use a calibrated monitor. Backscatter removal cloning tool needs a one touch tool like PS. I just tap each spot on a tablet. An actions tool like PS is also an essential for me, i have actions which take my processed tif and resize to a set pixel size , add shapening layers do initial sharpening and place a copyright notice. The dodge/burn tools also get use - PS allows burning of only the highlights so for example will dull down backscatter without impacting the background. On the topic of masking I use the Tony Kuyper free luminosity masks plug in in PS makes controlling shadow/midtone/brights contrast so easy . I tried Affinity photo and while its good at levels curves etc. masking is ridiculously convoluted and I gave up. The sort of masking I am talking about is using a monochrome version of the image suitably adjusted with contrast and/or inverting it. Doing this in PS is a single click to get the image placed as a monochrome mask. Affinity requires jumping through flaming hoops. I'm a bit different to the average user in that I do everything with levels and curves etc, the original toolset in PS. I don't need all the other so called smart tools as I can do just about everything they do with the basic set of PS tools and some masking capability.