Chris Ross

It depends, if you dial in really close on buoyancy then changing to a medium size dome can end up positive. I know I've had it happen. Two INON mega float arms S are just perfect when using a 60mm macro port. I changed to a Zen 170mm dome and it was positive. My little 100mm Zen port is fine with the bigger float arms.

I think the risk of a problem is very low, a little bit of awareness is needed is all I'm suggesting. Just be careful to dry the cap before removing, check the cap and o-rings for contamination before re-installing it. A tiny, tiny smear of grease once or twice a year - that's it. A blower bulb is quite useful for clearing water droplets away and moving any grit that you find. I raise this as I see people being very casual around opening their housings and can see that translating to these caps.

Not exactly, the o-ring in the cap is your primary protection. The press button vacuum valves can be pushed in by water pressure if you are deep enough, maybe 30m deep or more. The old style Nauticam valve that you screwed in to seal I don't think will leak but the valve will have water inside which will get into the housing when you release the vacuum. On the topic of bulkheads they are vacuum sealed and need to be tight against a 200 mBar differential pressure. Are they good enough to be tight against a 3 bar differential at 30m depth? Maybe? - maybe not? The actual USB connector is not resistant to salt water corrosion. The o-ring on the cap works by screwing the cap on and as it lowers it tends to push away debris, if you only leave the cap off when vacuuming or releasing the vacuum, the chance of contamination is low. I think checking the o-ring briefly before re-installing the cap is enough, you might want to add a miniscule amount of grease before a trip or once a year or something like that. A piston style o-ring such as this needs some lubrication to be able to slide past the sealing surface cleanly. Many people probably get away with not being too careful - but it certainly is a risk that can be mitigated with a little care. On the topic of shorting - best avoided of course. Just blow or wipe away any water droplets before you open the cap. When charging find somewhere clean to keep the cap, a ziplock if you are on a boat and somewhere dry to leave the housing. Don’t leave the housing somewhere where it can be splashed while charging it. Opening it to charge while on a Zodiac or similar open boat would be asking for trouble.

Just weigh it, the maths is not hard, the UW weight is equal to the required buoyancy. Salt vs fresh doesn't really matter that much, it's a 3% difference, just make sure you are slightly negative. A great many accessories have their UW weight listed, for example the MF-2 is 150 grams UW. INON has a page with the UW weight of all their gear. here : http://www.inon.jp/underwater_weight/index.html Housings generally don't have it listed as it varies with the attached port. Once you have the weight of your rig work out a float combination that has a buoyancy slightly less than the the measured UW weight. For example if your rig weighs 800 grams UW then you could add in two INON mega float arm S with 390 grams buoyancy and your rig will then be 800 - 390x2 = 20 gram negative UW. Just be sure to err on the side of slightly negative, you don't want a positive housing. Also it may be obvious - changing ports will change buoyancy a dome port is more buoyant , you can work out a float combo for each port/lens or just set it up to be OK with the dome and live with the macro setup being a bit more negative.

I should add that the bulkhead, in common with any sort of cable bulkhead is waterproof because of the o-ring in the cap. This one is vacuum tight meaning that water won't get inside but the salt water can short out the connections in the plug and will also destroy the terminals by corrosion. So I wouldn't be opening the cap unless there is a dry area where you can charge without risk of salt water dropping on things.

Yes it means it will short the connections. Like the vacuum valve cap you should maintain this o-ring , occasionally a little bit of grease and check for contamination.

Hi Precha, sorry to hear about your strobe. You say it powers on, does this mean your hear the sound on the circuit charging up and then the ready light comes on? How are you trying to trigger the strobe? It looks like it is purely triggered by a slave sensor, so a camera flash should trigger it. You could also use an infrared remote to trigger it. Which mode are you in when testing ? Have you tried both modes? It appears one mode is for cameras with pre-flash and the other for cameras without. If you have already tried all of this I would think it is probably the sensor that is at fault. If the tube is gone, that is often visible. Regarding repair, be warned that the capacitors in these strobes work at high voltages and store a lot of energy and can cause serious injury. They need to be discharged before any work is done. If you are not experienced working with electronics, better to find a repair shop. However finding someone who knows how to work on such an old strobe would be difficult I think. Repair costs likely will exceed the value of the strobe unless it's something very simple.

The devil will again be in the details. For UW photographers the issue will likely be the box on the lens that holds the motor or battery presumably. Will it fit through the dome port and second will it get in the way of a zoom ring? I think For Nauticam where adapted lenses on the FTZ can use F mount zoom gears the zoom ring will be just above the lens mount. I'm not sure all the housing makers have adopted method of placing the camera back in the housing to allow space for the FTZ adapter though.

Assume you have shutdown and re-started things and also fully shut down the system and re-booted? Have a look in the task manager (ctrl-alt-delete) assuming you're on windows to see if there is anything from lightroom still running and end the task if you find anything. Did you find the fix someone posted for a CC install, see if you find the folders referenced in the post: adobe forum post Otherwise the brute force method is to re-install, though back up your catalog first of course and you might need to de-activate this install first - check online about how that might be achieved first I would think. Before I did that I'd go down the burrow on a couple of support forums - you'll probably get the "you should be using CC posts" but might gain some traction on one of them, there's the adobe forum and the lightroom queen forum. Again assuming windows I saw reports of that error on other programs so could be something in the operating system playing up. You could post on tenforums or which ever version of this forum matches your windows version.

You could likely get one from Dive and See, but they are quite expensive. Assume you have confirmed it will charge through the USB connection. I think my EM-1 MkII wouldn't do charge via USB.

Fogging has to be caused by water inside the housing this can come from many sources, a common one being the drops of water clinging to an o-ring when you open the housing. Make sure you mop up or blow off any water droplets before closing up again. Closing a housing with a clamshell back can push some of that water in. Blow out the inside of the housing with air from a scuba tank if possible, it will remove water as it is very dry before you test the housing. It seems unlikley to me that there is any layer you could remove with a micro fibre and really can't think how that could impact anything. They likely tell you to leave it alone to avoid scratches. Silica gel particularly small packs has a short life as it quickly absorbs moisture from the air. It needs to be stored in an airtight container till you use it. You said it's an AOI housing? do an extended vacuum test to check for leaks and works all the controls. If it holds vacuum it should be water tight. Air leaks in quicker than water.

Welcome aboard, was wondering when you might find us, good to have you here.

Before my most recent trip last year I purchased the Nauticam USB-C bulkhead for my OM-1 housing which uses the M24 bulkhead on the housing. The setup consists of an M16 bulkhead and a specific M24-M16 adapter that is machined so that the right angle USB plug will fit through. In summary it works as advertised, I can charge the camera without breaking the vacuum and also download images. Download is a little slow compared to using a card reader it seems the limit is set by the camera interface. I achieved around 28 Mb/sec, while I can achieve 150 Mb/sec with my card reader. Battery charging seems to be about the same as plugging the camera directly into a charger. I got the bulkhead as I shoot the Canon 8-15 with metabones adapter, which requires placing the camera in the housing then assembling the lens from the front placing the dome over the installed lens. This takes some time to pull apart and re-assemble, so being able to charge and download without opening is one less thing I need to deal with each evening after diving. Here is a couple of photos of the bulkhead installed, it seems to be a high quality cable. and externally the bulkhead uses a sealed cap similar to a vacuum valve to protect the USB terminal inside. It is sealed so holds a vacuum if the cap is removed. Overall I'm happy with it as it does what it's meant to do.

Hi Lembeh resort, thanks for joining us, good to have you onboard.