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Chris Ross

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Posts posted by Chris Ross

    1 hour ago, Sokrates said:

    What you need for the DIY is optical plexiglass/acrylic, 3D printer, waterproof sealant.

    Some CAD skill will be needed aswell. I think hardest part is to find he plexiglass for a decent price and made into a dome shape.

    Essentially you want minimum 12" dome, but something close to 20" could be done also depending on your needs.

    If you do go the DIY route, please document it for others in the DIY section of the site.

    If you want something large like this the large Matty Smith domes can be purchased they are rated only for use down to 2m and a very specific for splits. The price is around $AU1770 or about $US1100 for a 12"dome - a 17"is also available,

    • Like 1

    Maybe trying to create a Leica vibe, make it expensive enough to become a status symbol. It's probably inevitable prices will go up if sales volumes are not there, outside of enthusiasts or perhaps hipsters who buy retro models most people just use their phones and are not interested in cameras. Couple that with sensor development topping out at least IMO, sensitivity, noise and dynamic range improvements are really only incremental today and its going into readout speed and computational photography.

    • Like 1

    2 hours ago, bvanant said:

    After all the nonsense published about the MFO-1 and subsequent before and after work showing not very much difference are there ANY with and without photos? I spent $500 or so on the MFO-1 and don't want to make another mistake.

    We do lots of black water and using the 30 macro (either Oly or Pany) I seem to be close enough for anything I want to shoot.

    Bill

    I've ordered one, for me the attraction was having a 60mm and a 30mm macro on the same dive. In Sydney we have on the same dive Pygmy pipehorses which are about a 1/3- 1/2 life size+ subject for m43 and weedy sea dragons which are 300-400mm long so having a wider view with me seems worthwhile and there's quite a few other examples both small and large. That to me seems to be the so called "use-case" for m43 shooters. I actually have the Panasonic 30mm macro and use it a little, the AF I feel is better and snappier than the 60mm, but the limited working distance is a problem for the subjects I have so it only gets occasional use. I'll post some examples once it arrives, but with the advised delivery time and my schedule it'll be a few months before I get it UW.

    If you are shooting blackwater I would think that the 30mm lens should be good enough provided you have the working distance as 1:1 is is only a cm or two beyond the port glass and the practical limit is around 1/2 life size for me at any rate.

    On the MFO-1 I think it was not communicated very well, the image quality benefit was small and mainly seen on full frame systems and the AF benefit seems to be only on certain lens/camera combinations. Really it should be thought of as a high quality low power diopter.

    • Like 4

    10 hours ago, Geoff said:

    Thanks everyone, looks like DAN + travel insurance is an overall winner ☺️🤿🐠📸

    Again I should mention read the fine print, insurance products differ in every market and exclusions and limitations will be different depending on your home country. If you read the fine print for DAN they specifically state it it is add on insurance which makes up the difference over what your travel insurance pays for. As I recall DAN membership provides evacuation insurance and the actual Insurance pays for DCI treatments if they are required. The price is quite reasonable.

    DAN insurance for emergency evacuation cover plus cover for dive injuries. However read the fine print: you really need to have general travel insurance as well if you want cover for delays, missed connections, cover of your gear if you want cover for these items as well. Some dive operations I recall offer DAN on site as well. The fine print also says you need to stay within your qualifications for cover to apply - such as depth limits.

    • Like 4

    10 hours ago, d2b said:

    Is there any important difference between the Q1RC and the Q1i other than support for the Sony TTL mode? If not maybe us humble OMDS users can get a deal on Q1RCs.

    They appear to be exactly the same apart from the TTL support, they list 3 different models with the same general specs as well as black and white variations of each model on their website.

    • Like 1

    9 hours ago, richijota said:

    Hi everyone,
    Just bringing this thread back to ask if anyone has had the chance to try this strobe in person. I'm in the process of choosing a new pair of strobes and I'm torn between these and the Backscatter HF-1. The AOI UIS strobes are really appealing to me, but I haven’t found much first-hand feedback from actual users yet.
    Has anyone had the chance to get their hands on them??

    Alex Mustard has tried many strobes recently and seems he likes the light quality from circular tube strobes but also uses the HF-1. Seems he has tried a number of the Chinese manufactured strobes and lumps them together, but doesn't specifically mention the AOI. This post I thought was quite informative I thought. He clearly likes the Retras. You don't state your setup and whether you really need the power of the HF-1. In Alex's video review of the PRO Max he mentions one problem with very powerful strobes is turning them down enough and the Pro Max has more turndown as I recall.

    • Like 1

    On 7/20/2025 at 12:08 PM, bghazzal said:


    Yes, the RX100 VII looked very promising for macro but so far the best RX100 macro footage I've seen seems to be shot on the RX100Va for some reason...

    If this helps, I can reach macro on a 1" sensor compact, the LX10 (max 72mm zoom), with a powerful diopter like the CMC-1 (+15) or AOI UCL-09 (+12.5) or lens stacks (if I could budget it I would get the AOI +18) - this is for video, not stills.

    The V1 has a larger sensor, which will loses some of the smaller sensor benefits.

    I think the devil is in the detail, if you look to the port chart the RX100VII fills the frame with a 16 x 10.7mm object and the SMC-3 diopter but it focuses only between between 91 and 103mm Which means the magnification range will be quite small and you'll probably need a pocket full of diopters to cover normal working ranges of a macro lens.

    The RX100V on the other hand covers the 35 x 23mm frame with CMC-1 and focuses between 35 and 75mm, so will give a wider range at a more reasonable magnification. (equivalent to 100mm macro lens on full frame at 1:1 at max. With the VII you are stuck up closer to 2x full frame equivalent. I think that is because the min focus distance for the VII is very long at max zoom and becomes somewhat impractical unless you shoot everything at super macro. Zooming out you will soon vignette I guess.

    I seem to recall reading somewhere the the VII ended up being impractical for macro.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

    3 hours ago, CaolIla said:

    I think it would be wise for Retra to sell the retra only with booster but to give the 2 closing parts for use with 4 or 8 batteries.

    But personally I don't really see the point of diving only with 4. Unless, of course, for one reason or another, we run out of batteries


    @Oskar - Retra UWT A small Idea for the next firmeware

    For my local diving I usually do a single 70-80 minute dive. On macro I can get 3 of these dives in with capacity to spare. I'm diving with the Retra Pure which suits my m43 system quite well. When I travel I'll probably use the boosters. As Alex pointed out it keeps the strobes compact to get them in close to the port.

    I agree the battery change is super easy and light quality an excellent step up from my Z240s.

    • Like 2

    11 hours ago, RomiK said:

    Canon V1 opinion anyone? We know it's going to provide decent quality WA in a super small package with that small dome but what about macro? I do not shoot wet macro optics and have no idea how it is going to work with that lens ...

    Max magnification is hard to find, but eventually found a reviews that said you could fill the frame with a subject about 10cm wide at the long end of the zoom range which is about 0.2x mgnification on the 1.4" sensor. You would need quite a powerful diopter as the focal length of the lens is quite short.

    • Like 1

    32 minutes ago, bghazzal said:



    Despite the amazing demos in some videos — like the one above, where it seems you could track a subject’s nostril hair while skateboarding — the unmentioned fact is that video AF is a totally different beast, and there’s no way to know how it would actually work for moving pictures (which also means needing unicorn-like video-optimised lenses that can keep up...).

    Have to agree, though the examples provided are relatively low stress as magnification is very low and whole frame is close to being in focus. Shift to low depth of field macro (or a long tele lenses for that matter) and it's a different story.

    It's obvious from the video that it's a Leica wannabe rangefinder imitation, the language used, the pricepoint - it's all about style and selling to a very specific crowd that has the income to blow on items like this. Like a it's a $5k plus camera and they don't include a lens hood and they charge $200 for it.

    • Like 5

    11 minutes ago, Dave_Hicks said:

    I am curious what the deal is with the rash of certificate failures in the last week. Did someone not setup auto-renew on some accounts? :)

    believe it was update of apache server software which broke it.

    • Like 1

    Combination strobe/video tend to max out at about 5000 lumens which is not all that powerful in terms of a video light and often have restricted beam angles. The most powerful combo seems to be the Backscatter HF-1 currently. It depends on what your video expectations are of course, the HF-1 I expect could do macro video quite readily, but would expect it to be limited to do video with your main camera. Basically the video light needs to out power ambient light or close to it. As a flash it's very powerful, though I saw Alex mustard comment it sometimes doesn't turn down enough for macro. The downside I see is that it quite a heavy lump even UW, you can counteract that of course but it's more weight you need to cart around. We have quite a few people on the site who use it now.

    • Like 1

    7 hours ago, Pooley said:

    Thankyou

    Sony A1 and 90mm in a nauticam housing

    Nauticam SMC-1

    Two retra strobes, no snoots on these as I wanted a bit more background interest

    Mike

    Nice shots, I agree on the background, I've never been a huge fan of black backgrounds, comes from land based macros for many years where black BG was reserved for night shots and getting a pleasing out of focus BG was highly regarded.

    8 minutes ago, Yorkie88 said:

    Do you have a multimeter? Could you measure the remaining one?

    that will get you the capacitance, but I think there's probably some other parameters to get a capacitor which does what it is supposed to and lasts. I found this site, I expect if you find the capacitance, ordering replacements from here might be a good bet. Perhaps you could contact them with the capacitance and dimensions and see if they are able to assist:

    https://www.xenonflashtubes.com/photo-flash-capacitors_21

    Also I assume you are aware of the hazards these capacitors present, they store a lot of energy at hazardous voltages and need to be discharged before working on them. The limiting factor is likely to be the external dimensions, it has to fit in the space available.

    • Like 1

    8 hours ago, Architeuthis said:

    This is opposed by 61 Mpixel, 14-bit raw images (and S/N ratio clearly deserves to be digitized at 14-bit resolution) with 4x the maximum light gathering capability (and according dynamic range)...

    IMO dynamic range is nice, but rarely critical UW, If you look at ambient images the histogram is squashed into the middle and needs to be stretched to get a decently contrasty image. The sole exception might be sunballs, but It seems that high sync speed is your biggest requirement there. and the dynamic range progressively goes away as you increase ISO. I don't doubt the images look great, but for me the the m43 sensor is more than adequate for what I do.

    If you like to look at sensor data plots you'll see that The Nikon D800 and the A7RV are very very close with mainly slightly more dynamic range at a given ISO. In fact the EM-1 MkII matches the D800 ISO400 dynamic range at ISO200 and it hardly drops at 400. It's a similar story for noise. Where full frame really comes into play is at much higher ISOs which are not that commonly needed UW.

    I have seen remarkable shots at high ISO out of the OM-1 though. This shot at ISO6400 I found quite nice, the shadows are blocked but FF and infinite dynamic range won't help the feathers have microstructure that makes them close to the blackest object known, they just don't reflect light.

    https://500px.com/photo/1111734237/magnificent-riflebird-or-papua-by-petr-bambousek

    • Like 2

    1 hour ago, Stig said:

    I'm also considering switching to M4/3 from my aged Sony NEX5 and have been eyeing up the Olympus OMD-EM10 and AOI housing for reasons of cost and weight (especially cf. Nauticam). I'm undecided and lens/port choice though, I guess a fisheye (or wide zoom) and small dome would be lighter than a wet lens?

    Either the Panasonic or Olympus 8mm fisheye is very light and affordable and they work well in a 4"dome.

    Agree though the AF in the OM1 and EM5 is way better than the old series like EM-5II - mainly a benefit when using the 60mm macro lens which was relatively sluggish on the EM-5 II. I upgraded to the EM-1 mKII 8 years ago it was way better than the old EM-5 II. If you are concerned about expense a second hand EM-1 MII or III in an aluminium housing would be a great option. The OM-1 and OM-5 are better but not as much of a step up as the EM-5 II to EM-1 II.

    • Like 4

    I shoot the OM-1 in Nauticam, quite happy with it. I didn't downgrade from full frame UW, though I went from using a Canon 1DIV on land to olympus as well . I still have the 1DIV and Canon lenses including a 500mm f4 and 180mm macro , but I've switched over to using the OM-1 for all of that and the Canon gear only gets used very occasionally as the OM-1 is every bit as good and for land based macro using focus stacking among other features easily surpasses the Canon and other full frame options. There are others here who have gone Full frame to APS-C and never regretted it such my fellow moderator @TimG . My feeling these days is APS-C is a bit of an orphan child with lens range a little limited in some ways. I used to try to shoot everything so that I could print big!! but I've found in reality I almost never do.

    Other advantages include you don't need to stop down so much so you can shoot lower ISO as you are at least 1 stop further open compared to FF, this means smaller cheaper flash units will work for you. The lens lineup is very complete with excellent macro, rectilinear wide (14-28, 16-35 equivalent etc.) and fisheye options. The lenses are cheaper than full frame and a lot smaller as are the ports required.

    On the full frame question, a lot depends on what you want to use the images for and I can see two main reasons for wanting full frame these days -1. you make your living from the images and clients demand it and 2. You want (and actually do) make large prints - I'm talking A2 size and bigger. The 20 MP sensor in the OM-1 can print A3 natively at 300 dpi and up-ressing to A2 is quite feasible, it's starts to suffer a little beyond that. A third reason might be you can afford it, can put up with size and weight and you want to. Ports and lenses in m43 are quite a bit cheaper as are the housings.

    I have the 60mm macro, which is my most used, the 12-40 in a 170mm dome and now use the an adapted Canon 8-15 fisheye in the 140mm dome for wide angle - you can't get this so cheaply in any other system. It combines a full diagonal fisheye with a 14-28 equivalent lens and includes much of the range of a WWL setup in one package. Full frame requires either Sony and the same adapted 8-15 lens with a Sony 2x or using the very expensive Fisheye conversion port. Amazing flexibility and image quality and uniquely micro43 allows you the most flexibility. Only downside is it needs lots of flotation to get near neutral.

    Your two main housing options are Nauticam and Isotta. I started with Nauticam and I'm bought into this system, but Isotta for example would allow you to do the Canon 8-15 significantly cheaper. I can pack my setup including housing, ports, camera, lenses and two strobes into a carry on size photo backpack.

    Feel free to ask more specific questions about shooting with the OM-1. There's lots of images on my website and most recent ones since about late 2023 are with the OM-1. You can also find my gallery here on Waterpixels.

    • Like 2

    15 hours ago, makar0n said:

    How to say "I'am living in Australia" without actually saying it 😂

    Now (bad) jokes aside, most of NVMe enclosures rely on passive cooling, i.e. enclosure acting as a heatsink. As long as it's semi decent (aluminum and not too much plastic, good thermal pad and large contact area), this is usually enough for a normal usage. Might of course wary in very hot climates, but again, most NVMe drives are rated up to 70 degrees before they start to throttle.

    There are very few passive cooling enclosures that are really designed well enough to handle full on, constant maximum use of the NVMe drive. But then again, such usage is rather extreme, and is not going to happen by just copying or editing a few pictures.

    Example would be SilverStone MS12/MS12-40G.

    Enclosures with active cooling aka fan, can be a better choice in some cases, as active cooling will always be superior, but come at the cost of being quite bulkier, and possibly nosier (small fan).

    Example would be Icy Box IB-1922MF-C32.

    Much more important performance wise is not to go for bottom of the barrel DRAM/SLC-cache-less NVMe drives - that will hurt you much more when writing a lot.

    The biggest problem is there are so many junk enclosures out there. I did find this active cooled one which claims to be very quiet:

    Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD...
    No image preview

    Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure Offline Clone D...

    Buy Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure Offline Clone Docking Station (SD560) - Buy Now, Pay Later + FREE pick-up & same day dispatch!

    None of the specs though mention anything about DRAM or SLC- cache?

    I usually buy Samsung storage for my SSDs, was supposed to be the "best" a few years back but haven't researched recently. My internal HDD on my desktop tower is a Samsung 4TB SSD 2.5"form factor, but I'm still using a spinning backup drive in an external enclosure. I'm thinking about what I'll update it with down the track??

    But back to the OP, any SSD with a 200MB/sec card and good reader will eat a system using a spinning HDD plugged into a laptop I would think.

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