Chris Ross

The little S220s are great value little strobes they really are tiny and they have improved them significantly over the prior model. I hope we get as good an improvement out of the eventual Z330 replacement when it finally appears.

The main thing is whether the trigger registers as a flash. If it does the camera takes over and says no setting SS over 1/250. Then the Trigger has to pretend to be a flash to allow include high speed sync as an option and let you raise the shutter speed.

Again in wide angle depth of field is not the issue, the corners are soft due to dome port optics often combining with corners from the lens that are a little soft even on land. The WWL lens corner is soft due to the optics, it's not depth of field. Less depth of field in fullframe is a concern in macro, CFWA and shooting wider open than about f8. A fisheye as Tim says is generally not noticeable UW, there are exceptions which you learn to avoid. A big advantage of fisheyes is they pretty much force you to get closer. Water between you and your subject is a problem. The first rule of UW photography is get close. The second rule is if you think you are close enough, get closer. Sounds like you are determined to go full frame - if you are concerned about travel weight the A7C would be a good option and as you have seen produces nice images. Just be sure you check the downsides of the A7C, like slower sync speeds etc. there are posts about it on site. Remember rectilinears are difficult to deal with, some of the Sony lenses work quite well in the 180mm dome, others not so well, once you go ultra wide beyond about 16mm perspective can start to be an issue. this is distortion and stretching of foreground objects. An extreme example is the 10mm laowa lens. See this post: https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/1313-14mm-rectilinear-lens-guide-the-true-must-have-uw-lens-more-important-than-fe-lenses-or-wcap-wwl-fcp-etc/#findComment-9553 Also the Nauticam 180mm dome geometry is such that with a lens correctly positioned at the centre of curvature will vignette if it is wider than 16mm. So the entrance pupil of a 14mm rectilinear wide needs to be placed forward of the centre of curvature otherwise it vignettes. Most people find 16mm easier to deal with and the eligibility of the 16-35 lenses helps. With a fisheye you can be more compact using the 140mm dome and get better image quality.

The right answer I think is it depends, the rectilinears have their place if you need the reach for example sharks that don't get quite close enough, wrecks etc. The all purpose solution might be a WWL but you don't get the full fisheye effect it's like a zoomed in fisheye as you would get with the Tokina 10-17. This is partially taste and also partially wanting subject a decent size in frame. Also it depends if you are talking full frame or smaller formats. You're on full frame so the tokina is out, so it's an 8-15 using either 8mm for a circular 180° image or 15mm for a classic diagonal fisheye or the 8-15 with 1.4x for a limited fisheye zoom which goes from 180° diagonal fisheye to about 97° across the horizontal frame which is about the reach of a 16mm lens. A good solution if that is enough reach for you. The 10-17 gets you out to a 21-22mm rectilinear in terms of reach (same horizontal field cover). In m43 an 8-15 gets you out to about a 28mm rectilinear. You can also use a 2x but it seems that takes a hit on image quality. Sony users have an advantage of using the Sony 2x with the Canon 8-15 which seems like a slightly sharper lens to get decent results, this goes: Sony camera-sony2x-metabones-Canon8-15. I seem to recall people testing the Kenko 2x were a little disappointed. There's posts on that floating around on site. There is also of course the very expensive FCP, though there seems to be reports of limited depth of field for CFWA in that optic, again posts are on site.

Some nice looking pics, one question as I recall that Nauticam recommended shooting at f16, what apertures were you using and assuming f14-16 range, did you find this a limitation?

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.