Chris Ross

You need to look at the top view as well to see how controls line up there, the critical ones being on/off switch and the control dials. I found the camera decision page and they had top view comparisons, I cut out the R5 and overlaid it on top of the R6 II at 50% opacity: Perfect alignment is not possible so I lined up the lens mounts which is how they would go into the housing, It looks pretty close on first view but the R5 has the on-off switch where the R6 II has a movie/stills switch and they don't line up, while the R6 has a mode dial where the R5 has a top LCD. the rear control dial is also a little out of alignment. For the camera controls to work reliably the dials/buttons need to be aligned to sub millimetre precision and this is only rarely the case between different models. This seems like enough to render the R5 very difficult to use in the housing even if you could live without rear mode dials and on/off switch. null

The other solution for the 14-30 and 15-30 might be zooming in a little bit? Can you zoom in enough to use the 50mm extension without vignetting?

If the magnet won't activate the switch then it likely needs replacing. I assume you've tried swapping with a known working magnet and swapped the magnet out from the bad strobe to another one to prove it's not the magnet. If this is the case there's nothing else you could do externally and you'll need to find a repair agent. It should be a relatively simple repair too replace the switch for a service agent.

It does hold the vacuum, I know it's pricey, but it's cheaper than the Dive and See bulkhead I was looking at which is $US390. the short USB cable is also a good idea.

I agree these solutions are what I call kludges, they work but have a range of caveats. For example going for a macro wide solution for APS-C forces you into a 60mm macro lens which is not ideal. If you are on Sony APS-C the short macro don't work so well. The Nauticam solution on the MWL sounds good but you are at f14-16. Even the FCP produces good image but has very restricted depth of filed in CFWA situations. The most straight forward solution is the WWL/WACP and it works seamlessly on Nauticam but doesn't give you a full frame fisheye option. A zoom fisheye in a dome really doesn't have any of these issues, the only problem is having to adapt a zoom gear on Nauticam. If a camera manufacturer introduced a 10-20 APS-C of 15-30mm full frame zoom fisheye lens it would be the ideal solution. For the moment you only get this with cameras that can use a Tokina 10-17 or with m43 where you can adapt the Canon 8-15.

Not that I'm aware of, it's an extremely simple part though. You can use the the Nauticam gear directly on the tokina 10-17 mounted with a Metabones speed booster as for some reason the 34.7mm N85-N120 was designed to mount EF lens in combination with the speed booster which is thinner than 1.0x glassless smart adapter. The Tokina is a good solution but it doesn't have the zoom range and becomes a 7-12 mm lens with the 0.7x speed booster. IMO it's worth finding somewhere that can print you one for the extra zoom range of the 8-15 lens.

Yes It's the Nauticam system and the standard arrangement is as follows: 140mm N120 dome 35mm N120 extension N85-N120 34.7mm adapter Nauticam zoom gear 3D printed adapter for zoom gear to position correctly the zoom knob on the adapter Then an 8-15 lens and a metabones smart adapter (not the speed booster) The zoom knob on the adapter is a bit coggy doesn't feel the same as the zoom gear on the body. I'm going to try getting a zoom gear printed for the housing zoom control, there's not a lot of room for it but would be better zoom I think it it will work. I ran out of time before a recent rip to give it a try. The USB-C bulkhead is nice - but only works for OM-1 for battery charging, it can be used to download from other cameras. It's a Nauticam one, be sure to get the specific M28-M16 adapter as it won't fit through the original part number adapter. I'm going to do a mini-write up on it. Here's a sample from Kimbe Bay in PNG (New Britain)

I'm not sure how a quote of my response to your post about WACP and other wetlenses managed to make it's way over here to your intro post - but the post quoted above is all about the field of view obtained with a WACP vs an 8-15 with 1.4x.

The Tokina 10-17 was in fact indirectly on the old Sony N85 port chart, the final entry was an N85-N120 adapter with zoom knob that matched to the Nauticam zoom gears so that you could use any EF lens on a Metabones adapter. With that system the Nauticam zoom gears for the Canon lens would mate up to the Zoom knob and be controlled from there. The latest port chart omits this option Similarly on that question around EF macro lenses yes you could but you may not want to. The Metabones generally provides acceptable performance on wide angles but macro lenses at high magnfications are less likely to work well. I ended up upgrading to an OM-1 for other reasons and now have an adapted Canon 8-15 working on that system and it gives me full frame fisheye through to about the field of a 28mm full frame lens so combining a Full frame fisheye, a 7-14mm lens and the wider end of a WWL into one package. SO I have an FCP equivalent package (zoom range- wise) for a small fraction of the price of an FCP and without the CFWA narrow DOF restriction. Zooming in the get your framing is a better option than cropping IMO. I shot this system in PNG recently and I bought the USB-C bulkhead which meant I left the camera/lens in the housing the whole trip and download images and charged the battery through the USB-C connector.

To understand things better I feel it is better to look at the horizontal field provided by the various lens options, the reason being that with barrel distortion the corners get stretched proportionally more. For example looking at the diagonal field of the WACP/WWL or 130 deg you might think it matches a 10mm rectilinear lens. However if you look at the horizontal field which tends to define what you can frame with that lens it is quite close to what you would get with a 14mm rectilinear lens. From what I can tell the barrel distortion of the WACP is somewhat similar to what you would see with a fisheye zoomed into the same field. The distortion lessens as you zoom in more. That is not say it is interchangeable with a 14mm lens for a number of reasons including close focusing of the WACP and lack of the fisheye impact bringing subjects forward in the rectilinear. The coverage provided by the WWL is something like that from a 13/14mm - 33mm rectilinear lens, just a bit wider than a 16-35mm. The horizontal coverage is around 111-58 degrees. The 8-15 fisheye with a 1.4x covers full frame fisheye with 144 deg wide frame zooming into about 100 degrees or in rectilinear terms the same horizontal field coverage as fisheye to about a 16mm lens. As to which to choose, it's going to be the one that matches your preferred subjects, if you need reach for subjects that don't approach too closely it's likely to be the WACP. If you like the fisheye impact on reef scenics and CFWA ten perhaps the 8-15 with 1.4x.

They are compatible, there are a couple of changes in them. I mated a type II ring with an older N85-N120 extension and a 140mm dome. I wrote up a mini review a little while back as there was no information around about them:

The normal way it is done is the Canon 8-15 with a Canon Mount Kenko converter. It has been reported that a Sony 1.4x with Metabones then the 8-15 also works well. The Metabones acts as an extension tube in this setup and the field of view obtained may be different. If I recall correctly a certain version of metabones was needed with a large enough diameter to accept the nosepiece on the Sony 1.4x.

Yes, usually, however Nauticam recommend it on some full frame cameras, specifically on the Canon RF 100mm macro lens. They also list the SMC lenses for DX 60mm macro and CMC lenses for FX 60mm macro lenses. This is all in the port charts. You could ask the question specifically if anyone has tried the CMC lens on the Sony lens You could also consider the INON lenses, the UCL-67 is listed as providing 2.7x magnification on the 105mm Nikon macro. http://www.inon.jp/products/lens/ucl67m67/spec.html

I had a look through the port charts and see they list the CMC-1 as an option for the RF 100mm macro lens, the max magnification is 2.8x midway between the SMC-1 and SMC-2 with 18-85mm working distance compared to 3.2x and 16-35 for the SMC-2. I know nothing about the optical quality but it might have easier handling compared to the SMC-2. It's not listed for the Sony 90mm macro but I would think is it works on the Canon lens it would on the Sony?? The performance figures for the 90mm and RF lens show very close magnifications and working distances.

Hi Sergio, according to your exif data the soft coral was taken at about 29mm focal length and this is about equal to the field of view (horizontal) of an 11.5mm rectilinear lens based on some calculations. If you look at it being a fisheye lens that would be an 18mm fisheye in round numbers assuming that a 15mm provides a 180 deg diagonal field. 11.5mm would be the number I would suggest using in the DOF calculator. The depth of field of a fisheye in a dome of the same focal length would be a bit more than what is calculated here. I also can't find any references to Fisheye DOF calcs. The subject distance should also be from the sensor so that would be 16mm plus lens length plus distance from lens to subject . So that would 16mm plus your 50mm plus length of your lens. It's hard to work out what would be with 24-50mm combined with the FCP optics but would be at least 16+ 50 + 50 = 116mm , The dome looks about 120-140mm dia so add 60mm radius maybe try it with 176mm distance. This brings the DOF up to 20cm.

The black bands displayed on the images posted by the OP are due to flash sync limitations. While the A7RV specifies a 1/250 flash sync speed, you may not always achieve this and you may need to read the fine print. I'm not sure about this model, but some SONY models only achieved max sync speed when using a SONY flash. This is likely why the Nauticam manual trigger is giving you a problem as it doesn't communicate with the flash and so doesn't get the timing right. The manual flash uses electro-mechanical contacts built into the shutter, it's Likely the SOny lash is triggered a little earlier and i's done electronically. The flash triggers that allow max sync speed need to masquerade as a Sony flash and communicate with the camera correctly to achieve the specified sync speed, presumably to get the timing correct so it can achieve the full illumination. The strobe needs to start only a few milliseconds earlier so the banded area receives illumination. It may not show up on wide angle as there may be enough ambient light that the band is not seen. The band is there only because that part of the frame receives no flash receives no light from your strobe. The background will be bright enough to illuminate this area of the sensor.

The example image I was referring to IMO had un-workably thin DOF. I don't know how extreme the magnification was on that shot but for me you would have to be picky about subjects the soft coral head had background and foreground out of focus and to me blurry foreground elements ruin a shot, background elements being soft is not an issue for me. The shot was taken at f13 so not much opportunity to get more DOF by stopping down either.

Walk into any camera store and buy the off brand caps - they however are very easily dislodged as is the genuine article, I think tight fitting neoprene cylinder like a stubby cooler and attaching a lanyard to it might in fact be a better option.

I don't know that I would say it's a CFWA solution seeing the soft coral posted by Sergio, the lens was zoomed to 29.5mm and the DOF in that image was remarkably narrow. The shot was out of focus both in front of and behind the plane of sharp focus at f13. Certainly expect to do better with a fisheye and dome.

It is often reported that the quality of light is better with the ring flash strobes, I haven't been in a position to experience this, only ever shooting with INON Z-240, but personally know a few people who swear by the light quality improvement. This is a very subjective improvement and not one you can demonstrate with testing so easily except perhaps to show that the light falloff is less. All reports seem to indicate that the Retra strobes are quite similar to the big guns in this regard. On the technical discussion versus end results, some people can look at graphs and plots and understand what the impact on results is, others it doesn't help. Publishing an image really only shows that in the hands of the photographer in question that strobe produces a good looking image. It's very hard to look at a pair of photographs of different scenes and say you like one strobe better than the other. Ideally the same scene on the same day with two different strobes might help but it's hard to tell if the differences are due to the strobe or small position changes of camera and strobes by the photographer. Both the technical and artistic approaches have value and ideally using a balanced approach to selecting gear surely must be the ideal situation.

Hi John, yes I'm using it now in a new Nauticam housing. It's quite nice to use UW, though probably not any super compelling reason to upgrade. The AF is better than the EM-1 MkII with the 60mm macro and I also bought the USB-C bulkhead so I could download images and charge the camera without removing from the housing. Can't do the charging with the EM-1 MkII. It means I don't need to remove the front port, Zoom gear and 8-15 lens every day just to change battery and get my images, I could leave it sealed for an entire trip if I don't want to change lenses. I basically changed as my EM-1 mkII which was 6 years had a couple of times when it stopped responding and needed to pull the battery to get going again. I could get it repaired but it only does it occasionally so finding the cause might be hard and getting stuck with the camera in the housing not responding didn't sound great. I could also get another EM-1 II but it's a 7 yr old camera now and thought it better to put the repair cost towards the new housing.

This is an older housing and I expect probably different arrangement to newer ones. Typically there is a metal insert that remains in the acrylic window and they should be standard sizes. I assume the standard viewfinder is the one that came with housing as original equipment or did you you purchase it to use with your housing? Normally you remove the viewfinder by removing an o-ring inside the housing and slide it out of the metal insert. You should be able to do this on your housing. Typically you don't unscrew anything to remove the viewfinder. Now that you have unscrewed the insert you would need to install it back into the window and also make sure the seal to keep water out is sound. First check the view finder you should see an o-ring in a grove that you can remove to allow you to pull out the viewfinder. Carefully remove this o-ring and try pull out the viewfinder. Next check the insert to determine how it is sealed - probably an o-ring - check this carefully and re-assemble. I would suggest maybe talking to a store like backscatter who services housings and tell that what you've done and ask if there are special arrangements to ensure it seals between the rear window and the insert. this instruction manual for viewfinders might help: 32201 32203 32204 32205 Instruction manual for viewfinders (nauticam.cn)

Comparing rectilinear and wide lenses on the diagonal field of view is a bit misleading. The field of view on the horizontal axis of the WWL/WACP is actually about the same a 14mm rectilinear lens due to the barrel distortion. The view is stretched most in the corners. I prefer to use the horizontal axis to compare as when you are framing a subject like a shark for example you don't usually place it along the diagonal. Due to the barrel distortion the zoom ratios are not totally comparable as you are zooming into centre section which looks enlarged with a fisheye. I use a Canon 8-15 on my OM-1 which on first glance is a 2x zoom. However if you use the horizontal field of the lens to compare you find the framing is similar a 5.8mm zooming to 28mm rectilinear lens so this is like a 4.8x zoom lens. I have done the calculations to show how the horizontal field changes when you zoom and then taken images with the 8-15 at 15mm and my 7-14 lens at 14mm (m43 camera) and apart from the barrel distortion the field that is framed is remarkably similar. The WWL behaves more like a fisheye zoomed into a 130 deg diagonal field than a 10mm rectilinear lens and I've done the calculations to show this and the 10mm takes in a wider horizontal view. The increase in zoom ratio is not as much as the 8-15 lens shows as the distortion is a lot lower. This is the technical view - it somewhat ignores the end result. The barrel distortion pulls the subject forward to be more prominent in the frame and places it firmly front and centre - this is the fisheye look and you can't replicate it with a rectilinear. That not to say there is no place for rectilinear lenses - there certainly is whether it is shooting video, the need to have straight lines remain straight in a wreck or needing more reach for smaller shy subjects. Recognize what the difference is and then make your choices to suit your application and the look you prefer.

Good to see, their behavior has been really bad. For example they held off from providing a fix to the running the program on high resolution monitors in CS6 blaming Microsoft for not updating their APIs and didn't fix it till the subscription model came out. Turns out a simple registry fix made the software usable on such monitors. I still use CS6, though on my latest laptop with Win11 getting the software to activate has proved a challenge, so I'm trying affinity photo.

This is correct, a strobe is 100 CRI. The light is produced by heating the Xenon in the tube to around 5000 kelvin and the radiation approximates black body radiation - a continuous spectrum. Better quality LEDs can produce a more complete range of wavelengths that get close to the strobe but you pay $$$ for this.