Chris Ross

Looking at the specs for the 14-30 vs 14-24 lens the total length with lens extended (for the 14-30) is 114mm vs 125mm for the 14-24, this says that the 14-30 should use approximately 11mm less extension than the 14-24 as a first pass guess, however the port charts show the same extension for both lenses, which seems to be an error. A starting point would likely be the 48462 extension at 39.5mm long which is the next smaller extension at least on their extension length chart: https://www.bluewaterphotostore.com/content/portchart/Aquatica/aquaticaextensionchart.pdf a 48455 plus 48456 (25.5 + 16.5) for a total of 42mm is another possible combo. If you had some other extensions already for other lenses you could try them yourself. If Aquatica are working on it probably best to wait for them as this assumes the same position for the entrance pupil in both lenses. They are probably close but may vary a bit in how far they are from the front of the lens.

For ambient light shots it should be fine, but it doesn't work with flash as it takes multiple very short exposures and combines them, so flash sync won't work and is locked out I believe. The main reason to use it UW is to stay inside flash sync speed, so it would defeat the purpose of using it. The other issue is that the fastest shutter speed is 1/60 for ND2 and it gets slower as you increase ND strength and for some subjects 1/60 might be a little slow. A better solution is probably to use a manual flash trigger which allow you to go up to 1/400 with manual flash without running into sync problems. Combine that with low ISO extension of 100 or 80 and you'll get two stops less exposure in total at ISO80.

Yes, it's unclear exactly what sets this and it varies between the WWL and WACP models as to which lenses they work with. I would guess that port charts for these optics are fairly complete and to get a better optic use the chart to help, but probably involves going to a WACP. I would think that the main limitation with some of these bigger lenses is the flat port size (port ID or the m67 port diameter causing vignetting), or some of the small primes a short enough port to properly accommodate them.

welcome aboard, some nice shots there, we can certainly help with GAS!

There are a number of constraints when using lenses behind water contact optics, there is an entrance pupil constraint and there are also issues with zoom lenses that change length as they zoom and the lens hits the back of the optic (or the flat port for wet lenses) as it zooms in and they need to be close to the optics rear element to avoid vignetting. The 24-105 STM extends a lot as it zooms. Nikon users it appears may be be in a better position to try out a more advanced lens as the Nikon 24-70 is internal zooming while the Canon Equivalent extends as it zooms. If you look at the port charts the Nikon 24-70 f2.8 is listed for Nauticam WACP, but nothing like that listed for Canon probably because all of their zooms in this range extend as they zoom. I know you don't like the fact that the corners on the kit zooms are black in the raw file. All this means is that the image is up-scaled (exactly as you upscale (resize) an image in photoshop) after they have been corrected for the barrel distortion. The corners aren't created the recorded image is expanded in size to "fill" the sensor. It appears the lens is actually wider than stated to allow for this and to capture of the full distorted image. This operation is competing against the loss of resolution in the corners of a rectilinear lens behind a dome and it seems that the wet lens combination wins on some occasions. The other advantage of the wet optics is that shooting at f5.6-8 is possible where the corners would be pretty mushy on a rectilinear behind a dome. I'm quite sure this could be improved with a better base lens, but for many these kit zooms are good compromise, being significantly smaller, lighter, cheaper and the optical quality is good enough. Another consideration is that an 8-15 is much closer to being a 4.0x zoom as the barrel distortion magnifies the the centre of frame. So if you place a 2.0x behind an 8-15 and you look at the horizontal field width it zooms from 145° to 67° which is equivalent to a 6.5mm to 27mm rectilinear lens approximately. Using the horizontal field gives a better idea of what size object you can fit within the field. Looking at the WACP - calculations show that this is closest to a stereographic projection fisheye, using the formula for that projection provides the best match to the stated diagonal fields at the extremes of the zoom range. This matches well with the statement that the WWL-c/24-50 has straighter lines than the Tokina 10-17 zoomed to the same extent.

I would be interested in this except for the fact I don't use Lightroom, I have Capture one pro.

No doubt the design could be tweaked, this one has worked well for me so far though, perhaps a material upgrade is enough in this case I don't know? Using this with an OM-1 you are a little limited as the nose of the "pentaprism" housing clears this gear by all of 1/2 mm. As noted by Gudge, this one was printed in PETG.

I've posted on this before, I don't shoot Sony so really don't care about the lens, but many people happily shoot with it. From what I understand the field of these lenses is wider than the stated focal length and the lenses have quite a bit of distortion and this allows room to correct the distortion and crop back to a rectangular image. Presumably the pixel dimensions of the image produced are the same as a lens that covers the full field of view so what happening is they are up-ressing the file and you are losing resolution across the entire image. I guess it's also possible that black part includes excess pixels that might be used for extra coverage when the sensor is moved about for in camera stabilisation where that is used, but you should see that in the pixel count. What I'm not clear on is if the vignetted image is is actually the same width as a regular 24mm image from a lens that doesn't use these digital tricks or they are short changing you on field of view as well.

This particular gear is a little different in that gear teeth are not as well supported and stand up as individual teeth. Most gears have the teeth supported from behind which provides more material. I do agree though printing methods will be important. This gear is a very tight fit, so not an option to design it like a regular gear.

The vast majority of these wet optics have barrel distortion and act like a zoomed in fisheye lens. If you do thefield of view calculations using the same formula that matches a fisheye like the 8-15 you find that at the 130° diagonal field of a WWL the horizontal field matches what you get with a WWL which is about a 13-14mm rectilinear lens in terms of horizontal field. Putting it another way, the WWL at maximum field is similar to putting a 1.3x converter on a 15mm fisheye lens. The exception seems to be the new OPP from Seacam which is a different concept and it seems it produces a true rectilinear field.

I'm not sure, I had it printed by a member here @Gudge . Perhaps you could PM him and check?

I don't have the lens/camera you mention, being a m43 user, but I can tell you using it at a site like Lembeh is invaluable. Sure you can go on a separate dive with the 60mm macro lens, but the big subject you were shown yesterday like a paddleflap Rhinopia for example while diving with the 105mm might not be there the next day and your dive buddy may want to go to a different site. But if you have the MFO-3 just pop it on and you are set. As far as how it works, it seems all the reports for people using it are positive and that it provides very sharp images, I doubt very much there is any special about the z8 and the 105mm macro. If you scroll up this post you will see some shots posted by a guy using a Z9 and 105mm macro. Not much commentary but you could PM him.

Agree - I would call Bluewater

I was curious to see what the housing looked like and found this link: https://www.photoexperter.com/product/recsea-sony-fdr-ax40-axp53-axp55-4k-underwater-video-housing/ seems to be connected to Bluewater photo somehow, otherwise I would probably disregard it as it is an odd website.

This was the original premise behind the WWL - the degredation of the image by the a plain dome is such that it makes a kit lens look good UW. Whether this is still truly the case with all the new wide lenses coming on the market I don't know, I have seen several posts that I recall expressed the opinion that a really good lens behind a well positioned dome could out perform the kit lenses behind the WWL and also stating that the long ends were not as good. The Canon 8-15 also gives the performance of wet optics a run for their money. The Sony 28-60 and the Canon 28-70 if you look up tests on these lenses are rated as surprisingly good for kit lenses or words to that effect. The Canon 8-15 is also a highly rated performer behind a small dome. I'm wondering if what these wet optics (WWL type) do is effectively make these lenses into moderate fisheye lenses, they do produce the barrel distortion after all. In a fisheye lens the zone of sharpest focus is not a flat plane but rather a partial hemisphere wrapping around the front element - the shape is similar to the shape of a virtual image with a dome port. From all of the posts talking about this type of topic it seems that the Canon 8-15 is very hard to beat for sharpness - however the downside at least on full frame is that it lacks reach, but some posts indicate people are willing to compromise and use the 8-15 with the Sony 2.0x and are happy with the performance. This is where wet optics come into play giving something with similar quality to the 8-15 albeit a little narrower maximum field and the ability to zoom in for subjects you cant get close to.

I think this can potentially be a cause for some otherwise good wide angle lenses not working so well underwater. One issue is field curvature - all wide angle lenses have it to some extent and the plane of sharpest focus can be concave or convex or even wavy with respect the sensor which is perfectly flat. Wide zooms tend to be more complicated and the curvature may change from concave to convex or vice versa as you zoom in. This link discusses in some detail: https://www.dpreview.com/opinion/7031211310/roger-cicala-field-curvature-pt-2 Why is this important UW? For lenses behind a dome port they are imaging a curved virtual image which mean the image plane of sharpest focus is also curved. If the lens's field curvature works with the curvature of the virtual image it can tend to help bring the edges into focus, but if it works against it it can push the edges even more out of focus. Field curvature doesn't change shape as you stop down, the depth of field just increases so that the edges progressively improve as the edges come into focus as you stop down. UW we tend to shoot well stopped down in dome ports which may mask some of this but a lens with strong field curvature in the wrong direction could potentially be impacted. It is most important on full frame, and gets to be less on an issue with smaller formats. On the topic of sea water, that and the air/water interfaces reduce image quality, ultimately limiting resolution that can be achieved. So it seems to me there are limiting returns when chasing sharper lenses. This can even happen in air, I was shooting across a fairly wide turbulent river in Ecuador in the mountains, the river was snow melt so very cold - I had noticeable image degradation shooting across a 20m wide river. bad enough I could see it in camera, I ended up raising ISO , opening the aperture to get the shutter speed a lot higher which helped a little. I'm not sure I agree with the premise that because lens manufacturers make lenses with lots of elements that adding optics does not always degrade performance. First we are talking about external elements such as domes and wet optics not being able to improve performance, not internal elements. Any internal elements are custom designed to work with other all the other elements while external wet optics are all so far designed to be universal. Even looking at the premise of adding elements will produce some degradation with each air/glass interface losing some light transmission and not being perfectly manufactured, however it is a compromise to correct aberrations in the optics, you might for example add an element to correct field curvature accepting that it reduces light transmission by 0.5% and centre sharpness by 0.1%.

I basically agree with the premise, any additional elements tend to degrade performance to varying degrees, it may degrade a lot or a little to the point it is hard to see, but it entirely reasonable to expect that it won't improve. As for the statement : start with the best land candidate, then optimize the underwater setup as intelligently as possible yes but it still seems that some lenses play better underwater than others, so there is a need to be selective in what you try to take underwater. Just because it is an amazing lens above water doesn't automatically translate into good UW performance. Though it seems that with the latest crop of close focusing mirrorless zoom lenses many of them work quite well UW. For the specific case of the Tokina 10-17 potentially what we are seeing is that this lens works exceptionally well with small domes and the degradation in performance when taken UW is minimal. But if you compare the UW results with some of the older rectilinear zooms that don't seem to work well UW or perhaps people are using them in too small a dome, the Tokina seems to really shine if you just compare UW shots taken with these older lenses with shots taken with the 10-17. It is also a very flexible wide angle option the ability to zoom in and take reef scenics and CFWA on the same dive can trump ultimate sharpness for many people.

A couple of points on this, equidistant and equisolid angle projections are quite close to each other and while lenses are described as such, they probably do not strictly conform to the ideal model. So telling the difference between them from a random photo may be difficult. Ideally you would want a photo of a brick wall or similar taken with the each of the lenses with a tripod in the same position so you can see how the stretching varies. This link for example shows some measurements taken from optical formulas, look at the second and thirs plots where various lenses have been plotted on the curve, they mostly cluster around equisolid but there is quite a variation. https://www.photonstophotos.net/GeneralTopics/Lenses/Optics_Primer/Optics_Primer_25.htm Other references state the equisolid has more barrel distortion so more fisheye effect - the forward placement of the subject in the frame. This link has some projections plotted - it takes some time to look at the plots to see the differences in equisolid and equidistant if you look at orthographic and sterographic plots they are more exaggerated versions of the changes between the first two: https://paulbourke.net/dome/fisheyetypes/

I didn't say special, I said right - and scissors are the wrong tool, I recall someone saying they used scissors and had problems with their cables.

White balance and colour grading is similar just color grading can't go as far, DaVinci can do that for you in the free version. It should work if it's close to balanced. I don't do much video, but I managed to grade a clip from a TG6 shot just using the UW white balance setting. Turning a completely green clip blue would be a stretch, but if you make some attempt to do a custom white balance it should work OK for you.

With the right tool of course - no scissors!

In the meantime you could try logging out, closing your browser then reopen and log back in. Could get you going again, if not have to wait for Rich to look into it.

I think it kind of depends, for example say you are diving in Lembeh, well known for black sand getting all over everything, it's probably quicker to clean up the o-ring on the seal plug than pull the o-ring and service it particularly on a clamshell style housing. It's about the same as what you would do on a bulkhead which is also o-ring sealed. I agree though that a bulkhead is a better solution if you can source it.

You can download the manual for the strobe from the S&S site now, it has a bit of information about the batteries in it. The battery looks just like the battery from a Canon DSLR/mirrorless the LP-E6P - not saying it is but the locking tabs etc look the same, the S&S battery has a nearly 50% higher stated capacity than the Canon LP-E6Pbattery though. It seems the Li-ion battery comes with the Pro model. The features and details of the strobe look quite familiar to the prior S&S models. Download link here: https://www.seaandsea.jp/support/download/manual/manual_en_03133_ysd130r.pdf

Probably no real advantage unless you really need the speed, but shooting wide open even in a 230mm dome is going to produce pretty horrible corners. Then there's the question about whether it plays well behind a dome and also if it will work behind a WACP-2, probably more likely to work on this optic than the WACP-1, the large front element can be the issue for these optics. The WACP-2 might be a chance as it works with the Sony 14mm f1.8.