Chris Ross

Based upon the reviews and the fact it only gets to 1.1x, I don't have an MFO-1 and don't plan to buy one. Seeing as how you already have the CMC-2, mounting it on a flip seems the best way to go. I agree I'd take the MFO-1 along, you might as well try it out, it's not like it takes up much space.

No not exactly - the suggestion is to work out if you regularly find critters that require that amount of magnification. My experience with the 60mm macro is it's very rare for me to find something small enough that I feel like I need a diopter. From a week in Lembeh with over a hundred critters found only one or two were small enough that a diopter might have been useful. Your experience might be different, I think it depends on where you dive, how good you are at finding small stuff etc. The CMC-2 will be challenging to use at max magnification for sure, I'm not suggesting don't use it, rather I don't see it as an either/or situation with the MFO-1 as they have different magnification ranges and I would choose based upon how much magnification I need. If you find you are getting down to 1:1 all the time currently and wishing for more and are OK with lighting subjects right on 1:1, then a CMC-2 is possibly the next logical step. The 90mm macro I think would be a lot easier to use at high magnification, it has about 65mm working distance at 2x compared to 22mm with the CMC-1 also at 2x, but it's an expensive lens, needs a new port etc. I'd want to be sure I would make use of it and could live with the extra working distance. At 1x it's only maybe 10-15mm more working distance than the 60mm, at 0.5x (35mm wide frame) you are at 170mm then 330mm at 0.25x. So for 60mm long subjects you are getting quite distant. I have the 90mm macro and use it a lot on land, but have not been tempted to take it UW.

Thanks for the update. I suspect it is something similar to what i see with e-shutter on my OM-1 . In focus stacking I do on land with an Olympus flash - the flash fires very rapidly on low power. I trialed doing a short stack UW, using the mini flash on manual at 1/64 power for triggering. The little strobe can fire rapidly at such low power but it was like it was waiting to confirm the flash was ready again before firing. The standard way of getting around this is to make use of the X-sync on the camera, which it basically a mechanical contact built into the shutter - the camera doesn't recognise there is a flash attached and fires every time the contact has closed as long as it has charge. Did a little searching to find this, seems the problem is by design from Nikon:

The MFO-1 should be thought of as a high quality low power diopter. In the case of the 60mm macro it only improves magnification to 1.1x while the CMC-2 achieves 1.7x but it will only focus between 33 and 122mm. Based on the focus distances there might be a little overlap with the CMC-2. It seems there are some benefits on image quality on full frame sensors and also prevents hunting with some macro lenses which readily switch to the background. However it seems that for m43 lenses there is no reported improvement. It seems to me that whether to keep it or not comes down purely to whether you can find subjects in the magnification range covered by the diopters. There is less case for diopters with m43 lenses, first the working distance is small and diopters work by reducing working distance, second the field covered at 1:1 with these lenses is 17mm across, half that covered on a full frame sensor. The CMC-2 covers a field 10mm across at a working distance of 33mm which means it is difficult to aim and to light the subject. Because diopters like the CMC-2 limit the focus range to a a limited working distance, they are in general more difficult to use compared to a bare macro lens, the MFO-1 limits the range but the maximum working distance is over 1m so you can use it just like a regular macro lens, you can find the subject from a distance and close in while looking through the viewfinder, not so easy to do if the subject isn't in focus until you close right in on it.

If you can fix it. but only have one cable, try running the other strobe with a bare port it will likely trigger off the other strobe. If you need to cut the cable to repair it - DO NOT use scissors, a sharp box cutter or razor blade is what is needed, it needs to be cut at right angle to cable.

Unfortunately the evidence is that the cables are not putting enough light through, the INON strobes are usually easily triggered. The strobes should trigger through the cable with an IR remote. try the test with the strobe in manual - first thing to try is to get it working in manual - a strobe in manual is better than no strobe. It's not 100% clear from what you have said, you mention more light coming out of the cable at position 0 compared to position 1, however some questions to clarify: Have you tried to trigger strobes in both positions 1 and zero with the trigger? Have you tested both cables? Are you testing with the cables plugged into the housing? If so have you confirmed the LEDs are well seated in the fibre ports, i.e. pushed all the way in? The instructions mention this and I recall a few times this was the problem people had with triggering. Is there someone else there who has a cable being used with a LED trigger that you could borrow briefly for testing purposes. What were you triggering the strobes with before this trip? A different trigger? an onboard flash? It's important to check all of these things and report back if we are to have a chance to successfully troubleshoot.

Don't know where you are, perhaps the dive shop could loan a screwdriver or are there any hardware stores around? The little dials don't require much force to turn so perhaps a small nail file might work? Probably some other household or kitchen items might be put to use.

It would depend on the type of coating, but I expect it would require strong mineral acid to have any impact, magnesium fluoride is often used as a glass coating and it's reported to be quite resistant to acids. Searching showed that magnesium metal is treated with HF to provide a MgF coating which resists corrosion by acids, much more so than the bare metal.

the method shown below using Levels will automatically setup your colours - providing you have a full histogram with a bit of room at each end to allow you to make the needed adjustments. https://www.photoreview.com.au/tips/editing/advanced-levels-adjustments/ It will properly correct a photo that is under flashed for example, very occasionally it might need a little more green removed or blue added, which you do with the midtones slider in the appropriate channel. Sometimes you might need to tone down specular highlights, but it works well for 95% of images.

The cheapest path would be to adapt what you currently have most likely. Recently another member was looking at switching from Aquatica and went with an Isotta housing and an Aquatica adapter ring: Isotta is well supported in Australia with a few dealers selling them and they also have solutions to use WACP/WWL with their system. Aquatica also have a dealer in Cairns. You could start out with a metabones adapter with your Sigma fisheye. For easy travel a small dome with a fisheye is hard to beat IF a 180° diagonal fisheye has enough reach for you. Another Australian member recently went with an adapted Canon 8-15 on SONY along with the Sony 2x TC. A few members are using that solution it's not as sharp as the bare 8-15 but gives superb flexibility zooming all the way from 180° diagonal to a frame that is wide as a 28mm rectilinear WA lens. I don't shoot Sony but I use an adapted 8-15 on an OM-1 and used it for the entire trip when I went to Walindi in 2024 I get the same field of view range with the bare 8-15 on a m43 sensor.

Where did you see this?, I find Sea Frogs documentation for this hard to follow. It seems they have two different ports with built in extension for their plastic housings so don't really attempt to precisely position the lenses behind the dome. The citeria seems to be just make sure it doesn't vignette. I see they have extension rings listed now, but don't see them mentioned anywhere in their lens charts. On the 8-15 on full frame - it's either 8mm circular of 15mm diagonal fisheye so unless you want circular fisheye you don't need a zoom gear and if you can use it at 15mm without vignetting it's probably as good as you can get in this system. On the 15mm fisheye, it's probably a bit short for your stated interest in big animals, particularly sharks and rays where you can't get quite that close.

Acid won't harm glass, it is alkaline solutions that can etch it. Certainly though whenever you clean glass ports do not let the water dry on there. It causes any salts in the water to concentrate, distilled water in theory should be free of salts but you may mobilize some salts whenever you rinse. The answer is to blow off most of the water (a blower bulb is good for this) then thoroughly dry - use a microfibre cloth.

Welcome Sabine, good to have you here, hope you enjoy the forums.

I waved it around the end of my cable while pressing the TV on button and it quickly fired both on the cable and the sensor itself (on retra strobes) A cable issue is quite possible and I would suggest assuming that is the problem till proven otherwise. The older TV remotes with the LED poking out are easiest to align of course , but a I used a SOny TV remote and it quickly fired by passing the window section over the acble end. In any case Pavel has provided some advice and I would certainly try that first.

This one is relatively easy, Google AI hallucinated and gave you the Nikon F (SLR/DSLR cameras) flange distance. I would think when measuring the flange distance you would want a piece of film in place as it has a finite thickness. Using google without the AI, there are multiple references to the dimension being 28mm and at least one where somebody measured and found 32mm.