Chris Ross

You need to be able to burp the lens if it doesn't clear all the air between the WWL and the port, some people report it works without this but be aware it might be needed. The M67 WWL-1 (not 1b) can work on any port and also work with third party bayonet systems potentially however the bayonet need to be designed to get the back of the WWL very close to the port glass. This avoids vignetting which you would need to zoom in to remove and lose field of view. You would need to experiment to see if it works. How you can make it work depends very much on the port you are attaching to. Any port can use the m67 version, select ports can accept the Nauticam bayonet adapter and so be able to use the WWL-1b and WWL-c. It would be easier to answer if we knew which port you were contemplating using.

I think a good first step is next time it happens adjust your exposure to what the camera thinks is the correctly metered exposure and take a shot (without flash) and then go back to your usual settings and take another shot. You came up 5 EV and recorded some detail in your image but I expect if you are indoors you might need quite a bit more than 5EV to get the exposure in the right ball park for an ambient light shot. If it does it on land take the rig outside to take the shot. Just dial your shutter speed down until the meter says exposure is right, don't be concerned about camera movement we only looking to see if it exposes correctly. The main thing is to take an exposure that the camera says is correct. If it can do this it points to the problem being a strobe/sync issue. Take a second shot immediately afterwards at your usual settings just to show the issue is still present and didn't fix itself as you changing settings or moving the camera. If the camera is able to take a correctly exposed ambient shot it narrows the problem down to the strobe/TTL converter issue and additional trouble shooting steps are needed. It is important to be methodical when doing this type of trouble shooting.

The Canon converters won't fit due to the extended nose, but people regularly use the Kenko 1.4x converters with the 8-15 zoom fisheyes. Several housing makers provide zoom gears to use with the 8-15/1.4x combination.

I think this highlights another saying: "horses for courses". Chip, you mention wrecks are a favourite and that fisheye gets less use now except for certain subjects. The phrase certainly subjects highlights why I think a different approach will be very helpful. Start with your subject and work backwards. If you are doing wrecks a lot a rectilinear may make sense or a WWL, if you are doing CFWA on tropical reefs or sometimes even in temperate waters a fisheye comes into its own by bringing the subject forward in the frame and giving it prominence while the background is sent backwards and this creates a unique look. Fish portraits depending on their size will have a different solution. Scientific photography may demand low distortion for some applications, the list goes on. So subject will define the lenses you want, then work out which port of if you want a wet optic. Next work out what camera you want to use and based upon lens/port selection choose a housing that will support the ports and/or water contact optics you want to use. All of these choices have various pros and cons to weigh up. Before jumping in and buying lots of optics think hard about what you want to shoot with them, then ask what is the best solution for that. Next ask how much flexibility do you want, this may push you in a different direction.

Not to mention changing everything to the N100 port system and possibly some new lenses. I often wonder just how much extra real resolution you get from high MP count cameras, shooting through too much water and sometimes multiple water/glass/air interfaces removes some detail and because of this the often quoted ability to crop may not give you as much gain as you might think. I argue that for 95% of users 20-30MP is perfectly adequate, sure if you have the funds, why not, but realistically you won't see much change in images that are just posted online or even printed up to A3 size or so. On a quality 27" plus monitor the images might look better but consider a standard res 2560 x 1440 screen is 3.7 MP and a 4K screen is 8 MP or so, you need to zoom on the monitor to see some of these differences.

When using a tele converter with the 8-15 you need to use the TC in addition to the RF-EF converter not instead of. The EF lenses won't achieve focus without the RF-EF converter which is basically just an extension tube. Also if you are on Canon and don't think you will use the Spherical fisheye option you could consider using the SIgma 15mm fisheye instead, it's cheaper and many people are quite happy with it.

The point to remember is the field of view between rectilinear and fisheye is not the same the rendering is quite different between them as the fisheye uses barrel distortion to achieve a 180° diagonal field, something not possible in rectilinear lenses. Also the diagonal field is a bit misleading for comparisons as well as fisheyes stretch more in the corner, if you want to compare coverage then using the horizontal field works better. See this table below which lists field s of various focal lengths. Full frame horizontal vertical diagonal 15mm Fisheye 143 92 178 10mm Rect 122 100 130 14mm rect 104 81 114 16mm Rect 97 74 107 20mm Rect 84 62 94 24mm Rect 74 53 84 You can see the 10mm goes close and in fact the vertical field is larger than the fisheye, However it needs a big dome port to provide good corners. Another thing to remember is just because a lens performs well on land it doesn't always translate to good UW performance. In particular a lens needs to focus very close to work well in a dome. Your 24-105 lens for example has a minimum focus distance of 450mm but is measured to focus at 332mm at the wide end, so while it will work in the domes specified it won't let you get in close. UW photography is all about getting in close to minimise the amount of water which degrades the image between you and the subject. Which brings up another point in that just because you own a lens (or a camera for that matter) doesn't mean it's the best option to take UW. A big reason you want close focusing lenses is also because in dome ports you are actually trying to focus on a virtual image underwater, this is located 3 dome radii from the port surface , so quite close. Some older lenses would not even achieve focus with a dome UW. This link explains: https://oceanity.com.au/articles/view/understanding-flat-port-and-dome-port-theory. Another important point with fisheye lenses is their rendering UW, most will focus on the dome if required and because of the barrel distortion the centre portion of the frame is magnified compared to the edges - it looks fatter so is makes the chosen foreground subject stand out against the background. UW there are very few straight lines unless you are in a wreck or you include the surface in the frame edges you don't notice the barrel distortion as a problem. They also generally work well in smaller domes. Rectilinear lenses have their places for wreck photos and also some scientific work, but they need usually big domes to work at their best, but this varies with the lens, very close focusing lenses seem to be able to use smaller domes in general.

Specifically it's the top line models after the EM-1 MkII that have enough of a step up in image quality to go close to what the D500 can do. The earlier ones like the EM-5 MkII were OK, but AF and 16MP sensor weren't up to it. Significant improvement with the EM-1 MKII/MkIII and now the OM-1.

Just because the cameras are physically smaller doesn't always translate to a smaller lighter housing. If your main concern is travel size and weight you won't get significantly smaller than the D500 housing in Nauticam apart from a few cameras like the A7C. What does go up in size and weight are the lenses if you go to full frame. The decisions are complicated by the fact that port sizes have been changed in Nauticam APS-C so carrying ports across is more problematic and any future APS-C Nikon Z model is quite likely to be an N100 port. The decision is further complicated if you want to keep using the Tokina 10-17, which as you know can't currently be adapted to Nikon Z. You could go to SONY but you would be buying almost everything for the new system with no carryover - depending on lens choice. However there are probably other ways to reduce size and weight, for example the Isotta housings are more compact than the Nauticam equivalent. I know a local diver who chose the Isotta Z6 over the Nauticam due to size. They were coming from a D850 in a Seacam which was huge and the size/weight savings with Nauticam were not enough while the Isotta was very compact indeed. Isotta use N120 ports for all their housings apart from SONY APS-C and m43. This means you can carry your Nauticam N120 ports across provided they have removable lug rings, but they have to make a housing for a camera you choose I would suggest a watch and wait strategy. Wait and see if the promised Nikon F to Z adapter from monster works well with Nikon screw mount lenses. Wait and see if the promised Nikon APS-C camera comes out and who makes housings for it. Or you could bite the bullet and switch to m43. Housings are the same size but lenses and ports are a lot smaller and there is a full range of lenses available, including the adapted Canon 8-15 which goes between full frame fisheye and the equivalent of 28mm full frame focusing right on the dome, or the Canon mount Tokina 10-17 with the speedbooster. If you look at the sensor databases the image quality is very close to the Nikon D500 sensor.

You don't explicitly say how much light you have available, the next thing to check is whether the frame is black with an ambient light shot which is metered to correct exposure with the strobes off. Depending upon which particular strobe and triggering method being used it's possible the strobes are not syncing correctly. I just tried taking a shot on my camera no strobe indoors with your settings. Then turned up the ISO by 5 stops and got a similar result with your first two shots, first totally black then with +5EV you can barely see some detail. Outdoors in daylight 1/250 @ f7.1 ISO200 would be close to the right exposure. I'm not sure how reproducible the black shot thing is but next time it occurs trying taking a shot out doors no strobes to see if the camera is under exposing or not. This is to eliminate a camera issue. While it's possible that the flash is not syncing properly, I'm not sure how it would be intermittent, usually I would expect them to either sync or not. The flash trigger batteries are a good first step to try.

Welcome Aboard Brett! You'll see a great many Wetpixel members have moved across.

I use Capture One - a big bonus for me is that includes Levels - to me that is invaluable, to get a punchy, contrasty photo you need to get the histogram under control and the levels tool also allows very quick colour balance adjustments - by adjusting levels on each channel, something that LR still doesn't have as far as I know. Backscatter removal tools I find are best in full photoshop they are not so intuitive to use in LR or Capture One, same with masking. Though I just tried the healing mask in Capture One and it seems to be pretty quick to deal with backscatter.

This is the lug ring you would need: Howshot Bayonet Port Ring for Sea&Sea DX/NX Ports – DiverVision Underwater Photo Equipment

You can use many Nauticam ports on Isotta, you just need to change out the lug ring that is bolted to the back of the port, to a Sea and Sea lug ring then they will fit Isotta housings for N120 ports. You would need to buy new zoom gears though. As I understand it they are a direct swap at least for DSLR lenses. You could ask Isotta if any changes are required to extension going from Nikon F to Nikon Z. Before diving in check that your ports have a removable lug ring and then add up the prices for new lug rings and zoom gears and any new extension rings if you need them (they are cheaper than Nauticam equivalent). You can then work out if you are actually making a saving. Also note Nauticam ports are push in and operate lock lever. Isotta ports are push in and turn.

Who are you flying with?, this can make a difference as to whether your carryon is weighed. Jetstar for example will weigh carryons so they charge you to check an extra bag. If you have a travelling companion temporarily off loading some gear to their carryon can be a strategy.

Was the scam from someone posting on the classifieds forum here? If so please report it to us.

One thing to note with monitors is that for imaging and particularly for printing they can easily be way too bright. The standard brightness is 100-110 cD/m2 and some monitors struggle to get down to that value. If you edit on a very bright monitor your images will come out too dark for someone viewing on a standard photo monitor and prints will be too dark compared to the screen.

I would second an Eizo monitor. If you are printing having Adobe RGB or a good percentage of that is an advantage as inkjet printers can print pretty much all of Adobe RGB colours and if you are editing on a lesser monitor you won't actually be able to see those colours before you print. The Eizo inbuilt calibration capabilites together with a good colorimeter puck make an easy job of calibration - quite important if you are printing. My view is that for the vast majority of people the end product of all the $1000's we spend on camera equipment is what we see on our monitor and it is not something to cheap out on. I have two Eizos on my desk a good quality one and a standard grade one next to it and I keep all of my palettes etc over there so I can use the whole of the 27" monitor for the image. You could keep your existing monitor for all the palettes you keep open and then a 27" is probably big enough.

Welcome aboard, good to have another Sydney-sider here.

Better late than never and with all the talk about the new FCP, this is basically the same thing but now available on full frame. Yes Wolfgang did a lot of good work on this with m43!

Welcome onboard Rohan, good to see you here.

Most remotes for flashes use either cable, radio signals or optical signals. I would think that radio signals would have trouble getting out of the housing and penetration through water would be limited. How do you plan to trigger the flash? It looks like the camera has a multi interface shoe so you should be able to attach a flash trigger. You would need a trigger with a longer cord for the LEDs and you could probably mount them to the inside of the viewfinder window and stick a port on the outside to attach a fibre optic cable. Most important you need enough space inside to mount the trigger. I suspect you would need to mount the trigger in the back half so you could attach the LED to the rear window - probably using double sided tape. The hotshoe cable would also need to be long enough so you could fit it to the hotshoe when assembling the housing. You might try contacting Turtle and UWT for advice? Otherwise I believe you can get an M14 or M16 fibre optic port and you would need to drill and tap a hole to instal it. You could always email Gates to ask for advice?

You need the N85-N120 34.7mm adapter then 35mm extension then 140mm port. If you have the 4.33"port and it's an N120 already you can use that instead, believe the extension is the same. You need a 3D printed part to adapt the Canon 8-15 zoom ring as the 34.7 adapter is designed to use with the Metabones speed booster which is 5mm thinner. You use the focus knob on the adapter to zoom rather than the housing zoom knob, so you basically can't use both. You can also use the Tokina 10-17 with the speed booster, all equipment is the same except I think it's the 30mm extension and you just use the zoom gear directly. It's all in this thread: https://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?/topic/61629-canon-ef-lenses-on-mft-cameras/page/4/&tab=comments#comment-446983 I think the 8mm FE is pretty much equivalent to the 8-15 at 8mm, the advantage is the zoom giving you reach so you can shoot smaller CFWA subjects and shoot shy pelagics that don't come close enough. Also means you can for example shoot a hawkfish sitting on a coral from a bit further back. For me it means I can leave the dome for the 7-14 at home and just shoot with this combination.

Thanks to all who have signed up for the support of the new forum

I recently acquired a Canon 8-15 fisheye. Calculations show it covers the range from full frame fisheye to 28mm FF equivalent, albeit with barrel distortion the whole way - a pretty handy range. To visualise this I took a series on indoor shots at medium (1.8m ) and CFWA distances with the 8-15 and a 7-14 rectlinear. What we are covering here is reach - a rectilinear has quite different look to a fisheye as we will see and I'm not claiming the rectilinear and fisheye lenses are interchangeable for all subjects. First up shots taken through a standard door (about 2.1m high) from a distance of 1.8m. This is at 7mm/8mm, you can see the door is rendered about the same size even though the field of view in frame is much wider due to barrel distortion of the fisheye. Next up zoomed in to 14/15mm. You can see again the door frame is about same size in each shot - this time with similar angle of view. Next some CFWA style images with the bag about 220mm from the sensor at 8/7mm, You can see the bag is rendered larger although the field of view is much wider in the fisheye: Now with the lens zoomed in, this is about the close focus limit for the 7-14, the fisheye can go a lot closer though yielding larger subject size. Again you see the subject rendered significantly larger with the fisheye and actually covers a smaller field - 110mm for the fisheye and 160mm for the rectilinear lens. This means the 8-15 replaces my 8mm fisheye and my 7-14mm Panasonic lens. The distant frames show what you might expect when for example trying to shoot sharks and other large animals where you can't quite get close enough with just the fisheye and the second set of images shows what you might achieve in CFWA shots and shows the advantage of using the fisheye. The door shows how the barrel distortion is reduced middle of the frame but is makes the door look fatter - this is the fisheye effect which brings your chosen subject, be it a shark or sea fan forward in the frame and more prominent. It looks like this will be a very flexible combination and means I can effectively travel with this setup and just the one lens and dome if I'm expecting to shoot large pelagics as well as reefscape shots and CFWA. and perhaps just add a macro lens/port. I'm using this on m43 olympus and you can do similar with APS-C and Tokina 10-17, full frame however needs the new Fisheye Conversion port. I picked up the lens and N85-120 adapter locally just need to find a 140mm dome and 35mm extension before my next trip.😃