Chris Ross

It is interesting that Nauticam applies the " * " to the 230mm dome for this fisheye lens while all of the other fisheye zooms have the 140 mm dome asterisked. The new type II dome is asterisked for the Canon 8-15 with Kenko 1.4x while the type I dome is preferred for the 8-15 alone, while the new dome is preferred for the Nikon 8-15 with and without the 1.4x. It was previously suggested that the 140mm was preferred due to it being closer to a full hemisphere than the 230mm. Not so for the Sony lens at least and kind of shows that fisheyes may be less sensitive to precise dome positioning as the 230mm not being a full hemisphere requires the lens to be placed further forward in the dome. It is said Nauticam bases the asterisk on testing, so leaves us wondering what is better about the 230mm dome images. I would have thought you would still base dome choice on whether splits of CFWA was your priority or even that you already had either a 230mm or 140mm dome.

Have you tried shooting in manual? In most cameras this only requires a connection between the centre contact and the hotshoe frame and only needs to close the circuit- it doesn't need to transmit data like the TTL connections, so should have a greater chance of working.

I would add that you are highly unlikely to get close enough to whales to be able to get any useful light on the subject and many places prohibit the use of strobes or lights with any whales. The bigger problem which is apparent if you've been in the water with someone shooting video is that the lights are very bright and cause many subjects to turn tail and leave.

See this link from a post made by Reefphoto, there are issues you should check out when a flood occurs. Also I recall reading that the INON cases were strong but not incredibly chemical resistant so can crack when exposed to the alkaline soup from a battery flood. Here's the link: Reefphoto post I'm not aware of any INON service agents in Australia though, but this company says they can work on UW strobes: https://www.underwaterhousingservicing.com.au/about_us.htm

I don't doubt it will be an improvement over a 16-35 - it's just not a fisheye. Los of people are happily shooting with them.

There is not much around on how to do this. I found a couple of posts discussing doing this for flat ports. the principle I believe is the same for dome ports. The hard part is getting to old o-ring out. https://waterpixels.net/wp-archive/topic/68709-domeflat-port-deconstruction/#wp-post-447495 These may help a little. You could also ask the vendor is they can provide advice, or if they could do the replacement for you, I think I would be a bit nervous replacing the acrylic as it would be easier to scratch even with soft tools.

Well yes for that particular use, but if you are framing big animals it's a different story, you aren't getting close to fisheye wide, it's still better no doubt, but the advantage over rectilinears in a dome is more than just the width of the frame, the barrel distortion gives a bit of fisheye effect and you don't need to stop down so much to have decent corners, plus a big benefit is it focuses down to the glass, while retaining a good percentage of the reach of the 16-35.

The thing to remember with water contact optics like WACP is that they are not hugely wider than a 16-35 , the WACP 130 deg diagonal suggests it’s like a 10mm rectilinear, however the horizontal width of the frame is around that of a 13-14mm rectilinear lens. The water contact lenses and fisheyes both feature barrel distortion which is much stronger in the fisheye. What this means is that image scale varies across the frame, with objects in the centre rendered larger and more prominent with edges of frame rendering smaller and apparently receding. This draws attention to the subject if it’s placed in the central region. Rectilinear lenses feature constant image scale, but nearby objects appear more prominent (larger) and this becomes more apparent the wider the lens. This can cause weird distortion to a diver for example reaching forward that appears to have giant hands as they are closer to camera. Not super apparent at 16mm, more so at 14mm and on to 10mm where it is very apparent.

When do you go , is it soon? I think the winds shift within a month or so. There is a possibility of diving the far side of Lembeh island, depending on which dive resort you are with when winds swing to the north. Some nice wide angle reefs there apparently. As for lens choice I agree that a macro lens plus the MFO3 is indispensable in Lembeh, there are enough larger subjects to make good use of the MFO3. If you using the Olympus 60mm that for me was enough for most subjects I was shown.

Back from a trip diving from Lissenung Island resort in PNG, it's located at the NW tip of New ireland. Plentiful fish on the reefs there, this one pic I have ID'd 15 different fish species and there's at least 4 or 5 more where I'm not sure or the fish is facing the wrong way to allow a good ID. Here's a link to a larger image if you want to explore and chase down different species: Larger image List of species I could see: Lemon damsel Pennant bannerfish Purple anthias - lots of these Moorish Idol Blue and yellow fusilier Saddled butterflyfish Pink-tail Triggerfish Twospot snapper Speckled damsel Talbot's damsel Darkfin chromis Tailspot squirrelfish Neon damsel whitetail surgeonfish possibly and eclipse pigfish??

Email Backscatter as suggested. All the backscatter website talks about is compatibility with their branded flashes. Just because a strobe is listed as being compatible with Sony TTL, doesn't mean a particular trigger will work, even if it is said to work with Sony TTL. A lot of this TTL stuff is reverse engineered and may not use the exact Sony protocol for communication in TTL. It should work in manual though, which is wireless flash on in the camera settings and the strobe in manual mode at one of the fractional power settings (not Sony mode) - something like 1/4 power for testing - which is the mode dial set to 6. The AOI strobe is likely setup to work in TTL on Sony cameras using the AOI trigger in their housings.

I was there last October, there was a little rain, but weather mostly pretty good. It switches sometime in November usually in Lembeh. I would also add the seasons move around in Indonesia depending on what part you visit - it's a huge place. For example peak season in Komodo is low season in Raja Ampat. Many of the liveaboards move between the two areas. I also went to Lembeh in November many years ago. It had started raining but wasn't too bad and certainly didn't rain all day. In November the lodge I visited offered dives in the south east side of Lembeh as well as the much dives inside Lembeh, the SE dive sites are coral reef sites.

No experience with this, however the range of video lights is quite limited so you need to be quite close for them to have any impact. Video lights have much less power than strobes and they run out steam at about 1m or so, depending on strobe power, aperture being used etc. It also depend son how deep you are, if you are quite deep and ambient light is limited you can raise ISO to compensate as the ambient light is low.

Here's the mini review I did on the Wolfbox blower, I ordered from wolfbox, it got here pretty quick:

The standard recommendation for glass polishing is straight lines, however you rotate the dome regularly, this is how it is done for polishing astronomical optics like telescope mirrors. You don't want to concentrate all the effort just around the scratch as it can impact the dome shape if you go too much in one area.

The Zen port chart includes the Olympus 8mm and they recommend the 30mm extension with the DP100. The port chart has disappeared from the Zen website in the past few days, but you can get it on the web archive here: Zen N85 port chart

Assume you have the lens and the dome? have you tried it out in the dome yet? I would suggest trying it before taking it UW as the 7" Nauticam has a fair bit of extension built in and the 9mm is a little shorter and has a wider angle of view than the 10-18mm. You can do this on land to see if it vignettes or not.

They both work but achieve different results. The fisheye has barrel distortion which has a distinctive look the center is bought forward big in the frame and the corners recede, so it draws attention to the subject. You just have to have a little care what is in the corners where larger objects distort - divers for example stretch out and look strange, so you have to place them in the frame properly and be aware from intrusions into the frame. They work quite well even in small domes. Rectilinears on the other hand have narrower fields where straight lines stay straight everywhere. Usually this is only important for subjects that contain straight lines like interiors of wrecks, though of course there are other applications. Very wide rectilinears have perspective issues. something in the foreground that is much closer appears a lot larger, one example I have seen is a divers arm reaching forward, the hand looks way too big for the body it is attached to. You can take advantage of that of course but you need to be aware of it. The 10mm Laowa lens caused quite a stir, it performed quite well but interest seemed to wane and people complained about difficulties dealing with the perspective issues. with it. The other issues is corners can be softer, though the newer close focusing rectilinear lenses perform better in this regard, but still need larger domes than fisheyes.

This is true for Nauticam, but most of the issues to my mind stem from the N85 port which IMO is too small. It becomes a lot simpler on Isotta who use a 102 mm port and you only need a simple and cheap 40mm extension with zoom knob to use the Canon lens and they have a zoom gear you can use directly. Combine that with the 4.5" glass dome and you have a nice compact system.

Yes selections can be tricky , I find for my purposes that absolutely clean selections are not vital in most cases and the ability to feather the mask hides a lot of faults. Usually I sharpen some in Capture One so the subject only needs a light lick of sharpening in the final jpeg and Noise reduction I rarely find necessary. I try not to use selections for independent processing - unless it is very subtle the selection stands out to my eyes. This is mainly around producing images for web use, printing requires some care in preparation, but most of that is covered by only printing my best frames. I used to sweat over processing, but I've come to learn that it's not worth my time trying to save an image- far better to work on one that is close to start with. It's so easy to suffer paralysis from over thinking the processing.

There is some great diving on the Australian east coast but it's very weather/swell dependent and the vis is up and down. IMO the very best access to diving is in Sydney, lots of dive sites just inside estuaries and shore accessible, particularly on the south side. There's also an active dive community who dive the shore sites regularly independently from dive shops who only run dives on weekends. Brisbane/Gold coast you need to travel to get to many sites there is basically one shore dive at the gold coast seaway. Near the gold coast there is Julian Rocks, 2km offshore from Byron Bay, cook island offshore from tweed heads where there is also the shore dive at the tweed river. Many of these are boat dives which will run to $170-$250 for a double dive. You can also dive off Stradbroke Island where there is a manta cleaning station (summer only). it's subject to currents and swell and vis is up and down. If you like Nudis, the Mooloolaba river has a shore dive with lots of them, Gary Cobb who runs the Nudibranch Central dives there and finds lots of nudis. I think diving is more accessible from the sunshine coast with a few dive operations running to reefs around that area. Further down the NSW coast you have excellent dive spots at the Solitary islands off Coffs Harbour and Fish Rock Cave offshore from SW Rocks . UW photo wise, a lot of the sites off the qld coast are wide angle sites, vis variable 5-20+m. Sydney a lot of macro sites, weedy sea dragons and other specialties. Vis varies from 2 up to an occasional 15-20m. My main experience is in Sydney, I've dived a few spots off the NSW coasts and once or twice did a day trip on the great Barrier Reef. A good resource is Michael McFadyen's website, he has descriptions of dive sites around Sydney and up and down the coast: https://www.michaelmcfadyenscuba.info/viewpage.php?page_id=1

Updating on this I went to Lembeh again, September 2025. Went with Divers lodge Lembeh again, as I said food/accommodation was nice, Most dive sites we were the only boat there, had one or two other dive boats at Nudi falls, other sites just us or another boat at an adjacent dive site. I was travelling solo, so they provided me a dedicated guide, on most dives I had one other couple with their guide on the dive boat and a couple of days two other couples. If you search you'll find my trip report. I had mostly no queues and good guiding. Their policy is one guide - two divers, I highly recommend it and I'll be going back at some point.