Chris Ross

Nudibranch & Sea Slug Identification Indo-Pacific (Gosliner, Valdes & Behrens) NSSI for short. Reef Creature Identification Tropical Pacific (Humann / DeLoach) Guide to the Sea Fishes of Australia (Kuiter) Should the thread title perhaps be "Fish & all other Marine creatures ID books"

If you are free diving, then you might appreciate a more compact package, something like INON UWL-H100, though I think it's now replaced by the UWL95 which seems to have the equivalent field of a 20mm lens. You can add a dome unit to it for a much wider view.

The Seafrogs lens only gets you back to the land view for the RX100 lens, which in underwater terms is not that wide. The weefine lens if you look at their webpage is designed for a small sensor camera like a TG6, so may not work so well on the 1"sensor of the RX100. This page may be helpful with a lot of sample shots taken with wet lenses. https://www.housingcamera.com/blog/product-reviews/the-ultimate-wet-lens-sample-post It mentions cameras used and the settings can be found in the EXIF data of the images. Before you decide if you need a wide lens perhaps you'd like to think about what you are planning to photograph and where you are planning to dive. Some sites you may be better using a macro close up lens.

Not surprising that you are blowing out at ISO 5K. ND filters are very straight forward - as long as they are reasonably neutral they should only reduce the flash exposure by the rated number of stops.

No doubt the tech has its limits - all I'm saying the only way to really find that limit is with experience. You obviously haven't met some of our small birds over here. You follow them with focus tracking till they strike a pose. Many don't readily perch out on a stick for you. If you are following them through the lens they are less likely to spook from the sudden movement of lifting the lens to shooting position. I agree though shadows underwater are way darker. As for why you would want to shoot in such situations the biggest one would be identification, I can ID a great many Australian birds but a photo helps a great deal with some I'm not so familiar with or recording a rarity for survey work. Fish are much harder to ID in my experience and having a photo can help a great deal for some species that can be ID'd from a photo.

I would venture that diving in 5-6°C water with a 7mm conventional neoprene wetsuit is extremely optimistic. I'm one of the more cold tolerant divers around Sydney and 14° is about my limit diving wet. On boats where there is any wind you will continue to lose heat from the wind chill from water on the suit outer surface. Mid last year I was on a boat in 16 deg water in my drysuit (compressed neoprene) with light thermals underneath it didn't feel that much more comfortable than diving in my 7mm wetsuit, where i really noticed it was on the boat, people diving wet were shivering and I was 100% comfortable. I believe the open cells suits also shed water quickly. I think freedivers around Sydney often dive in 3mm open cell suits in 14-17°C water.

I only have experience with the OM-1 it does pretty well on birds in foliage and twigs but it does have a threshold beyond which it won't pick out the subject. If it can grab the eye it seems to follow the subject reasonably well as long as it can still see the eye - but lose too much of the subject and you are toast. It's still worth trying things out if only to find what it can't cope with and when to quit and find a new subject.

Welcome aboard Isaac, good to see you here.

If you could obtain a blank plug it should be possible. Ask your dealer if one is available.

It could be something as simple as the older cameras not providing as much power to the lens or that the early mirrorless AF systems were just not up to the task, even though the focus motor in the 90mm was. My experience with AF/MF is on Canon and Olympus, Canon switches between the two seamlessly and the big teles have full time MF. On olympus they provide a clutch on some lenses pull it back for MF, there the focus changes to whatever the lens barrel is rotated to and them when clicking back to AF it maintains focus.

I mostly dive in Sydney has some great diving, I've dived some of those locations you mention but not all.

Thanks Massimo From a literal English perspective the design of the WWL and the various WACP models are different - one is wet mounted others are dry mounted and the lens element sizes are different they are design specs that vary between related models. Try telling someone his hugely expensive WACP-1 is the same design as the WWL. It's been established that WWL-1 and WACP-C are quite similar in performance while the WACP-1 is a step up. Sure many use the same lens layout, the same thing happens with camera lenses. Some people like to dig deep into the technical comparisons. Personally I find all this interesting but am more concerned about how they perform in practice and don't really think it would change which option I chose, it would more likely be set by how much I'm prepared to spend. However the point of engaging with you is not so much to deal with the facts but more so how the message is delivered. Like it or not, blunt answers upset people unnecessarily and could easily be delivered as constructive criticism with a little thought.

Sorry Massimo, please elaborate on "the fact that it says the design is different while it is not is a material error" I just don't follow that, which design is the same? WACP and WWL? WACP-1 and WACP-C?

Massimo - sorry-no, there is a right and a wrong way of getting your point across and you are doing it wrong. Explain what you believe the error is and provide facts to back it up. Frankly your points while they may be factual are not really relevant to any trying to choose one of these water contact optics and are an omission rather than an error, as is the the fact that only Sony can use everything on the list, people will soon find this out from the port charts as you mention.

A key variable is how well the macro port fits the lens. Nauticam ports are very good in this regard. Some other brands are not as good and the lens sits back a bit from the glass. Doesn't impact shooting with a macro lens but can be a problem with wet optics. Also as far as I am aware the EMWL components connect via the Nauticam bayonet system. The Bayonet adapter can screw onto a and M67 port but the port needs to be suitable. If the flange around the m67 thread is too wide it can't be screwed on. See the photo in this post: https://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?/topic/68595-wwl-1b-on-seafrogs-housing/&tab=comments#comment-433827

Massimo, if you are going to point out errors please provide detail on what they are. don't just dump on the author of the article. He is only trying to help provide material for the site. Attacks like this only discourage people from contributing, please in the future think about what you write and how it might impact people.

According to the link I gave, turning the sensitivity down is the path if it gets false positives, but could prove counter productive if it's struggling to realise it's a fish? But definitely try one thing at a time, you could try keep your current settings on one custom function and what you want to try out on another so you can try out both and compare back to back.

Welcome onboard Fred. Whereabouts in Southern Australia do you go?

While Sony does indeed have great AF systems, the documentation is generally woeful and relies upon people spending time with the camera and working how the various choices influence AF behaviour and posting in forums and blogs, YouTube etc. . Add to this the camera is still sort of new (1 year old), UW photography is a small niche in the scheme of things and chasing skittish fish an even smaller segment, and only a % of UW shooters use Sony, means that you are in somewhat unexplored territory. Of course as soon as I hit post someone will chime in specific experience!😂 A logical approach might be try a couple of different combinations and assign them to a custom set and on a dive swap to the alternate set for part of the dive and make notes once you get back to the surface. The biggest community of people relying of good AF tracking is likely to be bird shooters and looking up posts about best AF tracking settings for bird photography will produce some hits for sure. While not directly applicable to your case, they explain how the settings work. For example: https://mirrorlesscomparison.com/stories/sony-a7r-v-bird-photography/#subject This seems to suggest turning up sensitivity IF the camera is not finding a subject. Try finding a few more to give you an idea on the consensus of how the settings behave. You might also experiment with birds as the subject - a perched bird is more like a fish than an animal you might argue - streamlined shape with an eye at one to try to lock onto. Wings and fins are somewhat similar - only different in size. I see you can select multiple subjects in the menu as well and there is an animal/bird option. You haven't mentioned what your experience so far has been. Have you been diving with it and tried pushing the AF system on the subject in question. If you have what has been lacking so far? This may guide you in what questions to ask and settings to play with.

Nice job Davide, always fun to find something rare and even better get great footage of it.

A pelican is good as it is airtight and the gel can bring humidity down to low levels when closed something like 10-20% relative humidity. The humidity will go back to ambient levels of whatever is in the room very quickly after opening the case though.

Silica gel is only useful inside a sealed container, it has limited capacity and moisture will constantly diffuse in from outside unless there is a seal of some type. The fungicide pouches in the link will work for a period until the chemical diffuses away.

The dome has built in extension which you can see here: https://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?/topic/59042-nauticam-180-optical-gladss-dome-for-sale/&tab=comments#comment-380898 The 43mm is the height of the glass, luckily Massimo has measured the height if the port as 85mm from glass to mount in his post here:

I like things even simpler a light you twist to turn on and twist the other way for off. You don't need anything particularly bright for macro work as you are in close and the AF system doesn't need a huge amount of light. They don't have fancy functions such as red light or off on flash, but with the low power the strobes totally overpower them: I have the INON torches a 330 and a 1400F mounted in their torch holders. Torches: http://www.inon.jp/products/le_light/lineup.html Torch mounts: http://www.inon.jp/products/le_light/acc.html Add a a tall cold shoe mount and you are set: https://www.scubapix.com/essentials/arms-clamps-trays/mounts/25322-long-light-mounting-stem-for-cold-shoe/ I use the supplied diffuser to spread the beam to 60° as it makes aiming them a bit easier. An added bonus is the external o-ring below the head keeps crap out of the o-rings and they basically never need servicing, the only chance for grit or hair to get on the o-rings is when you change batteries and you only need to inspect them.

Courtesy of Massimo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o0zId1PZnyGph3_SpVNxU04Z8Ob4So1K/view