Chris Ross

All macro lenses lose resolution as they stop down due to diffraction. Here is the MTF testing on lensTips: https://www.lenstip.com/214.4-Lens_review-Canon_EF_100_mm_f_2.8_L_Macro_IS_USM_Image_resolution.html and the 90mm macro: https://www.lenstip.com/561.4-Lens_review-Sony_FE_90_mm_f_2.8_Macro_G_OSS_Image_resolution.html The numbers are not directly comparable as they are tested on different sensor resolutions but you can see a drastic drop in quality at f16-22, so I expect you will see degradation at similar apertures on both lenses. The plots basically measure resolution and you can see it reduces after f11 or so. Optical limits also has a plot which is a little more complete for the 100mm f2.8 only, the dramatic drop beyond f16 is more obvious: https://opticallimits.com/canon/canon-rf-100mm-f-2-8-l-usm-is-macro/

They are not a diopter, rather a field flattening lens designed to pull the corners into focus, If I recall correctly they may change the field of view a little but are not really allowing closer focus like a diopter would. Single element field flatteners are common in astronomical applications for example.

I noticed an improvement shooting tiny bugs recently after upgrading firmware on my OM-1, it grabbed the bug and found the eye quite well. It's better than what I remember it doing.

Have to agree, the INON dive lights really are very good, a nice feature is an external o-ring that is positioned to just contact the light head when it is screwed on, they call it a sand ring I believe, but it's good enough to keep water out which means the o-rings stay clean dry and don't need regular service _ I look at them each time I pull the batteries but they never have grit or water drops. I use a 30 deg beam model with the included 60 deg diffuser and on low power it makes a perfect focus light, even the little 350 lumen models have enough light to work as a focus light in the hotshoe.

If you are trying to minimise expense you could look at Isotta housings. They use the S&S port system which are directly adaptable from Nauticam N120 ports and use the same extensions I believe, it involves changing the Nauticam lug ring to a S&S lug ring. You can do this for any Nauticam port with the lug ring attached by screws - it won't work for example on a port where the lug is machined. I seem to recall you can use INON viewfinders and perhaps Nauticam with an adapter. You would need new zoom rings I believe. You could email them an inquiry asking about what would be needed to use your existing lenses/ports and viewfinders. You may need an extension ring to accommodate the EF-RF converter if you are wanting to use your existing EF lenses.

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Back to your original question, S&S ports can be converted to Nauticam just by changing out the lug ring. An alternative is that Isotta housings can take S&S ports directly, they have the same lug ring. These options would allow you to bring your ports across. Nauticam have designed the Z8 housing to accept the Nikon F to Z mount adapter and use the same ports and zoom rings as would have been used with a Nauticam DSLR housing and Nikon F mount lenses - as a result the housing is thicker as the lens flange if located deeper inside the housing. Designed this way to make it as easy as possible to upgrade for a Nikon DSLR/Nauticam user. I'm not sure on the situation with Isotta, but as you are coming from S&S apart from housing thickness there is any difference that would impact you. I think Isotta may be an attractive solution though - the housings are cheaper and you don't need to do anything to use your ports - though contact them for advice to see if a different extension ring might be needed. If you plan to use your old lenses then an FTZ adapter is also needed.

It has to be a composite, blue ringed octopus are tiny, so likely a macro shot, and the split shot is wide angle. Even if you got the blue ring as a close focus wide angle shot , you would be so close that the jetty couldn't be in focus.

The CMC are generally paired with smaller sensors working with shorter focal length lenses, They will mostly work on full frame sensors and are in fact recommended for some lenses on full frame Canon and Nikon lenses notably the 60mm Nikon and Canon DSLT macro lenses and are listed in the port chart. The SMC is normally recommended as the better lens - that's not to say the CMC won't also work, just teh SMC is better Having said all that the CMC appears that it is slightly more powerful than the SMC-1 which is already achieving 2.2x at max magnification and physics dictates that the depth of field will be razor thin even at f22. I would think that the SMC would allow a fraction more working distance and depth of field but not much. the CMC would be giving 2.4- 2.7x magnification at min focus as a guesstimate based on the fact that the SMC is about equal to the CMC-2 on the 60mm Canon macro. If you are struggling with the CMC, the SMC will be a bit better but not night and day different I don't think. You might consider a less powerful lens as a first step - something like the INON UCL-90, or even UCL-165 it will achieve less magnification but will have better working distance than the SMC-1. If you look at the old wetpixel live video on the subject of macro wet lenses, Alex states his most used diopter is a +3 lens which gives just a little more magnification than the bare lens.

The concept behind the R50 is to use it with nauticam wet lenses so it has quite limited capabilities unless you go with the WWL which as you might guess is not cheap. For small capable rigs the choices are limited these days as there are not that many compact cameras sold. The 1"sensor models can be quite small and compact and seem to sell new for around $1000 $AU, Ebay prices are not much of a discount upon that, there doesn't seem to be a high volume of them coming up for sale. Besides these options you could also consider a number of m43 options like the AOI housings for Olympus EPL-9/10 and also some of the compact Panasonic options like the GX-8 or GX-85, these seem to sell for lower prices second hand. To keep it compact and easily clippable you would probably be looking for housings you can use without a tray - any time you add strobes the rig grows significantly in size. All of these models are discontinued and you would searching for second hand items.

Just be careful buying off sites like kayak and other flight booking sites, they will sometimes sell you an itinerary made up of individual tickets and the airlines won't check you through with that. The safest way remains to book a solid layover time. If you want to photograph birds, the SIngapore botanical gardens can be good, you can get the MRT there. The section with Heliconias attracts sunbirds. This is Brown Throated Sunbird taken there:

The issue may well be different ideas about what acceptable corners look like, but realistically no matter the lens f2 in a small dome is going to be hard on the corners.

For future reference you can get codeshare flights usually within the same airline alliance. In this case Luthansa is Star alliance and Garuda is skyteam, so unlikely to get all the flights on one itinerary. Flying from Europe KLM/Air France is Skyteam as is Garuda so you could try booking it through the either Garuda's website or Air France for example, how easy it will be depends upon the particular airlines website and which city in Indonesia you want to get to.

If you can do it anywhere you can do it in Changi - if and this is the big if - your flight arrives on time. The best trick if transiting is to have both flights on the same itinerary, that way you can get the luggage transferred through to final destination. Having separate tickets means of course the airlines normally won't check it through. Obviously too late in your situation but worth trying to achieve and even pay extra $$$ for IMO. Luggage normally arrives fairly quickly in Changi - immigration can be the slow step but mostly OK. You need to research to know exactly where to go with all your gear - as I recall there is a train between terminals. They say an hour before departure to be at the gate, but if you get to the check in on time and they accept your luggage they should let you on board as they would need to delay to get your luggage off the plane if you don't board. As you might know at Changi you clear immigration which is all automated these days then walk to the gate where you clear security if you are in the line to get inside the gate lounge you'll make your flight as the queues are not too bad as they are only screening your flight.

The standard approach on Nauticam housings for adapted lenses has been to specify a port adapter which allows use of the Canon port charts as well as using the Canon zoom gears directly. I seem to recall in the past older versions of the n85 port chart included this line item for Sony N85, but it is not there on current versions. For the 60mm macro I see the lens specs state the lens is 73mm in OD and this means it won't fit through an N85 port, the macro ports are 70mm ID, so you would be looking at combining an N85 - N120 adapter with an N120 port. This port adapter is listed to allow use of the Tokina 10-17 lens: https://www.nauticam.com/collections/port-adapters/products/n85-to-n120-60mm-port-adaptor-for-sony-e-mount-system However it doesn't say which port it designed to be used with and the port chart for Sony N85 does not include this option. You best bet might be to contact Nauticam to confirm if there is an N85 - N120 converter which allows use of EF lenses on the metabones adapter on Sony N85. If you confirm this then the Canon port chart can be used to specify which ports and extensions to use.

I had a look in Picture information extractor, which seems to include all of the mode information from Olympus cameras and I couldn't find it there. It seems to reliably extract the focus distance both in metres and in focus step count, which you could probably use to infer the mode: Below is a the reading from a shot taken on full range mode: It shows different focus step counts for near and infinity - so it looks like you could infer it from those readings?

i would start with macro photography using the capabilities of the 90mm first which will get you up to 1:1. this covers a scene 36 x 24mm and the depth of field is already razor thin. As you add diopters you add an additional degree of difficulty with holding the depth of field on the right spot on your subject. an additional problem is finding suitable small subjects which can take some practice depending on what can be found on your divesites. once you master that maybe start with a +5 and work towards smaller subjects. In the wetpixel live video on this subject Alex Mustard mentioned his most used diopter was the lowest power one.

best bet is probably a used Z-240. Much easier to keep them on the same setting so the illumination is the same from both sides when used conventionally with a strobe on each side and symettrical.

Regarding the INON , a review here of the original Nauticam and it mentions it's better than the INON: https://wetpixel.com/articles/thoughts-on-viewfinders-and-mini-review-nauticam-45-degree Sounds like the original Nauticam 45° can work OK on the Z8 but other makes may not have that option. I have an original Nauticam 45 and the corners of my EM-1 MkII and my OM-1 are a bit blurry.

Ikelite is not really setup for fibre optic triggering their wired TTL system is their "thing". The only reliable way to do it would do it would be to find an optical bulkhead -something like this: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4455817 I know that UW technics will provide a optical bulkhead something like the link above for the Sea Frogs housings, however unlikely to fit an Ikelite housing as they use imperial threads while the rest of the world is metric. I do see they offer a TTL optical bulkhead for Canon only, maybe a Sony one is might appear? Note though they only talk about fibre optic triggering of Ikelite strobes so you would need to confirm it would work with any other strobes. You best bet would be to contact Pavel to see if he can provide a suitable bulkhead for Ikelite.

If you are using the light with the go-pro the light would have to be close to the go-pro with a triple clamp and would definitely light up any particles. You could consider mounting the go -pro in the hotshoe and mount the light from one of the housing handles - or is you have strobe arms mounted you can get ball mounts that attach part way along the arms. this way the laight can be off to the side of the go-pro. lots of methods to attach a light to an arm here: https://reefphoto.com/blogs/lighting/i-want-to-add-a-strobe-to-my-housing-what-arms-do-i-need?srsltid=AfmBOooyXy8u63TueWYsg6pyOlUJ6pPsybqWOMXKXAHWgHdbLfJPTZ6a The quad ball might work well on the S&S at it has T plates I believe: https://www.bluewaterphotostore.com/xit-404-quad-ball-adapter-kit-w-2-ball-mts/

The new viewfinders are designed for the electronic viewfinders of newer mirrorless cameras, which are physically larger so need a viewfinder with a larger field of view to render them sharp across the frame. The net result is the older viewfinders are blurry in the corners on the newer mirrorless cameras. The older viewfinders are fine on DSLRs generally.