Chris Ross

The port charts list the two 30mm macros and the 12-50 so it seems it would work with the 45mm. I'd estimate the field would be be a bit wider than the 12-50 - about 24mm FF equivalent in terms of horizontal field. The MWL seems like a great idea but never really took off and there is probably a reason for that. For one thing it is said it needs to stop down to f16 to be at its best which is well into diffraction softness with m43. It seems not too dis-similar to my situation in Sydney, I mostly dive Macro and regularly see things that would benefit from the MFO3, but possibly might see a big subject - a grey nurse shark shows up occasionally as do other things like wobbegongs, large rays etc. I still dive with the macro setup and now the MFO3 as it covers 95% of what I shoot very well. There is FOMO of course but I'd rather have a system that does well on the most common subjects. I'll occasionally dive with something wider at this site.

No I don't have a tether, just need to pay attention when mounting the lens. It's worked OK so far. I used cargo shorts in lembeh, but reverted to a dock on the float arm diving in Sydney. The weight of the lens causes the shorts to fall down over time when walking any distance - not an issue when you are just falling off a boat but a real problem shore diving.

It seems to me that a 30 macro will do several things but mostly none of them well. It's really not wide enough for a really big subject and you need to back off too far, while it is fiddly to use on average size nudis and the like as you are in too close, I don't know what your dive sites are like but I find the housing contacts the rock the nudi is sitting on if I have to get too close -unless it is on the edge and I also don't want to shoot down as it's not that interesting. This is also an issue on a wall. The short port doesn't help at all. So basically I stopped using it. A little extra working distance and the longer port for the 60mm macro means you are shooting at a shallower angle in this situation. I would also suggest diopters are not really needed with m43 1:1 lenses, on the 45mm macro the working distance is about 60mm from port glass at 1:1 - the diopter only eats into this. None of the options discussed so far would be great for a Giant Pacific octopus. Seems like better approach would be do macro dives sometimes and CFWA others?

I suspect you'll find the smaller range challenging with the 30mm macro lens, the field at 0.5x is 34mm wide which is about right for a 20mm nudi and you need to be 25mm from the port to do this. The 60mm will let you capture 10mm nudis with reasonable working distance and adding the MFO-3 will get you subjects about 500mm long at a maximum - it only focuses out to 1.5m, The post I linked above showed a shot of a trumpet fish about 500mm long and EXIF reported the lens was at infinity. The best option probably varies with whether you are mostly shooting small things or leaning towards mainly larger subjects. If you mostly shoot bigger something like a 12-40 in a 170mm dome would do well or a CFWA setup of some type. If by octopus you mean giant pacific octopus, the MFO combination won't get you there as you'll be too far away. But for subjects between 10mm and 400mm the optical quality with 60mm/MFO3 will be great and better than what you have with the 12-50. The 30mm macro will be slightly better for big stuff, but will suffer compared to the wider views from the 12-50.

Even things like my Atomos monitor has a single button that you need to hold for 5 seconds to turn off, then there's the lights that need endless combinations of short and long presses to change settings. Are they trying to save money on switches? very annoying.

I've used the 30mm a little around Sydney, a couple of things to note with it. First it's sharp and AF is snappy, however the practical limit for magnification is about 0.5x, the working distance is very small, it's about 25mm from the port at 0.5x, which can make approach and lighting a challenge. I'm not sure what the subjects around Vancouver Island are like - are you thinking most of them are on the larger size?

I do it's the neoprene bag the lens came with, it doubles up to keep the lens from drying out till I get home and soak it in fresh water. I'm planning to see if I can find a neoprene sleeve and cap that's more stream lined for longer term use

some pics, first the docking adapter on my float arm second the MFO3 mounted. You have a similar adapter mounted to the port to accept the bayonet mount, line up the white marks, insert then turn till it clicks. You can see it is a big lump of glass. Roughly same size as 60mm macro port. Honestly if you are just boat diving a quality flip adapter will be easier to use, just doesn't seem practical for me when shore diving from rocky entries, which is why I went with the bayonet.

Alex Mustard used it on a flip adapter, so it will work. I found it fine to carry in cargo short pockets and went that way as I will use a lot at home where I am making sometimes a little rough shore entries and exits, but from a boat the flip will be fine I think as long as its fairly robust. Here is a link to Alex's review. also I replied to your original post asking what to use:

IMO the very best thing you can do for Lembeh is buy a Nauticam MFO3, I went there last September and used it quite a bit for larger subjects in combination with a 60mm macro which is what you want for smaller critters. It increases you field of view to about a 35mm lens. With this you can get both large and small subjects on the one dive. Here's my report on using at Lembeh: and here is my trip report to Lembeh: I used the MFO3 on the Nauticam bayonet mount and kept the lens in a cargo shorts pocket. At home in Sydney I have it mounted on a docking adapter on a float arm which works well. It's a fairly big lump but manageable. At least out here in Australia the MFO3 is cheaper than a 30mm macro plus macro port - assuming Nauticam housing, but you have to buy bayonet adapter, bayonet ring and docking adapter. Definitely worth it for the flexibility and image quality is very nice.

Your recollection is correct the attachment point on the WWL or adapter ring has 3 blades. The locking pin drops into a recess to prevent rotation. The only way these bayonets work is like with like. The way to use a WWl-1B is to mount a Nauticam bayonet assembly to the flat port. The only way to mix and match a Nauticam wet lens to another bayonet system is with the first WWL-1 which has an M67 thread allowing other bayonet rings to be threaded on, this may or may work well depending on how the spacing of the rear element ends up in relation to the flat port glass. The OP has a WWL-1B and the only way to use this with Marelux is to use a Nauticam bayonet mount on the the flat port, unfortunately the WWL-1 doesn't work well with available Canon zooms. I don't know if you have purchased anything yet but the ideal situation would be to compare costs using your WWL-1 with other systems such as the Nikon 24-50 or SONY 28-60 against buying a new port wet lens under the Marelux system to use your 16-35. Of course if you already have the R6 that's a different story. If that's the case I still think you should look into finding a second hand 8-15 lens, there will be plenty of them available in Japan and they will usually ship internationally. But the ideal situation will vary somewhat with what you like to shoot. If you were shooting mostly at the wide end of your WWL-1 with the R50, the 8-15 would be a good choice. But if you were using the long end a lot as well, going with a WWL range lens would be better. On the choice of wet lens, the Marelux 130 matches the WWL-1 it seems with the same field which is just slightly wider than a 14mm rectilinear in the horizontal field assuming that the Marelux has similar barrel distortion to the WWL-1, Marelux 110 seems a little narrow to me as the bare lens by itself is as wide if not a little wider in the horizontal field.

I basically no longer use tracking UW, it seems to work quite well on the eye of a bird but not so well UW on my system. I suspect this around the camera not being trained on your subject, so whether AI subject recognition is on or not is one thing, but if tracking is enabled without it the camera still needs to remember what it was focusing on and follow it. It probably has recovery features if it loses it, but can only do so much. So this means i have to place the small spot where I want focus and fire when it achieves focus, works well as long as the subject doesn't suddenly sway due to surge. It takes some practice to achieve this and I've found hand held macro photography on land to be a decent training ground.

From what I recall the WWL-1B doesn't work well with bigger lenses, this is why Nauticam doesn't list any EF lenses as being compatible, even the 28-80 that they list for the the WACP-C is said not to work with the WWL-1B, but the Marelux Aquista lenses are listed working with the other lenses.

The wet lens in question here is the WWL-1B as opposed to the WWL-1. The WWL-1B as I understand it can only mount to the Nauticam bayonet adapter, while the WWL-1 which was the first released has a 67mm thread and needs an adapter ring to attach to a Nauticam bayonet mount. You buy the Nauticam m67-bayonet adapter to attach to the port and the WWl-1B attaches directly.

I shoot quite a bit of macro, not a Sony user however I think I can offer some thoughts. When you are life size, your depth of field is very small - around about 1mm, so it stands to reason that you need to be able to compensate for the fact your subject might be moving, you may not be totally stable and surge and current might intrude into the picture causing both you and your subject to move. My regular UW shooting is done in Botany Bay south of Sydney, this site is inside the heads but rather exposed to ocean swells which can produce varying degrees of surge and also subject to tidal currents, one of the subjects there is the pygmy pipehorse and swings slightly out of sync with the surge. My technique with that is continuous AF, holding down the control as required while framing and waiting for it to swing into position. The AF chases and swings around quite a bit as the subject moves out from under the single small AF point. The trick to me seems to be patience waiting until the subject is in position then activating AF and if needed half pressing the shutter to engage IS which helps hold the AF point on target. The shot is taken when I can see positively that the AF has grabbed focus. The point is that IS can account for side to side, up and down movement, bu the AF needs to deal with our back and forth movement, so anything you can do to minimise this will be a great help. How well can you hover? DO you use a pointer or grab a safe handhold on bare rock to stabilise? You talk about moving off target is this because you/the subject moved or are you saying the camera decided that another object was better to focus on? I used to use C-AF plus tracking but have reverted to C-AF without tracking using the smallest AF point, then it's up to me to stay on the target and I find I can make this work, certainly don't get every frame sharp, but what I get is acceptable.

Looks like they are going to deny all knowledge. Looking around online seems to be a handful of shops claiming they have equipment in stock, but the Fantasea line website seems to be broken. You last option is probably to ask if they can sell you the o-rings for the AOI version? Otherwise use it till it gives you a problem.

AN 8-15 fisheye is an excellent lens and IMO a 16-35 is not a replacement for it as it doesn't focus particularly close so is likely to need a large 230mm dome port to do its best. You could consider a sigma fisheye but that's unfortunately also discontinued. A quick look shows quite a few 8-15 lenses on sale from second hand camera stores in Japan which might be a good option, they are advertised on Ebay. In rectilinear lenses, the 15-30 STM lens and 14-35 focus much closer and work better in domes including smaller domes like the 180mm, sample images are found here, where you can compare performance of the lenses: Your problem with the WWL is that the Nauticam port chart does not have any recommendations for full frame and the WWL-1B, they list the WWL-C with the 24-50, however the 24-50 doesn't receive good reviews. The WWL is only slightly wider than the the 16-35 lens in the horizontal axis. What's best probably really depends on what you shoot, for reef scenics and CFWA, the fisheye is king, anything needing some reach like pekagics maybe the rectilinear or look into the 8-15 plus 1.4x.

I use the think tank street walker hard drive, Carries my Nauticam OM-1 plus two retra strobes with dome, canon 8-15 and bits and pieces. It includes a laptop sleeve. The Think Tank bags are really well built, I got mine back in 2009 and it has had a lot of use and is still going strong. Pic of it loaded up below, It has Nauticam housing, Zen 170mm dome, Zen 100mm dome, macro port, two INON Z-240s and lenses to use in these ports plus batteries for all .

Hard to go past the little S220 INON, very compact and powerful enough. The TG-6 at max zoom if f6.3 at most anything beyond that is an ND filter and gets to f18 - mostly useful to pressures ambient light if you want a black background, but apart from that doesn't need a lot of strobe power as you are mostly in very close for macro work.

Try again: https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/1438-testing-nauticam-n120-port-extension-for-140mm-and-180mm-domes-with-wide-angle-lenses/?&do=findComment&comment=13817 The links on the forum are not active everywhere in the box, you have to hover over the title, caught me out a few times, hopefully this link works, it's just to show minimal difference with a change in extension on a fisheye.

I would at least send them pictures and see if they still try to deny it.

I looked at the the two pics from the corners in that post I linked above and didn't see anything that set the world on fire. Please show us the images so that we can see the improvements. Otherwise we can agree to disagree.

Probably the coolest point of the lens, the vapor re-distributed once it could condense somehere colder, likely the alumnium which would possibly cool faster than the glass. I think it shows there is a trace of water in there- which would be salt water and has perhaps left a light water mark. In any case likely unusable?? If that's the case, little to lose from attempting a repair I think. You would probably need to pull apart to measure o-rings to replace. The current specs say it's 3 group 4 element lens, which means one of the lenses is a cemented doublet quite likely so an additional possibility is breakdown of the cement, possibly caused by water entry. If you do pull it apart be sure to properly label everything so it goes back in the right order and right way up. You will need something like this to remove the retaining ring: lens tool I'm not sure how the seals work in these types of lenses, they might have o-ring on top pressed in by the retaining ring or is it might be like the way front elements of flat ports are sealed. Only way to find out is to remove the retaining ring.

You would need to warm it to maybe 40° to see if it disappears, it is sealed inside and the outside humidity should have no influence. It could also for example be components in the o-rings which have leached into the air space, not too different to the way cars used to develop a film inside the windscreen due to plasticisers evaporating from the dashboard. To be clear also, the point of the dewpoint calculation is to seal inside air that is dry enough it won't condense when diving. If the dewpoint is 7°C then you need to take it into water at least that cold to cause condensation and that should disappear when it warms up to room temperature.

Warming up won't cure it, just prove that it is condensed water. On the topic of avoiding fogging you can refer to a dew point calculator. For example at 15°C and 60% humidity the dew point is 7°C. so working in conditions like that should have a good chance of avoiding fogging unless you dive in the cold waters. You could probably achieve this in an air conditioned room with the AC maxxed out and you could also place the components in a small tub purged with air from a scuba tank (very low humidity) for assembly. Here is a link to a calculator: Omni CalculatorDew Point CalculatorCheck out the dew point calculator to calculate the highest temperature at which water vapor condenses.