Chris Ross

If it was me I'd be looking elsewhere for flights to the Maldives, all the Gulf airports are shutdown now, who knows how long before they open again? and will they remain open? Looks like you can connect through London and Istanbul among other places and I recall BA has a pretty generous carry on allowance. Travel insurance probably doesn't help if the airport closes due to war. The gulf airlines may normally be your best value, but if you hate spending on air travel you'll potentially hate being out of pocket due to travel disruptions even more. The point with domestic is many people may need to connect to a hub to depart internationally and once they are airside they remain that way at their connecting airport and are less likely to be hassled over baggage again and most international airports outside the US you only go through transfer screening when connecting who aren't going to hassle you over baggage allowances.

Depends on where you are flying from and which airline, many budget airlines weigh baggage, it's a revenue stream for them to force you to check the bag. In my experience in the US on domestic flights it's a free for all and you need to be in an early boarding group to get overhead locker space, if you then transfer to an international flight you are usually home free. Basically you need to research rules and book accordingly. Of course if you can afford business class most airlines leave you alone.

To illustrate the costs I looked at backscatter. an R7 camera plus Nauticam housing and the N100-N120 adapter is $6229 uses your current mini dome. An R6 Nauticam housing (conversion kit seems to be free) plus 140mm dome plus the required 30mm extension is $7600 (using your camera) An Isotta R6 housing (no kit needed) plus 40mm extension plus 4.5" dome is $4653 (using your camera) An Olympus OM-1 II body plus Isotta housing plus 40mm ext with knob plus 20mm extension plus 4.5" dome is $5730 plus a Metabones adapter about $600. All prices are from Backscatter wesbite. These leave out the lens you will use - all the same assuming using a Canon 8-15 in each case also no zoom gear though Isotta zoom gears are a bit cheaper. The R7 and OM-1 allows zoom, the R6 doesn't but you could add a 1.4x for limited zoom.

I'd still suggest adding up the costs, the premium for full frame housings is significant. Also look at what it would take to go with Isotta, their housings are significantly cheaper. I owned Canon gear when I bought my first housing and went with Olympus as the overall cost was less, you can get away with smaller domes, the lenses are cheaper and smaller for travel. Just enter everything in a spreadsheet, ask us if you are not sure on configurations. Regarding zooming I don't know what you usually shoot, reef scenics and fish swarming around corals are generally good with an straight fisheye at 15mm FF equivalent. You can also use the Sigma 15mm fisheye. I found that things likes schools of Barracuda above sea mounts, larger pelagics etc certainly benefited from the ability to zoom as did closing in on an anemone full of clownfish. On the question of zooming a fisheye unless you have very deep pockets or perhaps shoot Sony, doing it on full frame is very expensive and the common solutions only work on smaller formats - this is the reason for suggesting this. You can add a Kenko 1.4x for some limited zoom from 11-15mm as marked on the zoom ring to the 8-15. On the OM-1 which I use with the 8-15 you get full zooming capability. From a travel-ling perspective, going for an R7 your only addition is another body and spare battery, you be carrying your choice of fisheye regardless. with smaller formats your mini dome will likely be fine saving more space and weight. You'll have a housing anyway and you'll have your land lenses whichever system you use. You could choose to use the 8-15 or the 10-17 both will work with APS-C and the 8-15 has a lock to lockout zooming wider than 10mm when on an APS-C body. Lots of people on here swear by the 10-17 and it quite a bit cheaper. But either way it's only a body you'd be buying extra, you'll need a housing whichever way you go.

Do you need 17"? the 12" domes are more affordable, about $US1500 delivered assuming you'll need to pay duties on the way in.

Changing batteries occasionally is less work than dealing with the o-rings and potential corrosion of the contacts, you need to remove the cables regularly so the threads don't seize. so change a few times a year or maintain the cables after every dive session.

There really isn't an equivalent to the Tokina lens in full frame and Canon unfortunately. The WWL is certainly an option - but in Canon that means going with the WWL-C and the Canon 24-50 in FF which is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, plus in my mind the WWL only sort of substitutes for a fisheye as the angle of view is quite a bit less - horizontal field of the fisheye is about 144° while the WWL is about 122° and the barrel distortion that pushes the subject forward in the frame and gives it prominence is starting to be less noticeable. You do get a little more reach with the WWL compared to the 10-17. (The Nikon 24-50 is a much better lens) I'm assuming you are not in the market for the $$$$ fisheye conversion port. So what to do if you want to re-create the 10-17? First option is to find a second hand 10-17, should be straight forward to find a nice copy in Japan and use it on an EF-RF converter with an R7. Unfortunately a bit pricey though and Nauticam have handily changed to N100 port system on that model, meaning you would need the pricey 35.5mm N100-N120 adapter which you could use your current port on. The N100-N120 is half the price of a WWL though! Ikelite and Nauticam are the only options for an R7. Next alternative might be an OM-1 (Mk I or II) in an Isotta housing used with an adapted 8-15., yes it's a smaller sensor, but IMO the image quality is a step up on a D70 and good enough for most purposes. It works really well with the adapted 8-15. Isotta as the components are much cheaper to house an adapted 8-15 this route. The 8-15 is an excellent option in this format and exactly replaces a 10-17 and adds some reach at the long end with excellent optical quality a very flexible setup. You could use an 8-15 on a R6 but you'd not have any zoom capability for CFWA or more reach for shyer subjects but you might be able to use your current dome. The 8-15 is either 8mm circular of 15mm full frame 180° diagonal fisheye. The Nauticam R6II housing is about $1700 more than the Isotta at Backscatter. With the R6 MkI though your only option in new housings appears to be Isotta or Ikelite, Nuaticam seems discontinued. Some older Nauticam domes can be adapted to Isotta, but you may want something bigger than a mini dome for FF, probably the 140mm in Nauticam. We've already talked about a WWL-C with this above. I suggest you add what you would need to spend with each option to see what you would be up for. The issue is that anything in full frame gets expensive quite fast, smaller formats are much more affordable in aluminium housings.

That can work, but I found to dry a housing off thoroughly it took about half a scuba tank using the blower nozzle the resort had on site.

Thanks, seems like it's a good thing I don't need to modify mine.

Interesting, I have 36064, the 34.7mm N85-N120 adapter and the serial number is below the cutoff listed in the Seatech link posted, this is what I have and as far as I can see the adapter (purchased secondhand) has not been modified: I use it with a 35mm extension ring type II quite happily (ignorance is bliss after all) and I've done a couple of trips using it and everything works fine as far as I can tell. It makes me wonder what the incompatibility issue is actually is? According to the instructions this is the new style locking block and it seems to have a shorter tab: As I said the locking block in the photo works with my type II 35mm N120 extension ring.

I stumbled across an Instagram post from Tobias Freidreich talking about housing maintenance and he mentioned using a Wolfbox mini blower, which is usually used to clean out PCs, keyboards etc. This is the blower: Wolfbox AUElectric Air Duster –110000RPM Super Power | WOLFBOX MF50WOLFBOX MF50 Electric Air Duster with 110000RPM super power. Perfect for electronics, keyboards, cars, and outdoor cleaning. Order now and make cleaning simple! It is a Li ion rechargeable model and does put out a lot of air. I tried it out for the first time today blowing my Nauticam housing dry after a long soak. It develops good velocity using the smallest nozzle and really moves the water droplets quite quickly. In a couple of minutes I had blown the housing completely dry, I hovered it vertically over each button and along each seam and used it to clear out water from behind the latch and all the crevices and around the vacuum valve cover. I also tried it out blowing out the 0-ring grooves. I found it performed pretty well , you need to go over the housing a few times as each new bit of water you blow out of crevices needs to be blown off the housing surface. All in all it is a big improvement of the rocket hand bulb I've been using and it's nice and portable for travel. A full blow down uses a good percentage of the available charge though. It actually seems more efficient than using a scuba tank with a duster attachment to blow off water. I think it's a worthwhile addition and would recommend it. This process of blowing off all the water droplets is important to help prevent the white coating that tends to appear on anodized housings over time. If water droplets are allowed to dry the salts in the water concentrate and start to etch the coating. It also seems efficient in blowing out residual water behind buttons and various controls. Here's a pic of it with my housing: Uploading Attachment... It should help keep you housing looking good and have a longer life. Usual disclaimer, no relationship to vendor, just happy customer. Searching for Wolfbox air duster will bring up lots of vendors. They do have a bigger more expensive model, but this one seems quite adequate for the job. Uploading Attachment...

Further to this topic I recently purchased a mini blower to blow the housing dry, seems to work pretty well. I'm posting a mini review.

Yes that's the one, to bad it can't be used then, may work on other brands perhaps?

My MFO3 came with an M67 adapter, seems to be a different one to the one you linked in your post, the glass sits back behind the end of the adapter when it is installed, so should attach to most any M67 accessory.

I'm using the MFO3, took it to Lembeh last year and got quite a bit of use out of it. Also using it in Sydney diving. On the same dive I could swap between shooting a gyrating Harlequin sweetlips with 60 and a 500mm long trumpet fish adding on the MFO3. The reason for using it is you have the 60mm capability when you need and can switch pretty quickly to the 36-37mm focal length of the MFO3, you don't get that reach with the 14-42 and macro is more of a challenge. It seems to me there are advantages to be able to shoot the smallest fish with the 60mm over the 14-42. Focusing seems very straight forward with the MFO3, I didn't notice any hunting when using it and if you look at the EXIF you are shooting between 2m and infinity on the lens as reported in the EXIF for the most part (the subject is of course much closer) . This is the range where the 60mm is quite snappy. I would add that the 14-42 once you get to the long end is reported to be not the sharpest knife in he drawer while the MFO3 is sharp across the frame as it corrects for the aberrations caused by shooting through a flat port. At the 36-37mm focal length the 14-42 would be experiencing those aberrations behind a flat port. Here's a brief review of using the MFO3 with the 60mm macro:

If you look at the colour spaces Macs use DCI-P3 which is a little smaller than Adobe RGB and is extended in reds/yellows more so than blues/green that Adobe RGB covers better. This diagram shows the coverage of various colour spaces:

I agree in principle, One thing that seems apparent there are quite a few flavours of TTL among different strobes, you just have to look at the UWT triggers which have multiple different settings for all the different strobes and a different trigger model for each camera brand. I believe the timings are different with each type of TTL and I suspect this is a reason TTL is regarded as unreliable underwater as up until recently a universal slave TTL was all that was available. I heard somewhere that Olympus RC is open source so it does not need reverse engineering to make it work so in principle UW strobes that work with RC mode will work as well as any Olympus strobe on land when shooting TTL. It was also specifically setup to send TTL commands optically. This is probably the reason it might work a little better.

No problem, they are nice to work with - right! One thing to remember, if you are posting these, browser are mostly default colour managed now, however they will assume your image is sRGB unless it is tagged otherwise, You do need to keep the colour profile in the file, there is generally a check box to include the colour profile in the file when you save. Unfortunately you need the good monitor to see the benefit, Apple users will be close, but if they are being viewed by photography enthusiasts they are more likely to have a good monitor.

You can get very close with it, it compresses the range that will focus quite a bit, I haven't tested the limits of it at the short end, but the port chart says it will focus from 0-1500mm and get to 0.8x implying it will focus from the glass out to 1.5m away. If I need to get super close, it seems the best solution is often to remove the MFO3 and use the bare lens as you will get more magnification and working distance. The exception would be murky water with particles and you want to get closer to reduce backscatter.

Guide numbers can be quite misleading, A lot depends on how the light is distributed in the beam. Quite a few strobe tests have been posted on here in the last couple of years, it's probably about the best comparison you could find. Assume you've looked at the pinned strobe comparison table in this forum, the spreadsheet linked has larger images.

There have been some threads discussing this, I recall there is a quality uplift, but don't recall how dramatic.

sorry no, best to DM I think, you could try looking through his posts you might see something there?

I would expect that the TTL of the maxi would use the same protocols as other recent Retra strobes. I found this reference to TTL performance of a 4th generation Retra here:

In principle the way to do this is fairly easy, you just need to work out the right extension. I see the Seacam port chart mentions that is using a converted lens with Metabones to use to the PVL25 extension and that the zoom ring is a special. To that you would need to add extension equivalent to the thickness of the converter in question. Presumably you use the recommended Canon extension with the PVL 25, but you would need to confirm that with Seacam and also ask them if they can help you with a zoom ring, otherwise you would need to have one printed. I would also add that the compact dome or one of the fisheye ports would be more flexible for this setup if you want to do CFWA as you can get quite a bit closer.

Thanks for this, though possibly better 18650 batteries may now be available? I suspect you method has some validity, if the strobe has more power in your test it probably is also brighter in comparison for a quick burst, but I guess it depends on how the strobe is programmed to deal with continuous shots. In addition using 3 18650 (assuming) in series, the voltage is higher so less demanding on amp draw.