Chris Ross

On 5/9/2025 at 4:58 PM, Adventurer said:

Well yes that's what I did, but of course with shutter closed, which might explain the 1 mm offset. Good to reflect a little bit on that. Also the IBIS can make the sensor wobble a lot which might be interesting.

Having said that, the Nikonos bayonet is also kind-off weird and allows you to shift the lense a little back and forth when properly mounted. I guess the water pressure will always push that lens towards sensor direction. But overall there might be some tolerant for the focus plane.

As far as I know for infinity focus you need to be quite precise in air, The UW situation is probably similar for the Nikonos as you probably want something close to infinity focus on that lens while a land lens inside a dome is probably more forgiving as it is focusing quite close when used UW behind a dome.

I expect and depending on what type of tip your depth gauge has that it wouldn't hurt the sensor to touch it gently when doing the measurement. The main thing would be to de-grease it I would think - but of course at your own risk.

But if I'm not mistaken where you want your precision is the difference between the lens flange distance of a Canon RF versus a Nikonos. Assuming the figures are correct with 28mm for Nikonos and 20mm for Canon RF. You want the flange on the Adapter 8mm in front of the camera's lens flange.

It seems to me its aimed at the Pro cinema market, they show it on what looks like a Canon C400 which is a $US12K housing and from what I understand these big video housings are quite the brick to start with, the C400 weighs 6.6kg on land and 1kg -ve with camera in water. Whether it's right for that or not I can't say but they seem to work on using the bulk to stabilise things and have rails to trim etc.??

9 hours ago, Adventurer said:

Great Info Chris, where did you look that up? What is the source? Official from Nikon / Canon?
I did my own measurement and got 19mm on my Canon RF.

Indeed the extruding knobs are going to be an issue.

I am thinking about cutting or replacing them to be able to move the port adapter more inside.

Google reveals multiple sources stating it is 20mm including a Canon website. I recall reading somewhere that a straight measurement to the surface of the sensor stack is not what you use, rather you want the sensor surface. The sensor on cameras with in body stabilization is also mobile and some of them apparently have a parked position to allow cleaning without damaging the IS mechanism which could change the sensor position??

Though if you have measured using something like a depth gauge (not a ruler and straight edge) it should work for physically placing the camera body correctly.

It sounds like quite the project! with some precision machining required. The ID of the adapter recess you can use will be set by the ID of the port o-ring minus 2x the wall thickness you need to use, which you could judge from the wall thickness marelux uses. I'm thinking it might something like 110mm ID you have available (4mm O-ring plus 3mm wall thickness and rounded down). Some type of flexible drive shaft might be the way to control the focus and aperture.

Not that I'm trying to discourage you but it seems to me switching to Sony or at least researching a housing that places the sensor closer to the port flange might be a lot less work.

The issue you up against is that many housing manufacturers opted set the camera back in the housing such that the lens mount of the adapter (EF -RF or ZTF) was in the same position relative to the port flange as the DSLR camera flange. Doing this means that the port charts and zoom/focus gears for DSLR lenses will be the same when adapted to mirrorless cameras. Sony never had this limitation as it was for the most part and was using short mirrorless flange distances from their first full frame mirrorless.

Looking up the flange distance for Nikonos it's 28mm, your Canon RF has a 20mm flange distance - in theory adaptable if there's no obstructions but I guess you've worked that one out! I think your fundamental problem is that the aperture knobs will stop you getting the nikonos deep enough into the adapter to reach focus. Have a look at the pic in this arrticle, scroll down to the pic of the mounted 15mm in hand and you will see the knobs extend beyond the outer diameter of the N100 mount shown here:

Interceptor121 Photography & Vid...

You've got a 125mm mount on the Marelux but the knobs would need to be inside the port flange to get close enough to the sensor it seems, it looks like the knobs extend past the 100mm port diameter by at least 10mm or more not leaving enough meat to allow you to recess them even with the 125mm port mount of the Marelux. The link also reviews using the 15mm lens on his Sony.

The adapter looks odd with those plates bolted to it, that's because there's not enough room to build it with a flange, so they bolt on two pieces so there is no flange under the knobs. The plates are what stop the adapter ring being pushed through the port. I'm guessing you need to remove them, mount the lens then replace them. There's only just enough room to mount this lens in the Nauticam setup and have it in the right position to reach focus.

The only way I can see to use it with a Canon mirrorless would be to find a housing with a shorter camera flange to port flange distance if one exists. Either that or convert to Sony, You might be able to engineer something but it may work out cheaper to change brands 😂

I see that Aquatica utilise an external RF-EF extension to EF lenses on RF mount mirrorless cameras. Indicates their camera is closer to the front of the housing but is it close enough?

On 5/6/2025 at 2:24 AM, MartínSub said:

Thanks very much Chris, this helps a lot.

Only with your info it’s quite clear that the Canon one then will be 20mm to long for my setup.

You are right I’m having a Sony APSC on Sigma MC11 adapter(4mm) shorter than the meta ones.

Not lucky this time will have to buy it new I Guess.

Best regards

I would also suggest you confirm the port arrangement with Nauticam. They used to have a line item on their Sony N85 port charts for the correct N85-N120 adapter and then refer you to the Canon EF port chart, but that's not on the current port chart. I can't remember for sure but I thought it was a bit shorter than 60mm to use the Canon port system.

If you are looking for minimal maintenance, the INON torches are good, they include an additional sand seal that the torch head contacts when you screw it down, it seems to be good enough to exclude any water and grit, so that if the torch is dried off externally you just unscrew the head, give a quick visual and screw it back on after changing batteries. I have never seen any water or grit on the o-rings and and have greased and cleaned them once in about 5 years.

Operation is quite simple just a knob you turn to switch on, it's comes on in low power and you screw it in further and it goes to high power. Quite bright enough for a focus light. I'm a fan of low power focus lights, you really don't need a super bright light and even their 350 lumen model with the 30° beam is enough to grab focus for macro work. I generally add the 60° diffuser that is included. They also have a tight 5° deg model which has good range for use as a dive light, believe it is popular as a spotting light for black water dives. You don't need to remember button sequences to turn them on, just a simple twist knob.

2 hours ago, sammycheez said:

Thanks Chris! Didn't see this until now. My camera flash is already set to the lowest setting and while the recycle time isn't terrible, it will give a prolonged BUSY message and lock the shutter when the flash is used too many times successively. I wonder if maybe a fresh Canon battery would help with that.

I wish I had a Wetpixel account so I could see the post you linked. Thanks for linking the article; it seems to be exactly the guide I was looking for. Good point about the LEDs themselves. This is exactly the type of insight I was looking for to convince me I'm not saving money/time trying to hotwire something myself. I think you're right that the best option for me is to buy a manual flash trigger and position the LEDs correctly in my housing. The Sea&Sea, Fantasea, and TRT options are relatively inexpensive and the LEDs are already on wires.

I think unless you have experience in electronics, probably best to buy something. Any trigger that only has the large centre contact should work for you. You didn't say which flash you wanted to trigger, manual triggering is usually problem free, but if you are triggering a known difficult strobe like a YS-D2 you would want to be sure the trigger put out enough light. An additional possibility would be to use electrical sync cords if that is an option with your strobes, though you would then be maintaining the additional o-rings and dealing with the usual sync cord issues.

1 hour ago, aquabluedreams said:

Sorry Chris but I'm a little confused, lol, what system has the larger sensor?

Sorry, the Iphone does - if your interested in the numbers it's 24.6 mm2 for the GoPro and 71.5 mm2 for the Iphone 15 Pro. This means it gathers 3x the light for the image compared to the go-pro, means the signal to noise is better on the iphone.

The issue is two fold - a wider field than WACP/WWL and maintain reach while not getting too heavy.

A fisheye like the 8-15 gives you the first one, but no ability to zoom beyond 180° nominal diagonal fisheye. You could add a fisheye and exchange the WACP for a WWL, but you can't do them both on the same dive. and it's more weight. The 8-15 with 2x effectively combines the diagonal fisheye with a WWL/WACP. If you don't use the long end of the WACP much you could probably use the 1.4x.

2 hours ago, aquabluedreams said:

Thanks! I think I lean somewhat to the iPhone because you do have their typical ".5 1x 2" feature vs. the GoPro where you have to zoom with your fins, lol, little more flexibility for someone who may not be a strong free diver.

I would have thought the same. The sensor has nearly 3x the surface area and you can pick between a 24mm and a 13mm equivalent lens.

1 hour ago, Sokrates said:

Also the option with 140mm dome is not really cutting down from WACP-C (2.5kg with lens).

1.5kg 140mm glass dome

0.5kg 8-15mm

0.2kg Monster adapter

0.2kg TC

0.3kg N100-N120 adapter

It does get pretty heavy, the Canon 8-15 is a bit of a brick, though the 140mm dome doesn't weigh 1.5 kg, that I think is the shipping weight. I have most of this stuff so I can weigh it, the adapter/extension weight is of the n85-N120 34.7 with 35mm extension that I have, so will be close:

140mm dome 740 gr

adapter plus extension tube 550 gr

Canon 8-15 with metabones: 740 gr

Total : 2030 gr

While the 28-60/WACP-C/30mm ext weighs 2657 gr... You would need to add either the 1.4x or 2x TC if you want to get the reach you had with the WACP:

the fields of view are best visualized by looking at the diagonal field of view and also working out the equivalent 35mm rectilinear lens focal length, with just the 8-15 you get a circular fisheye or a full about 175° diagonal fisheye, no additional reach, if you want some reach as well you need to look at using it with 1.4x or 2x TC, the Sony TC produce better results than the kenko and can be used with the Metabones mounted in the order camera-TC-Metabone-Canon 8-15:

You can see that the 8-15 with 2x is close to covering the Full 180° diagonal fisheye all the way through to almost the full reach of the WACP-C by these calculations, while the 1.4x TC gets you out to about the field of a 16mm rectilinear lens. It will probably end up about the same weight once you add a 2x/1.4x and the required extension tube but, it does get you wonderful flexibility to shoot a school of Barracuda then drop down to shoot an anemone fish CFWA on the reef below. You could save around 200 gr with the 4.33"acrylic dome perhaps.

10 minutes ago, Brain Fade said:

Cheers! I would say mostly macro, with some wider angle stuff at Bicheno etc.

One thing that I really like about the Weefine housings is being able to easily add a monitor - that will be very nice instead of having to get my head in the right place to see a small screen on the back of the housing or peer through an eyepiece - I'm really looking forward to that. Weefine have a new 5" monitor out very shortly which is something like 3000 nits - so very sunlight readable.

If it's mostly macro , the TG7 is the only game in town really, it's wide enough for a weedy sea dragon, but probably want a wide angle lenses for big schools of fish etc. I hear the weefine housing allow you to use an 18650 battery to charge the camera up and get much more dive time before needing to change out.

Go-Pro and DGI are basically video machines they can take photos but they aren't fantastic. More importantly they don't focus close as they are setup for wide angle work. The TG-7 on the other hand is a macro camera- it's not that wide at its widest but can focus very close and is great at capturing smaller critters and filling the frame with them. As I understand things the TG-7 does video but it's not its forte. To some extent it depends on what you are shooting.

The GoPro/DJI require an accessory closeup lens to shoot anything small, while the TG-7 requires an accessory wide lens to shoot larger things like reefs etc. The lens on the GoPro/DJI is fixed focus no zoom, while you have full focus range from a few mm to infinity with the TG7 and it zoom from a 25mm equivalent lens to a 100mm lens.

To some extent it depends on what you are shooting and where, if you are mostly in Tassie, I would guess a lot of macro work?

Also I moved this into Photo Gear and Technique.

The Zen domes have some variations so you need the right version. I assume you are looking at adapting to an APS-C Sony and your housing is N85. From what I understand you need to add an N85-N120 adapter and they currently list the 60mm adapter #36204 for this specific purpose. The way Nauticam does these adapters is that installing the adapter and the Metabones Sony E to EOS EF adapter you then refer to the Canon EF port chart and use the ports/extensions specified there. Usually you can use the Nauticam Canon zoom gear for that lens and you zoom with th eknob on the N85-N120 adapter.

The EF port chart lists the Tokina 10-17 with a 10mm extension and 140mm dome. The Zen port chart lists the DP100-N120T for use of the Tokina 10-17 on Nauticam and this has the required extension built in. If you look online you will see quite a few variants of the Zen 100mm dome with varying extension built in. From the Reef photo website you can see all of them listed.

The DP100 N120NCR is for Nauticam with the Canon 8-15 with 30mm built in extension

The DP00 N120 T is for Tokina 10-17 with 10mm in built extension

Others are for Aquatica, Nauticam with 10mm nikon fisheye etc.

8 hours ago, Cyrille said:

Thank you so much for all answers! Super useful.

I am also planning to test the use of the canon RF 1.4x tel with the 8-15 and and com lite adapter. As I am using it for other zoom lens, would be good not to have to buy the kenko.

The more I dig, the more marelux looks attractive !

Also keep Isotta in mind, in this part of the world they seem quite reasonably priced. You can do all of this with their 4.5"dome as well.

A thread on the subject here:

A couple of things stand out - built in battery pack or it is contained in the arm on newer models it seems, heavy and needs adapters to use fibre optics.

I use the little accesory flash that comes with my OM-1 and I set it at 1/64 power which seems to be more than adequate to use. Do you have the option to set flash power in the camera menus? Looks like it can be set to manual and as low as 1/128 power which should recycle very quickly.

Also if you are looking at manual triggers, these generally only have the center contact and the shoe to complete the circuit, so and any model trigger will work on your hotshoe, the difference being only achieving alignment of the LEDs with the fibre optic ports. There are a few ready built manual triggers sold out there which should work with your 7D, you would be looking for a model with the LEDs on wires to mount in your fibre optic ports. Still pricey at around the $200-250 mark.

The circuit itself is simple in principle but finding the right LEDs might be a challenge. This post on th old wetpixel discusses :

https://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?/topic/62410-the-ultimate-diy-led-trigger-olympus/&tab=comments#comment-429772

You may not be able to read it unless you sign in though. It links to this post:

https://www.instructables.com/LED-Strobe-Trigger-for-Olympus-OM-D-E-M1-Mark-II/

You would have to adapt it to using circuit board to build and source a hotshoe and the right parts of course. The biggest issue is finding LEDs which will work and not burn out. You need quite high power LEDs to reliably trigger strobes.

5 hours ago, Toque said:

Wow! Almost afraid to ask a question. I use PS Elements for my processing and yes I throw out tons of pics, but with digital I take tons of pics. And I get many shots that I'm happy with. I guess I'm intimated by PS and Lightroom and the amount of options and "tricks" they have up their sleeve(s). And now this new product? I'm in awe of what can be done. So to start from the beginning where would I go to learn about the work flow that you guys use in post processing? Does everyone use both PS and Lightroom? some use 1 or the other? and after reading this thread What is ACR? Thanks

The big difference between PS and Lightroom is that Lightroom keeps a record of changes that you make to the image and stores them in a database, rather than storing an edited image. It is effectively a Digital Asset management tool as it has ability to store your files and organise them by libraries, albums and manage metadata with filtering and search tools to find your images. The downside is all of this and the changes you make when developing are stored in a database called the lightroom catalogue, which can get corrupted. To learn there are lots of online resources out there, some free, others paid.

Personally I don't see the attraction of lightroom, as PS is more powerful and has the ability to a lot of things with layers which streamline processing for me, plus it has the levels tool which to me is invaluable. PS elements can do much of what PS can do, a big difference being that 16 bit editing is limited. 16 bit editing is quite important for UW images to avoid posterisation when making adjustments to things like blue water. As far as I know you can do levels and curves in 16 bit then convert to 8 bit for the balance of editing with elements.

ACR is Adobe Camera Raw, where you develop RAW files.

In general UW images are not that demanding of the editor, with exceptions they tend to be a little low on contrast unless you have a sun ball or highly reflective subjects. The main points to adjust are black and white points then colour balance, followed by contrast adjustments if required. Starting on the RAW editor set it to 16 bit output, then adjust exposure, white balance as required and set black and white points, sharpening as required and any adjustments to saturation you want. In elements then you can open levels and tweak it to get a full histogram and maybe open a curves layer to get it looking the way you want. Convert to 8 bit now and do any backscatter work you want to do. Save then crop as required and produce any other files you may want - resize for printing or to produce a jpeg for web display, social media etc.

Do note though that PS elements is specifically not supported for Backscatter exterminator. the cloning tools within PS elements though do place you in a better position for dealing with backscatter than the tools available in Lightroom.

Particularly for macro, the little INONS will be quite fine I would expect, you might want to get into snooting later on, which is a different matter but start simple. Even if you find you outgrow the little S220, it will be fine for macro work later on. If you can have a look at them first they are surprisingly small, they now have better controls than their predecessors. The Backscatter video review gives a good idea of the size and control layout.

On the Retras they are certainly a good strobe and hove very good quality of light, a lot of well regarded photographers use them and like them for this.

You are spoiled for choice with the current available strobes, a great many recently released. It would help to narrow down your choice with a few considerations:

• Budget - strobes range a great deal in asking price!

• Travel limitations - some are more travel friendly than other due to size and weight - a lot of new strobes are big and heavy

• Depth rating - the vast majority of strobes are rated to 100m There are one or two expensive option rated for 200m

• Strobe power - again a wide range. Macro requires less power due to the close range compared to lighting up big wide angle scenes.

• Battery power - AA cell strobes versus Li-ion cells vs Custom (expensive) battery packs

• Charging - standard battery chargers or USB versus custom chargers

• Reliability??

Fibre optics is probably indeed the best way to trigger - you can get TTL and manual triggers. Manual stobe work is not that hard, but TTL seems to be getting better. The Nauticam manual trigger is a cheaper option, then you have UWT or Turtle as choices.

To give you an idea of the range from budget to high end:

INON S220- 469 Euro incl VAT, 463 gr (with batteries - 4 x AA) 140 x 100 deg beam. A very compact and quite capable little strobe, small size means positioning for macro will be easier. Maybe a slightly wanting for power for big wide angle shots, but very capable for macro. You can get around the power somewhat with ISO if ambient light is not included in the mix or if light is very low.

OneUW ONE160X, 1930 Euro plus VAT, 1460 gram, 200m depth rating. 130deg beam. Built in TTL circuit for Sony and other brands. A large and rugged strobe with TTL, HSS and other faetures and nic soft even beam. Proprietary battery pack (185 euro) and charger.

There is whole range of other strobes in between these price points and a few for a bit less plus some that are pricier.

7 hours ago, jlaity said:

Nauticam is in Florida I think but yeah I expected worse.

Nauticam USA might be in Florida, but the parent company is in Hong Kong.

The MFO in Australia is advertised at $US382 converted using the current AUD-USD exchange rate (before GST) so it is getting hit pretty hard on import duties a 44% premium on the AU price if I'm not mistaken and assuming $550 is the price before any local sales taxes.

The duty would be charged on the wholesale import value before distributor and retailer markups, even so it looks like the full announced 125% has not been passed on as yet but I have no idea what the markup on UW photo equipment by the wholesaler and retailers is. A lot of items like footwear and clothing have really substantial markups.

If for example the MFO came in at a retail price of $382 and assume a 100% markup the import landed price is $191 plus 125% would give a landed price of 427.75 with the tariff imposed. Then assume the wholesale and retail margins stay constant the final price is $427 plus 191 = $ 620 So a price ending up at $550 is not out of the ball park assuming the wholesale/retail margins take a bit of a hit. I'm guessing wholesale and retail margins are reasonably high as they have to pay a lot of things out that margin including warranty, staff wages, handling costs to get it out of customs, warehouse costs etc. and it's not like they sell 1000's of these widgets a year.

49 minutes ago, Pomacentridae said:

I will try the beam limiters as a secondary option -- as you pointed out it would be difficult for active fish.

Thanks P

Just to be clear snoots would be really difficult, the beam limiters similar to the Retra reduction rings still produce something like a 90° beam (as opposed to a 130° beam) with a sharp dropoff, making it easier to contain the light, not too different to regular strobes.

As I recall this is a failure reported in any type of strobe, the circuit that cuts the strobe output has failed but the trigger circuit still works. There was a reset procedure for earlier versions of S&S strobes, but don't recall seeing one for this model.

As a workaround try it in TTL to see if it works adjusting power. You could run it in TTL triggering off the duration of your other strobe?

In the meantime I would be calling your dealer about warranty - do this first if it has not expired as yet.

The benefit is largely around slowing down the movement of the AF point from target so the AF can lock on, it doesn't work miracles but I find it helpful. Basically the AF is your third axis to counter back and forth movement. I see no reason to turn it off, some of the earlier generations might have caused some issues, but today it is sound technology.