Chris Ross

First thing I would try is a multimeter to see if voltage is applied to the buzzer when it activates. It could either be the buzzer itself or the relay/transistor inside the electronics box that is not switching voltage to the buzzer. I assume the vacuum system is working, I expect the buzzer could be replaced if you had enough electronics experience to work out what type it is a select an appropriate replacment. Something like this would likely work, but you would need to check the voltage applied, I expect it would likely apply direct battery voltage. https://www.jaycar.com.au/mini-pcb-mount-buzzer-9-14vdc/p/AB3459 as you can see it's a $5 retail part.

Welcome Alastair, good to have another Sydney-sider on the forum. You'll have to break out your passport and come south one day and dive the Steps.

Take a look at the big picture, first think about what you want to shoot, is it macro, reefscenes, big animals, fish portraits? A little bit of everything?? Then look at what lenses you need to achieve that . Only then think about which body you can match up with the lenses. Regarding full frame, yes it's great, lower noise, more MP and all that. However the cost to take thing underwater scales with sensor size at least in aluminium housings, the housings cost significantly more, you need bigger ports, the lenses are a lot bigger. and with an expensive full frame camera it doesn't make sense to me get a cheap housing and a system where the ports and extensions needed are not optimised and so the you throw away part of the resolution you paid $$ for. The other consideration with full frame is traveling with it - it bigger, heavier and incrementally harder to take with you when flying to a destination. some of the resolution is also taken up due to the optics of the air water interface and the water between you and the subject blurring things. Next think hard about what you will do with your images. If they are just for you and 99% of the time you look at the image on a laptop or even a reasonable size monitor screen I think you will be challenged to see the difference in the overall image. Underwater things are different, the ultimate resolution is less and you need to get your camera down there, things like reach are different - you use wide angle lenses not to capture a big scene, it is to get closer to your subject. Wide angle optics presnt a particular challenge underwater. Fisheye lenses are extremely useful and the distorted perspective is nit really noticed on most shot, they get you closer to your subject and the optical characteristics are a much better match for the optics of dome ports. Ergonomics is important as well to get the most out of your limited time UW. So having said all of that, IMO m43 has the best selection of lenses suited to UW photography. There are 5 different macro lenses between 30 and 90mm focal length, some really nice wide angle options, two different fisheyes and several options to use with wet wide lens type optics, like the WWL. You can also adapt the excellent Canon 8-15 to give full zoom through from a 180° diagonal fisheye to a 28mm equivalent rectilinear wide in terms of reach and focuses right up to the dome port for CFWA. This entire gallery was shot with the adapted 8-15 and the OM-1: https://www.aus-natural.com/Underwater/Walindi%20Resort%20PNG/index.html

Look at the subject distance in the EXIF, it will be in the range of 0.6m plus unless you are pushing right in next to the lens, It shows up in properties under details tab, scroll down to camera in Windows explorer.

Looking at the rig I'm thinking one large buoyancy behind the monitor arm between the the two arm clamps, either using triple clamps or a system like this one: If you add enough foam to the back of the monitor to make it neutral on it's own you can place it where you want it without worrying about trim too much and you could raise it a little to make room for a big arm there. Then place about the same amount of buoyancy underneath between the two rails, maybe overall go for slightly positive on the housing/sled. Next attach floats to your light to get them independently neutral and connect them up with plain arms. you could try to find a hollow ring type arrangement or I think even a "T" at the end of the arm with a float above and the light below , it could then be set so the clamp is not too tight and it will always have the float wanting to sit directly above the light. set the fore-aft position of the light attachment point so that it sits level and doesn't want to twist. I did something similar with an astronomical telescope on a fork mount years back. A guide scope above and the same weight below the body of the scope plus a trim weight going back and forth. Fiddling with positions I could get it to sit anywhere it was pointed with minimal friction on the axes. In principle you are trying to achive the same thing with your rig, but using floats rather than weights for balancing and trim weights to adjust for aft trim. The scope only had two axes to worry about, you will have three, but the side to side is handled through symmetry.

strange it went to a red X it wasn't that way after I posted, try again: link also include the text version of link: bcgforums.com/threads/nikon-z8-focus-shift-and-flash-issue.34347/ it went straight to the red X just now for some reason. Hopefully the new trigger will solve the issue.

Yes, it's unfortunate that some of these things are not well made. Bear in mind you'll also need a 1"ball mount Z adapter to add to the strobe, with INON they are purchased separately. The mounting system for the INON strobes is quite sturdy. I had my INON Z240s for 10 years and they are still in good shape. Don't be afraid to use a single strobe while on this trip, the the TG-7 doesn't require particularly strong flash as it's f2.8 at the wide end and the single YS-01 will provide OK coverage there. For macro, you are closer and using one strobe for macro is quite straight forward for most situations. Also be aware that f8-f18 is achieved through a ND filter on the TG-7, the only time you would want to use it is if you are trying for a black background, it doesn't provide additional depth of field.