Chris Ross

Welcome Joakim, hope you find the forum useful. Feel free to browse the forums, on you specific question there is a long thread which is likely relevant here: Have a good read and feel free to post follow up question in this topic or for different aspects open a new topic.

165mm port seems a bit small for 7mm lens, I know that I used the Panasonic 7-14 a little in a Zen 170mm dome - there were two issues with it, first to prevent vignetting the entrance pupil was placed a bit forward of the centre of curvature which is down in side the extension it was also established that at least for stills a 170mm dome was a little small at 7mm focal length. I expect though that video it will be less critical, it's hard to pixel peep the corners in a moving image. The 12-35 will be much more forgiving. As for extensions, the 7-14 f4, 7-14 f2.8 and 8-18 all use different extensions with the 180mm dome in Nauticam, The Nauticam 180mm dome has the same problem, anything wider than 8mm (for m43 - 16mm FF equivalent) requires you to place the entrance pupil forward of the optimal point to stop vignetting. For a wider lens I would suggest either the Panasonic 8-18mm or the Olympus 8-25mm f4. Be aware that the 7-14mm f2.8, 8-18 and 8-25 all require you to assemble the camera into the housing then mount the lens then mount the extension/ports as they will not fit through the n85 port ID. This is where Isotta is a better option for m43 as it uses a 102mm port system for m43 and these lenses fit through and can be installed from the back of the housing. Unfortunately they only do a GH5 housing and only have 16mm bulkheads. You also don't need the very pricey N85-N120 adapters.

I don't know, you'd have to test I think. The 69mm is as reported by Nauticam, the 90mm is MFD- lens length - flange distance and doesn't take the port into account. The difference of 20mm seem like a bit much for a change of 1.4 to 1.5x as a typical macro lens increases magnification fairly rapidly with only small changes to working distance. For example my OM 90mm macro focuses at 1x at 250mm and 2x at 224mm. So I'd expect the MFO-1 plus 100mm to focus a little closer at 1.4x compared to the bare lens if you follow my thinking.

Gets you from 1.4 to 1.5x magnification with the 100mm macro at maximum, but the max magnification is in close, min focus is at 69mm compared to about 90mm for the base lens but it only focuses out to just over 1m, which is how it improves the AF by using full focus range rather than the max magnification range when shooting at macro distances.

The lack of a battery to replace sounds ideal to me, though for my system I'm quite happy using the little mini flash.

With the 100mm macro you already get 1.4x magnification, double than the best you do with the 28-60 (0.7x) and with more working distance. The question I would be asking is are you able to find subjects that need that sort of magnification? If you dive exclusively with expert guides in macro rich destinations you might get some use out it. Me - I'd be tempted to just crop a little if needed for extra small subjects as I don't find them that often, plus the depth of field won't be quite so diabolically thin. I recall Alex Mustard saying on one his videos that his most used diopter was a +3 or a +5 diopter which gave just a little more than life sized which you already have with the 1.4x available natively, compared to a traditional macro lens with 1:1 magnification

Welcome James, hope you enjoy the forums and sorry to hear you were on that liveaboard, but great that everyone got off!

I noticed a significant reduction in Backscatter first dive with my new Retras fitted with reduction rings. It's not a magic cure all and I can still manage to take a frame filled with Backscatter if I'm not concentrating but it's so much easier now to produce a frame without excessive backscatter.

I would also suggest reviewing airlines baggage policies - Air Niugini I believe offers 15kg excess baggage for divers if you fly into PNG with them. You can fly Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong - POM with them. Not the most reliable service unfortunately but they will get you there I have been advised by people who have dived there a lot.. They also fly POM-NAD direct every other day, so you could fly into POM via SIN/HKG/NAR and then head on to Fiji. It's pretty easy access for me to POM from Sydney, but not the way you want to do it if arriving from Europe. Alternatives to Air Niugini heading south are basically just Qantas who flies into Brisbane and Sydney. You could always do some temperate water diving in Sydney as well.

It's close to the smallest, the backscatter MF-3 is slightly smaller in diameter but longer. The MF-3 is popular for snooting, it is less powerful with a narrower beam than the S220. INON has a reputation for being reliable, the Backscatter strobes less so, but the newer models seem much improved. S&S YS-01 is similar size, reliability - I've seen a few complaints on the forum. The AOI UCS Q1 is also similar size. You could happily upgrade to a RX series or even m43 with the INON. The others perhaps, certainly you could continue with the MF-3 for snooting up to full frame but not for wide angle.

Welcome onboard Paul, good to have you here.

I very much suspect neither of these is rated for UW use, it doesn't mention a thing about using them UW. The first one has LEDs the second features light pipes to take the flash light to the ring around the lens. I would also guess that the strobe light is quite weak after being piped in and spread around the ring on the second model. They state the first model can compromise the waterproof seals A lot of people dive with TG-7s around my dive sites and many of them now have the Weefine or Kraken ring lights. They have a model with a 3000 lumen burst triggered by your strobe. Working with that could prove tricky on the TG-7 as the camera doesn't know what the ring light is going to do, but should be manageable. The link below shows one model, the others are listed on the side bar. https://underwater.com.au/shop/kraken-ring-light-3000-v2-new-version-sale.html?srsltid=AfmBOopsV7rWxEW0QCi4Dqop191F2xrX9GQxMxLnpuUMIBHD-_zhgStD I've seen some shots produced with these lights and they look pretty nice as long as you are in quite close. I'm not sure exactly which model they are using.

Assuming you have a removable shade, the first thing to check might be dome rotation. Set the camera/ lens up so you can see the edge then loosen the screws and try rotating the dome a little so that the edge doesn't appear. Next check the other corners to see if the dome appears in a different corner. Just to be clear the edge appears as you are zooming out towards a circular fisheye image? You mention extenders - the dome should not appear at all with the 2x and appear around 10mm zoom with the 1.4x, is that what you are seeing?

The max magnification varies depending of focal length for the MFO3 with the Sony 90mm reporting 0.8x from the port charts. All lenses focus between 0 and about 1500mm with the MFO3 added . The stated design from Nauticam is that the MFO3 corrects for having a flat port so has better corners than what a 50/60mm macro would have through a flat port and also shifts the the focus range of the so that in common 0.5x to min magnification range corresponds to the lens focusing to infinity and the fact the lens is out in the range where AF is fast and snappy on the bare lens, so AF improves. In my case with the olympus 60mm macro my limit is 0.5x - but for what I use the MFO3 for - it's a non issue. I've certainly found my MFO3 to be snappy when focusing once the lens racks out to the focal range needed after I first attach it, beyond that I don't even think about AF, it just snaps on. Whether or not the corners improve - I have not done any sort of detailed comparison, I'm just very happy with what it does. In terms of sharpness crushing - a lot of people are using the MFO2 now it seems and I don't recall anyone complaining about sharpness. These lenses are being used with Canon/Nikon/Sony top line macro lenses which are as a rule no slouch optically, seems to me it would be a hard ask for a different supplementary lens to claim to be crushing relative sharpness performance when using the add-on lens unless Nauticam is destroying it. As good as the bare lens or a little better - sure seems quite plausible. I haven’t used the Marelux version so don't know how it performs but have no reason to doubt it produces top notch images. Needs someone to spend some pool or test tank time shooting resolution targets to put the question to bed. Me personally - I'd rather go diving - but would certainly review the results with interest if someone was keen enough to produce some images to compare. Any volunteers?😅

It seems there are two Nauticam N120 140mm ports #18811 and # 18816 and the 16 version has 20mm of extension built in. Do you know which port you have?