Chris Ross

Can't help with the question of which monitor but I would say the choice between the two is probably quite personal and depends a lot on what you issue with vision is. My closeup up vision is my issue and the dioptric adjustment on the viewfinder is what makes UW pleasant for me. That and as I get older the idea of adding another piece of gear to lug around doesn't thrill me - especially doing stills for me.

I believe the ability to give you faster shutter speeds is limited to triggers that utilise the X-sync mechanical contacts and basically only use the centre contact and ground, more importantly they are not recognised by the camera as an external strobe so bypass the logic that prevents exceeding the sync speed by dialling up a faster shutter speed. If you scroll across you can see the hotshoe of the Nauticam Olympus manual trigger - it has the cehtre contact and the outer metal contact which connects with the hot shoe ground. https://fotografit.eu/products/164-underwater-flash-triggers-and-ttl-converters/2589-mini-flash-trigger-for-olympus-compatible-with-na-em1em5iiem1ii/

I usually travel with one set in the strobes. An extra plastic case is a cheap insurance if someone gets picky. However the NiMH doc I found seemed to centred around air cargo shipments. The passenger regs don't seem to even mention NiMH batteries inside devices, though I might have skipped over that ?? They go into a fair bit of detail about Li-ion batteries and devices containing them For general batteries they only talk about prevention of short circuit and I suspect demonstrating that accidental turning it on is difficult impossible would be enough - for example most strobes require turning a knob. This is the passenger document date Jan this year. https://www.iata.org/contentassets/6fea26dd84d24b26a7a1fd5788561d6e/dgr-66-en-2.3.a.pdf

It's well established that GN is a poor metric for strobes, it gives you a general idea, but the beam size and light distribution has a big bearing, A beam size changing from 100° to 130° doesn't sound like a huge change but it requires 1.7x as much light and hence at least 1.7x as much power to fill that cone. Similarly light falloff means an easier time as you don't need as much light to fill the cone. If you look at the test results from Backscatter as plots of light intensity such as this: You can see the circular flash tubes are 1 - 1.5 stops brighter in zones 2-3 which is the area that overlaps between two strobes and the main light being recorded in your shots. This means you can down a circular tube flash such as these 1- 1.5 stops compared to a flash with poorer fill of the cone that has the same guide number in the centre. More of the light is pushed into the area where you want and incidentally the tube pushes out more light overall to fill the larger cone. Having said all that various reports have come in come in that I recall indicating that the S220 has a nice full beam and seems like it would easily compete with the old Z240 and certainly seems good enough for something like a m43 rig for wide angle.

There is a solution to this to have the vacuum valve and bulkhead on the same m16 port, and offset extension valve from Nauticam, here, but sit down before you click on the link: https://www.backscatter.com/Nauticam-M16-Offset-Extension-with-Dual-Activation

I believe the WWL-1 is m67 attachment while the WWL-1B has a built in Nauticam boyonet.

Doesn't surprise me that this happened, which is why I never signed up for it.

Probably a question to ask Pavel I think, he explained something in a post a while back about the numner of TTL profiles available. I suspect it has to do with timings and how the TTL commands are communicated. see here:

I like my INON lights, they are AA powered, some models have multiple power levels, others only 2. I've used mine night diving and it worked OK, but I'm not a regular night diver. They use a simple rotating switch no multi button presses. This is the one I use: http://www.inon.jp/products/le_light/lf1400s.html They also have one you can turn down a lot more but it has a much wider beam that is not really needed for a focus light. I use the supplied diffuser on the 1400 model and the low setting, it's plenty bright enough for a focus light. I use mine on a tall YS mount in the cold shoe.

having an LED match the flash is pretty basic for a a manual trigger, it's the TTL stuff that gets tricky, basically it's reverse engineering the cameras TTL signals and converting them to something the flash can understand - and of course each flash has a different way of doing things.

You are not depth of field limited with dome optics when shooting at f8 plus. Look up dome port optics, you will see that the lens is recording a virtual image that curves around the dome, infinity is located about 3 dome radii out and with a fisheye lens it can be right on the dome at minimum focus distance. Because the virtual image is compressed like this the depth of field covers the full range for most shots, the only exception being close focus wide angle where the subject is almost touching the dome. You can actually use a calculator to work out the position of the virtual image compared to the actual object being photographed then plug these into a depth of field calculator to show this. The zone of sharpest focus is parallel to the sensor plane. Lenses are stopped right down behind domes to deal with the virtual image. Rectilinear lenses are designed to image a straight line and render it straight in the image. The edges of the virtual image are much closer than the centre, it's partly a depth of field thing but mostly dealing with abberations that requires you to stop down so much to get good corners when shooting underwater with a dome. Wet lenses like the WWL are designed to deal with this phenomenon they produce barrel distortion in the process and their zone of sharp focus is curved the same as a fisheye lens and matches the shape of the virtual image more closely.

Good to know

I recall discussions about the M1 processors, they're supposed to be very good with RAM and need a lot less. A quick google reveals lots of reports of 100% CPU usage with varying causes unfortunately most of them don't conclude. Might be an idea to post an issue on Adobe support?

Well for safety - Nauticam lists how to do it in the port charts and Isotta has provided the method to use an 8-15 in their system that works, it was posted on here. Using the Tokina is simply a matter of using less extension. Isotta is really quite helpful by all accounts and will respond to requests like this. Here is a link to the parts list for the 8-15 with Isotta. From the port charts you need 20mm less extension with the Tokina compared to the Canon lens, but check with Isotta - you would also need to sort out a zoom gear. :

I can understand the frustration - so it never worked 100% then? Did you change out the hotshoe cable connector - that is the piece that is a known trouble maker. See this post by Pavel: If you move away from Sony you at least escape this connector. I really quite like my OM-1 using the mini flash as a trigger.

I really think you are missing the point of what people are trying to say to you. They have provided you with examples taken with lower MP cameras that look a lot crisper than your sample shot that is plagued by colour noise. The point they are making is they can produce an arguably crisper shot than your example using a lower MP camera, even the 1"sensor from 20MP RX-100 looks sharper and crisper throughout the frame. Therefore there is room for improvement in what you are doing with your current equipment. Higher MP cameras are not a magic solution to producing a crisper image. Like it of not proper exposure and processing of your UW images is needed to convey an impression of sharpness and crispness. The point of stopping down behind a dome is not to get more depth of field it is to compensate for the dome optics. Your image edges will improve with stopping down some more. With full frame you need to stop down even more if you are using a rectilinear lens. Fisheye lenses are more forgiving, they are popular UW for a good reason. They are less sensitive to being used in a dome generally have much better corners and are sharper than a rectilinear in a dome. They allow you to get much closer to the subject with less water between you and your subject. You are wondering about depth of field behind a dome - it is significantly greater than what you get on land due to the compression of the virtual image to between 1 and 3 dome radii from the dome. Strobes UW are used for a reason also, to bring in colour and to fill in shadows created by overhead lighting from the surface. Unless you are in very clear tropical water and quite shallow, water when exposed as metered will often look muddy and often quite greenish - quite un-attractive IMO. To deal with this white balance is set for the subject with strobe light which pushes the water bluer and the shutter speed is increased to darken it. You can fine tune this to taste if you don't want very dark water. All of these items need to come together to make an image that is sharp and also pleasing to the eye. With the colour noise in your image you can't add much sharpening as it will sharpen that noise and quickly make the image look garish. I'll say it again it is not just the MP of the image!

I believe people are answering your questions on the premise you want better quality prints, they are raising issues other than just resolution because they believe for want of a better expression you are barking up the wrong tree. This forum is free to join and works because people are prepared to share their experience to help fellow photographers out. If they share something outside what you ask there is generally a reason for that. BTW I was suggesting comparing land photos with your A7RV and whatever lens you use with it to images from the a6300 and the zeiss, you mentioned in your reply that the a6300 land images are a lot better than UW - so there is Room for improvement UW! You ask about better detail. I critiqued your old image which you posted as an example as I believe you are not getting the anywhere near the full potential of the camera. I don't shoot Sony, but it seems to me you should be able to get a lot more out of that camera. Like it or not proper post processing, settings and workflow is a part of getting the best out of your images. It seems sensible to me to explore getting the most out of what you have now and spend $zero doing so before exploring spending a lot of money to take a different camera UW. You could upgrade to the A7RV and still be disappointed if you don't change what you are doing with the images. Regarding the image you posted there are significant issues with it, mostly around the colour noise I mentioned, in the 100% crop I posted the BG fish are very poorly defined, but with the noise it's hard to tell if it's the noise or maybe falling out of depth of field that is the issue. The downloaded image was 8874 x 6033 so it's been up sized. You mention f8 - I would think many people shoot at f11 on wide angle with APS-C. If you want to take this further I would suggest you provide an unprocessed image preferably the Raw file with EXIF intact to review. Also what equipment was used - you said it was the Zeiss lens, what dome are you using? did you use strobes? Until you solve the issues here I think you'll continue to be disappointed. By way of comparison here is one of my images taken with the EM-1 MkII - a 20MP micro43 camera using an 8mm fisheye lens at f8 (this a 180° diagonal fisheye) It is uncropped. 1/100 @ f8 ISO200. Sea fans at mermaid reef

If it fits the housing it will work, turned down to minimum power is fine. Sony may be an exception ? this flash only uses the center contact and ground to trigger and is fully manual. I expect it has significantly more light output than an LED trigger and should have no problem triggering any strobes assuming it points at the fibre optic ports.

If you really need faster shutter speeds than 1/250 a trigger like the Nauticam manual trigger is a workaround option. This is a fully manual trigger and will allow you to set any shutter speed you like and it will work up to something like the 1/400 - 1/500 range and sync with the shutter with no black band showing. This is arguably fast enough to deal with sunballs which is a major reason for wanting a faster shutter speed. It also works with any flash not just HSS capable flashes. HSS becomes increasing impractical as the shutter speed gets faster as the available power drops and even with this option the available power drops as the shutter duration starts to be shorter than the length of the full power strobe pulse.

I assume you are trying to work out if you can use a Tokina 10-17 in an AOI housing with an OM-5 with the OM-D port system that goes with that housing. If you look at the AOI port chart you will see that the 8mm fisheye uses the 22mm extension with the DLP-01/02. If you look at the Nauticam charts you will the 8mm fisheye uses a 17mm extension with the 140mm port and to use the 10-17mm on a metabones speed booster you need the 34.7mm adapter and a 10mm extension to use with the same dome. Based on this for AOI you need (34.7 + 10 = 44.7) - 17mm = 27.7mm more extension than the 8mm fisheye to use the tokina lens with AOI. SO a total of 22 + 27.7 = 49.7mm. OM-D ports only have two extensions 22 and 52mm and the Pen ports only offer 24 and 34mm extensions. The 52mm might work but it could vignette. If you could go to a store that has the housing and extensions in stock you could try them out - you can tell if vignettes on land in the shop if you put it all together. A safer course might be to go with an Isotta or Nauticam housing it's more expensive but they have a full range of extensions to work with. The 10-17mm will work perfectly well in the Nauticam 4.33" & 140mm domes, the Zen 100mm dome and the Isotta 4.5"dome. I use the Canon 8-15 on my OM-1 with a 140mm dome on Nauticam. It's quite expensive to adapt these lenses on that system but the Isotta will be significantly cheaper. From everything I hear the Metabones speed-booster/smart adapter is the better option for adapting canon mount lenses to Olympus. The smart adapter is for the Canon 8-15 while the speed booster gives a 7-11mm fisheye with a Tokina 10-17.

One thing that seems to be quite a negative to me for Sony is the flash connector, there have been a few posts around the fragility of that connector with those tiny pins that are used to make contact. I'm wondering if it could be connected to that? Why it would be random I don't know, but it could be a marginal connection there?

The mini flash works quite well as a manual trigger set at 1/64 power on my OM-1 and with the larger batteries in the OM-1 and EM-1 series battery drain is a non issue when used at 1/64 power and recycle is very quick. SO if you only want to trigger strobes in manual it makes a perfectly acceptable trigger. It will also work in RC mode to trigger compatible flashes. I've never used anything else UW.

I would suggest you are approaching this a little bit backwards. You are happy with what the A7RV produces on land and want to see how it compares to your A6300 UW. First thing I would suggest is take the same shot above water with A6300 and your UW lens to compare to what you get out of the A7RV. This will show what sort of improvement is possible. Next I would look at what your camera can resolve: 61 MP - 9504 x 6336 pixels - 807 x 536mm @ 300 dpi 24.4 MP - 6000 x 4000 - 508 x 338 mm @ 300 dpi The 24.4 MP image will 594 x 396 @ 256 dpi it's not a big deal to up-res an image from this to 300 dpi for printing. A2 is 594 x 420mm. Next I would look at expectations, guidelines for printing at larger sizes are about viewing at normal viewing distances. An A4 print viewed for example in an album probably needs higher resolution than a large print on a wall viewed from further back. If you want to look at a very big print from very close distance that's a different story. On the subject of what makes a good print - this is somewhat subjective but the examples you posted just won't make good prints they are muddy and lack contrast. Your eye adjusts for this when you are underwater but the camera doesn't. Contrast is needed for the impression of sharpness. I downloaded your shot of the goatfish with the coral and while the foreground exposure looks good, there is something weird going on. There is a lot of colour noise there, like something odd going on with the processing. Hope you don't mind , i downloaded this image and processed it a little adding some contrast. Could you confirm what camera settings you used and what processing you did? Did you say this was with a 12mm Touit lens?: Taking a 100% crop from the image that was downsized 4800 px across: Looks like something odd going on with the processing on this image. I would suggest before leaping down a new camera path you have a look at how you are shooting and processing with your current camera? That level of colour noise really shouldn't be present, it looks like you are quite shallow and at typical settings I would think the water should be quite noise free for a shot like this. I would suggest you need to get this sorted before looking into prints or upgrades.

Several things can cause problems with syncing - not dealing with the pre-flash properly is one. If you are in manual at high power if the pre-flash triggers the strobe it could exhaust the capacitor. Another is a optic fibre cable issues. Is it every now and then one exposure doesn't sync or is more like mostly it works but on some dives it gives problems for that dive?