Chris Ross

Look at the subject distance in the EXIF, it will be in the range of 0.6m plus unless you are pushing right in next to the lens, It shows up in properties under details tab, scroll down to camera in Windows explorer.

Looking at the rig I'm thinking one large buoyancy behind the monitor arm between the the two arm clamps, either using triple clamps or a system like this one: If you add enough foam to the back of the monitor to make it neutral on it's own you can place it where you want it without worrying about trim too much and you could raise it a little to make room for a big arm there. Then place about the same amount of buoyancy underneath between the two rails, maybe overall go for slightly positive on the housing/sled. Next attach floats to your light to get them independently neutral and connect them up with plain arms. you could try to find a hollow ring type arrangement or I think even a "T" at the end of the arm with a float above and the light below , it could then be set so the clamp is not too tight and it will always have the float wanting to sit directly above the light. set the fore-aft position of the light attachment point so that it sits level and doesn't want to twist. I did something similar with an astronomical telescope on a fork mount years back. A guide scope above and the same weight below the body of the scope plus a trim weight going back and forth. Fiddling with positions I could get it to sit anywhere it was pointed with minimal friction on the axes. In principle you are trying to achive the same thing with your rig, but using floats rather than weights for balancing and trim weights to adjust for aft trim. The scope only had two axes to worry about, you will have three, but the side to side is handled through symmetry.

strange it went to a red X it wasn't that way after I posted, try again: link also include the text version of link: bcgforums.com/threads/nikon-z8-focus-shift-and-flash-issue.34347/ it went straight to the red X just now for some reason. Hopefully the new trigger will solve the issue.

Yes, it's unfortunate that some of these things are not well made. Bear in mind you'll also need a 1"ball mount Z adapter to add to the strobe, with INON they are purchased separately. The mounting system for the INON strobes is quite sturdy. I had my INON Z240s for 10 years and they are still in good shape. Don't be afraid to use a single strobe while on this trip, the the TG-7 doesn't require particularly strong flash as it's f2.8 at the wide end and the single YS-01 will provide OK coverage there. For macro, you are closer and using one strobe for macro is quite straight forward for most situations. Also be aware that f8-f18 is achieved through a ND filter on the TG-7, the only time you would want to use it is if you are trying for a black background, it doesn't provide additional depth of field.

Incredibly annoying, but the problem is people buy them without research only to discover this and then complain about on internet forums as the manufacturers are behind a firewall and hard to contact and even if you do, it falls into a black hole. The only way to force change is to stop buying crappy solutions like this. That is why I have an INON focus light, it turns on by rotating a knob to low power, rotate it further and get high power, seems like it's a magnetic switch with two positions. Simple and robust, uses AA batteries, not incredibly bright - but enough for focusing, no auto off on strobe - it is not needed as the light is dim. On lights with higher output and more power levels they add another dial.

If you refer to the port charts you will see that the A7 port chart consistently requires 5mm more extension on the same lens/dome combination compared to what is listed on the port chart for later bodies. It appears they re-designed the housings placing the camera flange 5mm further back in the housing, perhaps to accommodate new lenses better, or even to allow for the grip on newer bodies?? Whatever the reason, the port charts changed due to change of housing design and this required a different Nikonos adapter. if your refer to the below webpage and scroll down to section 8 you will see the A7II has a deeper grip so this seems the likely reason for the re-design of the housing and new port charts: Mirrorless ComparisonSony A7 vs A7 II - The 10 main differences - Mirrorless C...The A7 was Sony’s first ever full frame mirrorless camera. It was released at the end of 2013 alongside the A7R. One year later, the Japanese company caught everybody by surprise with the launch of th If you look at the 37202 adapter, it has those two bolt-on pieces which act as the adapter flange to prevent the water pressure pressing the adapter into the housing. They are removable to allow space for the control knobs to rotate into position. This is consistent with having to place the lens 5mm further into the housing. The modification of the camera tray was discussed on another thread is un-related I believe, they are talking about very small adjustments because the location mechanism for the tray is not precise enough to get the accuracy required to achieve infinity focus. The different adapters are purely to accommodate the change in the housing design.

One thing with non matching strobes is it's not as straight forward to keep the lights balanced, also a video light is nowhere near as powerful as a strobe. The other thing to consider is trying to use manual - it's not as hard as it seems. You don't say what setup you have, but if you are doing macro having the strobe at the same distance means the strobe exposure is constant. It's also easier to use a single strobe for macro. IF you end up buying one strobe I'd suggest the little INON S220, it also uses AA batteries and is an excellent little strobe. If you want to balance the two strobes together one way you can try is have one strobe in TTL connected to your camera and the second strobe also in TTL can trigger off the flash from the first strobe. I expect it would trigger without a cable, but if you do use a cable run it off the first strobe. If I recall correctly the YS-01 have a port on front of the strobe for a trigger cable. The cable runs from the front of the strobe to the fibre port on the second strobe. INON uses a screw on connection at the strobe end end but the camera end is the same as the YS-01.

I have heard of many S&S strobes failing similar to this - the TTL circuit dies and can't quench the flash when required. It is possible it may spread to only full power on manual control. I'd think that with 26 days to go, you would be pushing to get it repaired in the available time, unless there is a repair shop in country, but even then it will take to to assess and possibly get parts. Also given repair costs a new strobe might be the best solution. I would suggest researching what is available to buy now, if they have to get stock in, again time might be tight. Might be another Solis - or perhaps a pair on INON S220 - a nice little strobe and INON seem to have a better reliability reputation.

Based upon the reviews and the fact it only gets to 1.1x, I don't have an MFO-1 and don't plan to buy one. Seeing as how you already have the CMC-2, mounting it on a flip seems the best way to go. I agree I'd take the MFO-1 along, you might as well try it out, it's not like it takes up much space.

No not exactly - the suggestion is to work out if you regularly find critters that require that amount of magnification. My experience with the 60mm macro is it's very rare for me to find something small enough that I feel like I need a diopter. From a week in Lembeh with over a hundred critters found only one or two were small enough that a diopter might have been useful. Your experience might be different, I think it depends on where you dive, how good you are at finding small stuff etc. The CMC-2 will be challenging to use at max magnification for sure, I'm not suggesting don't use it, rather I don't see it as an either/or situation with the MFO-1 as they have different magnification ranges and I would choose based upon how much magnification I need. If you find you are getting down to 1:1 all the time currently and wishing for more and are OK with lighting subjects right on 1:1, then a CMC-2 is possibly the next logical step. The 90mm macro I think would be a lot easier to use at high magnification, it has about 65mm working distance at 2x compared to 22mm with the CMC-1 also at 2x, but it's an expensive lens, needs a new port etc. I'd want to be sure I would make use of it and could live with the extra working distance. At 1x it's only maybe 10-15mm more working distance than the 60mm, at 0.5x (35mm wide frame) you are at 170mm then 330mm at 0.25x. So for 60mm long subjects you are getting quite distant. I have the 90mm macro and use it a lot on land, but have not been tempted to take it UW.

Thanks for the update. I suspect it is something similar to what i see with e-shutter on my OM-1 . In focus stacking I do on land with an Olympus flash - the flash fires very rapidly on low power. I trialed doing a short stack UW, using the mini flash on manual at 1/64 power for triggering. The little strobe can fire rapidly at such low power but it was like it was waiting to confirm the flash was ready again before firing. The standard way of getting around this is to make use of the X-sync on the camera, which it basically a mechanical contact built into the shutter - the camera doesn't recognise there is a flash attached and fires every time the contact has closed as long as it has charge. Did a little searching to find this, seems the problem is by design from Nikon:

The MFO-1 should be thought of as a high quality low power diopter. In the case of the 60mm macro it only improves magnification to 1.1x while the CMC-2 achieves 1.7x but it will only focus between 33 and 122mm. Based on the focus distances there might be a little overlap with the CMC-2. It seems there are some benefits on image quality on full frame sensors and also prevents hunting with some macro lenses which readily switch to the background. However it seems that for m43 lenses there is no reported improvement. It seems to me that whether to keep it or not comes down purely to whether you can find subjects in the magnification range covered by the diopters. There is less case for diopters with m43 lenses, first the working distance is small and diopters work by reducing working distance, second the field covered at 1:1 with these lenses is 17mm across, half that covered on a full frame sensor. The CMC-2 covers a field 10mm across at a working distance of 33mm which means it is difficult to aim and to light the subject. Because diopters like the CMC-2 limit the focus range to a a limited working distance, they are in general more difficult to use compared to a bare macro lens, the MFO-1 limits the range but the maximum working distance is over 1m so you can use it just like a regular macro lens, you can find the subject from a distance and close in while looking through the viewfinder, not so easy to do if the subject isn't in focus until you close right in on it.

If you can fix it. but only have one cable, try running the other strobe with a bare port it will likely trigger off the other strobe. If you need to cut the cable to repair it - DO NOT use scissors, a sharp box cutter or razor blade is what is needed, it needs to be cut at right angle to cable.

Unfortunately the evidence is that the cables are not putting enough light through, the INON strobes are usually easily triggered. The strobes should trigger through the cable with an IR remote. try the test with the strobe in manual - first thing to try is to get it working in manual - a strobe in manual is better than no strobe. It's not 100% clear from what you have said, you mention more light coming out of the cable at position 0 compared to position 1, however some questions to clarify: Have you tried to trigger strobes in both positions 1 and zero with the trigger? Have you tested both cables? Are you testing with the cables plugged into the housing? If so have you confirmed the LEDs are well seated in the fibre ports, i.e. pushed all the way in? The instructions mention this and I recall a few times this was the problem people had with triggering. Is there someone else there who has a cable being used with a LED trigger that you could borrow briefly for testing purposes. What were you triggering the strobes with before this trip? A different trigger? an onboard flash? It's important to check all of these things and report back if we are to have a chance to successfully troubleshoot.

Don't know where you are, perhaps the dive shop could loan a screwdriver or are there any hardware stores around? The little dials don't require much force to turn so perhaps a small nail file might work? Probably some other household or kitchen items might be put to use.

It would depend on the type of coating, but I expect it would require strong mineral acid to have any impact, magnesium fluoride is often used as a glass coating and it's reported to be quite resistant to acids. Searching showed that magnesium metal is treated with HF to provide a MgF coating which resists corrosion by acids, much more so than the bare metal.

the method shown below using Levels will automatically setup your colours - providing you have a full histogram with a bit of room at each end to allow you to make the needed adjustments. https://www.photoreview.com.au/tips/editing/advanced-levels-adjustments/ It will properly correct a photo that is under flashed for example, very occasionally it might need a little more green removed or blue added, which you do with the midtones slider in the appropriate channel. Sometimes you might need to tone down specular highlights, but it works well for 95% of images.

The cheapest path would be to adapt what you currently have most likely. Recently another member was looking at switching from Aquatica and went with an Isotta housing and an Aquatica adapter ring: Isotta is well supported in Australia with a few dealers selling them and they also have solutions to use WACP/WWL with their system. Aquatica also have a dealer in Cairns. You could start out with a metabones adapter with your Sigma fisheye. For easy travel a small dome with a fisheye is hard to beat IF a 180° diagonal fisheye has enough reach for you. Another Australian member recently went with an adapted Canon 8-15 on SONY along with the Sony 2x TC. A few members are using that solution it's not as sharp as the bare 8-15 but gives superb flexibility zooming all the way from 180° diagonal to a frame that is wide as a 28mm rectilinear WA lens. I don't shoot Sony but I use an adapted 8-15 on an OM-1 and used it for the entire trip when I went to Walindi in 2024 I get the same field of view range with the bare 8-15 on a m43 sensor.

Where did you see this?, I find Sea Frogs documentation for this hard to follow. It seems they have two different ports with built in extension for their plastic housings so don't really attempt to precisely position the lenses behind the dome. The citeria seems to be just make sure it doesn't vignette. I see they have extension rings listed now, but don't see them mentioned anywhere in their lens charts. On the 8-15 on full frame - it's either 8mm circular of 15mm diagonal fisheye so unless you want circular fisheye you don't need a zoom gear and if you can use it at 15mm without vignetting it's probably as good as you can get in this system. On the 15mm fisheye, it's probably a bit short for your stated interest in big animals, particularly sharks and rays where you can't get quite that close.

Acid won't harm glass, it is alkaline solutions that can etch it. Certainly though whenever you clean glass ports do not let the water dry on there. It causes any salts in the water to concentrate, distilled water in theory should be free of salts but you may mobilize some salts whenever you rinse. The answer is to blow off most of the water (a blower bulb is good for this) then thoroughly dry - use a microfibre cloth.

Welcome Sabine, good to have you here, hope you enjoy the forums.

I waved it around the end of my cable while pressing the TV on button and it quickly fired both on the cable and the sensor itself (on retra strobes) A cable issue is quite possible and I would suggest assuming that is the problem till proven otherwise. The older TV remotes with the LED poking out are easiest to align of course , but a I used a SOny TV remote and it quickly fired by passing the window section over the acble end. In any case Pavel has provided some advice and I would certainly try that first.

This one is relatively easy, Google AI hallucinated and gave you the Nikon F (SLR/DSLR cameras) flange distance. I would think when measuring the flange distance you would want a piece of film in place as it has a finite thickness. Using google without the AI, there are multiple references to the dimension being 28mm and at least one where somebody measured and found 32mm.

A lot of people use them , they are cheap for a reason. Among other things the ports are setup for multiple lenses, but can only have the right positioning for one of them. They will let you get your camera underwater and seal properly and certainly you can take quite good shots with them. The vacuum system is not recommended as it can only be used to test, it's not water tight so you don't keep the case under vacuum while diving, which defeats part of the purpose of pre-loading the o-rings. There is a third party solution though. You could check with UW technics when the time comes if they support YS-110a. They are getting quite old now though.

What strobes do you currently own? The ikelite strobes have their won proprietary TTL system that only works with the ikelite TTL triggers which are now a little cylinder that connects to a housing bulkhead. They used to line inside the housings. I know at leats one person who has had ongoing issues with these triggers. But there is more than one way to solve the problem The new external UW technics triggers could be used on ikelite and assuming you have compatible strobes you should be able to use them . If not compatible you have a wide choice of other strobes you can use. I still think you should consider jumping to m43 generally a great system to use, with a lot more choices for housings and lenses, depending upon which body you choose. You could even use your 10-17 with the metabones speed booster.