Chris Ross

I think the answer is with a 1.4/2x you are always further away than you would be with a bare lens and with a wet lens. With a 2x you can match nearly a 100mm macro with an SMC-3 (2x vs about 2.2-2.3x depending on which macro lens). Basically more water between you and your subject which will degrade the image. If you back off to get 1:1 with a 100mm_macro/2.0x you have the reach of a 200mm macro, so if you had a 100mm lens with 300mm focus distance and 150mm working distance at 1:1 you would double that distance with a 200mm focal length lens depending on how much the lens reduces in focal length to achieve 1:1 with and IF design. It gets worse as you progressively shoot larger subjects. A 1.4x might be a good compromise to give a bit more working distance compared to the bare lens and wet lens at a given magnification.. Also bear in mind that the longer focal length of the lens + TC combo will give you significantly more magnification than the bare lens with the same wet lens. For example the m43 Pany 45mm lens gets 1.6x with CMC-1 while the 60mm macro gets 2.0x (both 1:1 lenses) and 60mm is near 1.4x 45mm. so the new Sony macro might go from 2.4x with SMC-3 to 3.3x with a 1.4x and 4.8x when used with a 2x. So a 1.4x/2.0x locks you into smaller subjects than a bare lens/wet lens combo does and the impact would be noticeable I think in the 0.5x -1:1 range and lower magnifications unless the water was crystal clear. It may work well for skittish mobile subjects like small fish if this was the sole subject of your dive. You might also degrade AF performance with the 2x at max magnification again depending on lens/body combination

This is interesting, My old housing had 2450 cells they seemed to last forever, but my OM_1 uses 2032 cells, not sure why they would reduce the size, not exactly short of space, maybe as it's the same cell used in air tags?? The 2032 cell seems to be fine for an extended trip, I left it on for 3 days before opening at on epoint and did about 20 dives over 6 days and continued using it for local diving afterwards. Sounds like your Z8 is worse? IF you are indeed getting that sort of life it seems like a good option and worth trying out.

Welcome to the forum, good to have you here, feel free to post away with any questions.

Looks like their capacity is only 45 mAhr while a CR2032 is 235 mAhr - though that is to 2V so effectively about half of that to just under 3v where Nauticam vacuum alarms signal low battery. I like the idea of a rechargable bettery though- one solution might be to find a rechargable Li battery that you could wire in place of the coin cell holder., something with a small enough cross section.

It was certainly down when I checked.and showing as being on hold in whois, maybe it was switching domain provider at the time.

Problem with doing this is you cut through the anodizing on the threads meaning it's more prone to corrosion and the thread won't be as strong. It would be quite easy to strip the threads out. There's a few different brands of clamps that offer coloured versions, including nitescuba or you could convert to full ULCS clamps.

Popular ScienceReal-life Snuffleupagus found swimming in the Great Barri...The resemblance is uncanny.

Just clicked a link to wetpixel and got a server is down message. Also checked on downforeveryoneorjustme which confirmed it is down. It was up just a couple of days ago. Is this finally the end of an era?

Alternatively leave it on for a day or two and then turn off without releasing vacuum it should continue to hold.unless you do something like drop the housing or otherwise subject it to load. I think the vaccum valve from leak sentinel is designed to allow you turn it off.

It's almost guaranteed to be metric unless it is made in USA or possibly in Canada. You could pickup some colourful anodised clamps on the likes of Temu or Ebay for about the same price and just use the handle perhaps - the clamps themselves may not be great, more than likely same thread but no guarantee and the anodizing may not be great either so potentially disposable items. My Nauticam clamps are m6 x 1.0 FYI.

There's no lenses listed working with the WWL-C from Canon apart from the little 24-50, if EF lenses nothing at all, the 28-70/80 kit lenses are said to not work with the WWL-1B, so seems unlikely this lens would work with either of the WWL. I expect it should do pretty well behind a 180mm dome though.

3:2 is the standard dimension for full frame stills so any lens OK for stills should be fine with video, after all we aren't viewing 100% crops of the corners when watching the video, our attention is on what the subject is doing.

Hello and welcome, hope you enjoy the forums. On the topic of compact, if you really want to be compact I'd suggest asking if you really need a full frame sensor. There are of course reasons for going full frame, which might be publication demands, low light performance for fast moving subjects or you want it and are prepared to deal with the downsides. Many people on here are advocates for smaller sensors as you can generally use them with smaller domes and particularly in m43 the lenses are smaller lighter and cheaper. I use m43 with an OM-1 and have an adapted Canon 8-15 which goes from a full 180° diagonal to the equivalent of a 28mm rectilinear lens, effectively a 15mm fisheye and a 14-28mm lens combined - in full frame equivalent terms. With the 8-15 and an APS-C or m43 system you could seriously look at using the Zen 4" dome which is tiny and very streamlined. Of course an 8-15 fisheye is neither cheap or light, it's a havy brick which contributes to bouyancy. Of course if a 180° diagonal fisheye is enough (and you were using that previously the tiny 8mm panasonic fisheye only weighs a few hundred grams and works perfectly with the 4"dome in m43. Now the downside of going compact is that buoyancy drops away and the housing can become quite negative. My OM-1 with the Canon 8-15 and 140mm dome is nearly 1.8kg negative and I use two really large float arms to get it closer to neutral which if course adds back drag. This of course is an extreme case as the Canon 8-15 is quite heavy. You could sit the housing on a foam block to get some buoyancy, it would be something like 30x20x3 cm so quite a good size. I'm assuming you would be shooting natural light and not dealing with strobe arms? This of course is an extreme case as the Canon 8-15 is quite heavy. The upside is that in aluminium housings, depending on which model you compare you could save enough $ on hardware costs to pay for a good portion of a dive trip to warmer waters. It's all a trade off.

The o-rings will be the same or close enough between different brands, this thread covers what size they are: https://scubaboard.com/community/threads/o-ring-size-for-ball-joint-aluminum-arms.581917/ you can get Buna-N or silicone models - some say the silicone is a bit grippier, from an engineering supply store they should be very cheap. This prompted me to fish out some spare o-rings from the drawer and replace them on my arms. I have INON arms that I use the most and popped on some Nauticam arm o-rings I had. Visually the Nauticam o-rings are a little smaller but still fit the INON arms and they grip noticeably tighter than the old INON were doing. I measure the Nauticam ones to be 16mm ID and 3.75mm cross section.

The canon is the sharper of the two, but both are sharp lenses. The 10mm lockout is based on using on APS-C. I imagine designing a custom lockout would be quite a feat.