Chris Ross

Have to agree, though the examples provided are relatively low stress as magnification is very low and whole frame is close to being in focus. Shift to low depth of field macro (or a long tele lenses for that matter) and it's a different story. It's obvious from the video that it's a Leica wannabe rangefinder imitation, the language used, the pricepoint - it's all about style and selling to a very specific crowd that has the income to blow on items like this. Like a it's a $5k plus camera and they don't include a lens hood and they charge $200 for it.

believe it was update of apache server software which broke it.

Well technically RC mode allows HSS I believe. But in any case the headline on the website includes "under development" and the footnote: "Additional newly developed features for professional use will be revealed progressively", so who knows what the feature list might include. We will certainly be spoiled for choice I think.

Combination strobe/video tend to max out at about 5000 lumens which is not all that powerful in terms of a video light and often have restricted beam angles. The most powerful combo seems to be the Backscatter HF-1 currently. It depends on what your video expectations are of course, the HF-1 I expect could do macro video quite readily, but would expect it to be limited to do video with your main camera. Basically the video light needs to out power ambient light or close to it. As a flash it's very powerful, though I saw Alex mustard comment it sometimes doesn't turn down enough for macro. The downside I see is that it quite a heavy lump even UW, you can counteract that of course but it's more weight you need to cart around. We have quite a few people on the site who use it now.

Nice shots, I agree on the background, I've never been a huge fan of black backgrounds, comes from land based macros for many years where black BG was reserved for night shots and getting a pleasing out of focus BG was highly regarded.

that will get you the capacitance, but I think there's probably some other parameters to get a capacitor which does what it is supposed to and lasts. I found this site, I expect if you find the capacitance, ordering replacements from here might be a good bet. Perhaps you could contact them with the capacitance and dimensions and see if they are able to assist: https://www.xenonflashtubes.com/photo-flash-capacitors_21 Also I assume you are aware of the hazards these capacitors present, they store a lot of energy at hazardous voltages and need to be discharged before working on them. The limiting factor is likely to be the external dimensions, it has to fit in the space available.

To BJS, the OP I should add, we are in the same city if you want to see the Equipment in person feel free to contact me.

IMO dynamic range is nice, but rarely critical UW, If you look at ambient images the histogram is squashed into the middle and needs to be stretched to get a decently contrasty image. The sole exception might be sunballs, but It seems that high sync speed is your biggest requirement there. and the dynamic range progressively goes away as you increase ISO. I don't doubt the images look great, but for me the the m43 sensor is more than adequate for what I do. If you like to look at sensor data plots you'll see that The Nikon D800 and the A7RV are very very close with mainly slightly more dynamic range at a given ISO. In fact the EM-1 MkII matches the D800 ISO400 dynamic range at ISO200 and it hardly drops at 400. It's a similar story for noise. Where full frame really comes into play is at much higher ISOs which are not that commonly needed UW. I have seen remarkable shots at high ISO out of the OM-1 though. This shot at ISO6400 I found quite nice, the shadows are blocked but FF and infinite dynamic range won't help the feathers have microstructure that makes them close to the blackest object known, they just don't reflect light. https://500px.com/photo/1111734237/magnificent-riflebird-or-papua-by-petr-bambousek

Either the Panasonic or Olympus 8mm fisheye is very light and affordable and they work well in a 4"dome. Agree though the AF in the OM1 and EM5 is way better than the old series like EM-5II - mainly a benefit when using the 60mm macro lens which was relatively sluggish on the EM-5 II. I upgraded to the EM-1 mKII 8 years ago it was way better than the old EM-5 II. If you are concerned about expense a second hand EM-1 MII or III in an aluminium housing would be a great option. The OM-1 and OM-5 are better but not as much of a step up as the EM-5 II to EM-1 II.

I shoot the OM-1 in Nauticam, quite happy with it. I didn't downgrade from full frame UW, though I went from using a Canon 1DIV on land to olympus as well . I still have the 1DIV and Canon lenses including a 500mm f4 and 180mm macro , but I've switched over to using the OM-1 for all of that and the Canon gear only gets used very occasionally as the OM-1 is every bit as good and for land based macro using focus stacking among other features easily surpasses the Canon and other full frame options. There are others here who have gone Full frame to APS-C and never regretted it such my fellow moderator @TimG . My feeling these days is APS-C is a bit of an orphan child with lens range a little limited in some ways. I used to try to shoot everything so that I could print big!! but I've found in reality I almost never do. Other advantages include you don't need to stop down so much so you can shoot lower ISO as you are at least 1 stop further open compared to FF, this means smaller cheaper flash units will work for you. The lens lineup is very complete with excellent macro, rectilinear wide (14-28, 16-35 equivalent etc.) and fisheye options. The lenses are cheaper than full frame and a lot smaller as are the ports required. On the full frame question, a lot depends on what you want to use the images for and I can see two main reasons for wanting full frame these days -1. you make your living from the images and clients demand it and 2. You want (and actually do) make large prints - I'm talking A2 size and bigger. The 20 MP sensor in the OM-1 can print A3 natively at 300 dpi and up-ressing to A2 is quite feasible, it's starts to suffer a little beyond that. A third reason might be you can afford it, can put up with size and weight and you want to. Ports and lenses in m43 are quite a bit cheaper as are the housings. I have the 60mm macro, which is my most used, the 12-40 in a 170mm dome and now use the an adapted Canon 8-15 fisheye in the 140mm dome for wide angle - you can't get this so cheaply in any other system. It combines a full diagonal fisheye with a 14-28 equivalent lens and includes much of the range of a WWL setup in one package. Full frame requires either Sony and the same adapted 8-15 lens with a Sony 2x or using the very expensive Fisheye conversion port. Amazing flexibility and image quality and uniquely micro43 allows you the most flexibility. Only downside is it needs lots of flotation to get near neutral. Your two main housing options are Nauticam and Isotta. I started with Nauticam and I'm bought into this system, but Isotta for example would allow you to do the Canon 8-15 significantly cheaper. I can pack my setup including housing, ports, camera, lenses and two strobes into a carry on size photo backpack. Feel free to ask more specific questions about shooting with the OM-1. There's lots of images on my website and most recent ones since about late 2023 are with the OM-1. You can also find my gallery here on Waterpixels.

The biggest problem is there are so many junk enclosures out there. I did find this active cooled one which claims to be very quiet: Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD...Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure Offline Clone D...Buy Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure Offline Clone Docking Station (SD560) - Buy Now, Pay Later + FREE pick-up & same day dispatch!None of the specs though mention anything about DRAM or SLC- cache? I usually buy Samsung storage for my SSDs, was supposed to be the "best" a few years back but haven't researched recently. My internal HDD on my desktop tower is a Samsung 4TB SSD 2.5"form factor, but I'm still using a spinning backup drive in an external enclosure. I'm thinking about what I'll update it with down the track?? But back to the OP, any SSD with a 200MB/sec card and good reader will eat a system using a spinning HDD plugged into a laptop I would think.

Welcome Isobel, hope you enjoy the forum.

You Tube does auto bit rate and sizing it seems, On my big screen the video is often obviously stretched but looks a lot better on a smaller screen. The biggest thing is it will degrade the quality if the connection is not great. I just watched at home on a decent connection on my big screen and your footage looks pretty good. Smaller screens need a lower bitrate to look good. The footage under the overhang looks a bit familiar - quite like a shot I got from the Labyrinth divesite a few years back now.

As others have said you need a fast drive and fast card reader together with fast cards. Just picking any old card reader can be quite slow ( and don't even talk about plugging your camera for many cameras - it's a lot slower) I'm using a Sandisk mutli card Pro reader which gets decent speed. I assume macs report download speed when emptying drives - what does yours report? I get 160 MB/sec with a Sandisk card labelled as 200MB/sec which are pretty cheap these days. The cable I'm using might be slowing it down a touch, but haven't tried other combinations. I could probably get something faster but it would involve time and effort and $$ and most of the time the download is done in a few minutes. That card reader is reported to get 295-300 MB/sec with Sandisk 300MB/sec rated cards. For best speed you want to have two ports on your PC, one for the card reader and one for the storage which is going to fastest as a SSD. I've haven't heard a lot of good things about Lacie drives in fact any external drive using spinning drives bought as a complete unit. I've always used external enclosures, preferably with fan cooling and they are generally reliable.

Thanks @Alex_Mustard , certainly seems like it would be useful for the type of shots I take locally (and for a forthcoming trip to Lembeh!!) The question I have is will it work with micro43? The Olympus 60mm macro is a nice lens and works very well, but it's a bit too long at 120mm equivalent, unless you are on quite small subjects. Switching to a ~30mm macro when I come across a weedie or Eastern Blue devil fish or even a red indian fish and other similar sized subjects would be perfect. I can't think of a reason it wouldn't work except perhaps I'm mostly working at f8-10. Which flip adapter are you using? Is it the one for MWL-1? On the brighter image question I would say if adding a 1.4x TC loses one stop of exposure, then adding the inverse of that - about a 0.7x converter would gain you a stop of exposure. You probably need to add into the equation that the lens is focusing a little closer and this may lose some light. What you actually end up with probably depends on exactly how the optics were designed.