Chris Ross

Perhaps, but reducing pixel size to get more MP has it's limitations. Diffraction is already an issue, cropability has some benefits, however you need to be doing everything right to get those benefits high enough shutter speed and stable camera to prevent motion blur. the lens has to be up to that task etc. With macro m43 has quite a strong following, I do a lot of land based macro and focus stacking and it's astounding how good the images coming out of OM cameras are. And for UW use the little Olympus 60mm macro can fill the frame with a subject that needs a closeup diopter yielding 2x magnification on a full frame camera and is far easier to focus with a macro lens compared to using a diopter. The sensor test websites are interesting but obviously not the full picture. Prior to getting Olympus gear for UW use I had Canon gear, a 1D4, 500mm f4 lens, macro etc. I'm switching over to mostly using Olympus for land work and have the 300mm f4, 90mm macro, 12-40mm etc. It's easier to use and way lighter and overall is good enough for my needs. The only place it is put to the test a little is astro work, but fast lenses that are sharp wide open do help. I'm actually quite happy with the size of the OM-1, any smaller and it would be hard to hold for my hands, I have a EM-5 mkII which is very compact but it doesn't get a whole lot of use.

It's not OM system that will be developing the sensors as I understand things. There's only a handful of places that actually make sensors. The current OM-1 sensor is a Sony sensor while Nikon also uses Sony sensors, while Canon make their own. The camera manufacturers then work out the best way to utilise the sensor technology to build their camera around it. I really think sensor technology has plateaued if you want an example go to DXO mark and look at camera sets like for example Z8/D850/D810 covering about 10 years or Sony A7RV/A7RIII/A7RII. The Signal to noise curves all sit on top of each other dynamic range is all similar in fact Z8 is about one stop less than D850. It's not the full story of course but improvements are now very much incremental. What has been advancing is things like readout speed, on chip AF and computational photography, all nice features but not all useful for UW work. You are still not going to beat the size and weight of lenses for m43 cameras, not to mention the large range of lenses suitable for UW work.

Hi Roman, I ran it through Capture One Pro which did a decent job I thought. Just a slight reduction in tone then set levels channel by channel to get the colours right, I pulled highlights all the way down and reduced exposure to stop the highlights clipping followed by dragging the shadows up some. Next was then import into Photoshop and adjust contrast with luminosity masks - doing an "S" curve on Shadow/Highlight/midtones separately and just cropped out the remains of the sunball. It is hovering on the edge of posterising right now particularly in the JPEG and if I were really fine tuning I'd go back and back off the shadows boost a little. I also did noise reduction on the red channel and backed the reds away in levels on the mids adjustment as it was giving red snow noise in the shadows. Here it is: Manta image and here is the red channel: Red Channel I posted them as links as I have a bug on my account which screws up colours in images I insert into posts. My normal workaround is to upload to my gallery but obviously couldn't do that with a guest image!

Could be related to the number of species present that are hard to ID potentially unless you have a specimen and/or specialist knowledge? The Caribbean has 60-70 coral species while the indo pacific has 10 times that number. Sponges are also difficult to ID by all accounts. This website seems to have a lot of info about Corals in the Indo-pacific. Reef Builders

A firmware update is not going to destroy the transmitter, (which implies some sort of damage) I don't believe anyone said that. However people are reporting that they can no longer connect through the transmitter which means the capability is gone. The immediate impact is the same either way but presumably fixable in firmware or some sort of workaround Sony forgot to tell us about. 😬 It seems prudent for now to watch and wait for it to be fixed in an update. It's all too common these days for any type of tech to use early adopting customers as their Beta testers. If you can't connect seems like it's better to wait till the issue is properly sorted.

This has been going on for some time now and tropicals are regularly seen in dives off Sydney, though most don't survive the winters. I've seen quite a few myself at various times. Recently we've seen a few tropical nudis such as Tambja morosa happily dining on local bryozoans. There is actually a website that collects sightings of tropicals for research and they ask for particular species of interest south of landmark. It's called redmap: Redmap Australia - Redmap Here's a Tambja morosa from Botany Bay in Sydney, previous to this I saw it in Lembeh strait. They are found in the indo Pacific and down onto Great Barrier Reef.

Perhaps, though I don't quite follow you, in a couple of days I can post some images which may help explain better.

Roman, it has nothing to do with who started it, if someone else insults you it doesn't mean you get to insult them back. It gets a bit tiring when people seem to not get how to be civil to each other. Again play nice please - both parties!

I can post some images to demonstrate what I'm talking about, but it'll have to wait a couple of days till I return home, I don't have them with me currently.

Fisheyes are also fundamentally different to rectilinear lenses in that the in focus area is curved rather than straight. If you setup a rectilinear lens on a grid surface at close focus and wide open you will see the region that is in focus is defined by two parallel lines. If you do the same with a fisheye the infocus region is annular centered around the lens. The fisheye region that is in focus is a closer match to the curved virtual image than a rectilinear lens in focus region.

Yes I'm aware of flooding it could also break being installed. You need to be a little careful with o-rings and lubricant. The Nauticam o-rings are silicone I believe and if you apply actual silicone grease to them it can soften them. The Nauticam lube is a universal lube for o-rings, a generic silicone grease will damage the Nauticam o-rings. As I mentioned the Nauticam ones are very long lasting and I never did anything other than soak the whole housing after a dive, never added any type of lube. I don't believe the o-rings need lube as their function to grip. I recall someone mentioned the spec for the o-rings on here a while back but I don't remember the exact dimensions. Nauticam of course sell theirs but they are expensive.

Hi Roman, if that's indeed your aim then phrases like: " Are you for real? 🤦‍♀️ bathtub or pool vs the real conditions? I guess folks over at Nauticam have no clue on what to recommend to users of their products... They probably have no clue designing their products either... 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️" really don't fit with that aim. If you want readers to decide for themselves seems like it would be better to say: "I actually prefer to see comparison shots taken on dives of real subjects, Pool tests don't mean a lot to me"

To clarify is this the main o-ring or the o-ring on one of the balls mounts? I've found the o-rings on the balls very durable my previous housing they lasted 6 years so far.

You do know that Nauticam decides which extension to recommend by testing in a tank? Thye also use photos taken with their equipment for advertising. There is a valid reason for doing testing in the pool, mainly being that you can shoot a flat surface to check the corners more readily. In the real world the corners might be much closer to you than the subject and you don't know if the blur is due falling out of the depth of field, the optics or both. Different people have different ways they like to use to evaluate which lenses to use, some are happy saying that the photo they just saw looked great, others want the sharpest field across the frame and have the time and patience to do their own tests and the mathematical bent to do the calculations. Both are equally valid as it is up to the individual to decide what is good enough for them.

Nauticam no doubt knows exactly what they are doing, however most port choices are compromises. They won't for example usually recommend a port combination that vignettes. They have a standard procedure to decide which port/ring combination to suggest, I understand this is using a slide with test port setup. You only have to look at the large number of options listed in just the Sony port chart to see how many combinations they would need to test all of which takes time and money to do. Don't forget also that the number of people doing UW photography at this level is quite small and they are spread out across 6 or 7 main systems, more if you count the mirrorless systems of Canon/Nikon. So a niche lens like the 14mm f1.8 might be used by a handful of people. What Massimo is doing is applying dome port theory which states the entrance pupil should be placed at the dome centre of curvature. Many of the ports sold are also compromises, many are not full hemispheres which means that centre of curvature is placed down inside the extension ring. Many wide angle lenses have the entrance pupil right up front. The port geometry often means that the lens needs to be pushed forward of the ideal position to stop vignetting. This means that the positioning is not ideal. I've done calculations and measurements of some of my combinations out of interest, for example the Panasonic 7-14 lens sits the exit pupil about 20mm or so ahead of the centre of curvature of the Zen 170mm dome to avoid vignetting. There is no doubt the non-ideal combinations work and many people are happy with the results, that doesn't mean they can't be improved upon. the effects reported are real if the entrance pupil isn't positioned right. This is after all why Nauticam only applies a * to one combination and the reason is due to the dome port theory as discussed here. Some people can relate very well to the maths needed to do these calculations, others prefer to look at an image and say that's good enough, both ways are actually valid ways of coming up with a combination that the individual is happy with.

perhaps, but you are at the mercy of the volcano while wind remains from the north, once it switches to the south it tends to stay there for some time and ash is a lot less likely to be an issue.

It will depend on two things, first being volcanic activity, how much ash the volcano puts out and second wind direction. In May wind is generally from NW-NE switching to SE generally in June sometime. If wind blows ash towards the Manado airport they will close it. You can forecast what the wind might do, but the volcano will do what it wants. Up until monsoon winds switch a risk of ashfall remains. The volcano is down from alert level 4 to level 3. So it's basically a roll of the dice, whether or not the Lembeh is impacted. A NNE wind will direct any ash fall towards Manado airport.

I think the main thing is getting good travel insurance. You are stuck with the arrival and departure dates for your liveaboard. I assume this is the one where you have booked the whole boat? If so the boat will wait for you I would imagine. If you build in an overnight at Sorong on both legs it might leave you some flexibility. But by all accounts not much to do in Sorong. With Garuda you are perhaps more likely to get on the flights you book and the important one is getting on the flight to meet your international connection. Looks like you can fly Garuda from Amsterdam so if you went the whole way with them you'd get your dive gear allowance and they should re-book you if you miss connections because of them

the usual suggestion is to apply a strap wrench for additional leverage. Once you get it loose a little silicone grease on threads should help keep them workable.

you would need to take the Retra ball to a fastener place to find a nut that fits it to determine what the thread is. You will need to know this to work out which ball to purchase. For example Isotta sell balls with 1/4-20 Whitworth and M8 threads, which from eye balling might match what Retra uses. M8 is 7.97 OD and 1/4-20 W is 6.35mm OD, while the M10 bolt should be 10mm dia.

On the Retra connection, Nauticam has an M5 and and an M10 threaded mounting ball. Have you determined what thread the Retra is attached with? On the Nauticam connections - are the clamps of different ages? perhaps there is more wear on some clamps? Did you try using a Nauticam o-ring and the Retra ball? that might help if it fits?

I have found the Nauticam arms/clamps mix well with INON and Isotta float arms, so you could look at Isotta and INON for a ball as well. Are the Retra balls actually detachable - if so how do they connect to the strobe body?

Use one of the aggregator sites like Kayak to find options and connections, pick one that looks good and then book directly with the airline. CGK-SOG flight is 00:10 arriving 06:10 You would need to travel on wings air to Kaimana. 10:30am - 11:50 SOQ-CGK flight is 08:15 - 10:10 You won't get bags checked through to Kaimana so you will need to check in in Sorong. If I was doing it I would get a return flight on Garuda and one- way SOQ - Kaimana. You get the diving gear allowance and they are quite reasonable to fly on. One issue might be your arrival time in Sorong to make the 8:15 flight.

You could also look at Sea and Sea and Isotta ports, you can change them to Nauticam with just a change of lug ring, but of course domensions are hard to come by. But if you want a cheap acrylic dome from Ali express they come fully dimensioned. 😂 Ali express dome

I have a friend who had tri-focals done a while back, I believe he had them changed to mono-focals, apparently a common side effect is visual disturbances at night, some people get used to them and some don't. There is also an enhanced depth of field option which keeps a wider range in focus.