Chris Ross

Welcome aboard Chris, good to have you here.

welcome aboard!

A little bit apples and oranges comparing the 15-30 (f4.5-6.3 IS STM) to other options you mention. It's in the port chart as an option for an APS-C sensor where it gives the full expected range between 18 and 30mm focal length. It's not on the port chart for full frame, but guess that it would work on Full frame but between 28 and 30mm only.

You should be able to avoid this tax when travelling domestically assuming the airport is setup with a domestic arrivals channel where you don't fill out a customs form and don't pass through customs. It's not clear from the airport terminal maps how this works for domestic arrivals as it mentions some international flights arrive at SJD terminal 1 and the map shows customs areas. It seems to me to be a somewhat legitimate tax, but the rules to apply it are being bent, for example classifying a housing as a camera. The arrival card mentions you can bring in two cameras. Then there is also stuff about higher value items on the arrivals card. In theory most countries could apply this to incoming tourists as the vast majority are arriving with goods such as laptops, devices etc that would exceed the duty free import allowance, but they also depart the country with those goods. It is most likely a local official making a name for himself or funding an early retirement scheme. Certainly if you are coming back to your home country with brand new equipment to your home country you would be charged local taxes and duties. If you do get charged taxes on your housing in Mexico you should request that they provide a receipt and include serial numbers as it can only be legitimately be charged once. The other option which might be worthwhile if travelling with particularly valuable equipment is a carnet.

The first question is how well do your ports fit your macro lens? Does the lens come up to within a few mm of the port glass or sit further back? Then how close it is the accessory lens to the port glass? Testing the lenses by screwing them in a good suggestion and this will test if the flip adapter is an issue or not. But you also need to check if the distance inside the port is OK. The other consideration is does the adapter hold the lens parallel to the port? The saga adapters only have a hinge, while the Nauticam adapter has a locking clip to hold the parts together. I seem to recall this being an issue with flip adapters not folding completely flat in the past. The Kraken is a big lump and I suspect you need quiet a sturdy adapter to hold it properly.

The problem is the strobes over powering ambient light and if you put a filter on the lens it reduces both ambient and flash light and you need to boost ISO for ambient and you end up back where you started. Macro is entirely different as you are generally using flash as main light. According to the specs the Z330 ND is 4 stops - so hopefully that is enough for the task.

Welcome onboard Stuart, good to see you here

I found this link for the Godox you mention, seems like the coverage is not great: https://strobist.blogspot.com/2019/04/godox-ad200-amazing-flash-if-you-tweak.html Fixed using the bare bulb reflector system, but housing that would end up being a huge lump. It's been discussed on WP about dome covers probably not actually improving lighting cover. You want to see what sort of coverage it produced in testing. Getting a 100 deg beam would a reasonable target. Possibly it won't be Retra in its light quality??

A handheld rocket blower also works quite well for blowing off excess water: https://www.camerapro.com.au/4980-giottos-large-rocket-air-blower.html

Subal make flash housings for Nikon and Canon. http://www.subal.com/c5c17/Light_Flash/Flash_Housings.aspx I think one of the issues with land flashes is that while they come labelled with impressive guide numbers like 58 or 60 this is fully zoomed in. My Canon 580EXII has a headline guide number of 58 but at 14mm lens coverage the guide number if 15. Zooming into 24mm coverage it is 24 GN which is about the guide number of a Z-240 but with less angular coverage (84° vs 100° without diffuser for INON Z-240). Of course all of this assumes supplied GN are somewhat accurate.

I have used the combination on land - I don't have the port for it to try UW. AF is slightly slower but works fine mostly and image quality seems fine. I shoot at f11 usually. I probably have some reasonable on land samples I could share. I think I recall 1 or 2 WP people mentioning they shoot with it UW, perhaps they will chime in. Here is a sample with the 2.0x: https://www.facebook.com/groups/wetpixeluw/posts/10158868336166017 Some people using the lens on this WP post: https://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?/topic/70464-om-system-90mm-macro-announced/page/4/

This has been discussed before. The Nauticams are great to use but very complex inside so you would need to be very sure of yourself and meticulous. Other housings are much simpler with an array of straight buttons with minimal offsets so it is easier to disassemble and put back together. You need to source a service kit for all of the o-rings and may need to replace corroded shafts and other parts. You should use new springs and e-clips as well. I have seen a number of reports that Nauticam service is expensive but your housing comes back looking like new. As others have said does it need service? My EM-1 MkII housing is still working fine and is 7 years and near 300 dives old. I soak mine and exercise the buttons after every session and dry throughly - I don't let water evaporate on the surface - this avoids water marks. Soaking an exercising buttons is needed to flush salt water out - it won't leave of it's own accord. If salt water is left it will eventually evaporate and become very concentrated and corrosive.

If it's 74° diagonal at 60mm it's very close to an equisolid fisheye projection. This is apparently the projection used on the Panasonic m43 8mm fisheye and the Nikkor 10.5 mm and also the Canon, Nikon, Sony and Sigma 15/16mm fisheye lenses. so should be very close to the look of many fisheye lenses at it's widest setting..

The big one I recall from many posts I've seen is that the Sony 90mm macro AF is so much better on the latest bodies, quicker and less hunting.

One thing to consider is that DOF is not evenly distributed and you have 1/3 is in front of focus point and 2/3 behind more or less. If you are a little short of depth of field focusing on something closer in the frame tends to make the best use of what you have. The problem with DOF calculators is that you are focusing on a virtual image when underwater and if you were in a dome you could calculate the distances to the virtual image, I'm not sure that would work with the WWL. You should probably find that that using an 11mm lens should give about the right result in the calculator as it gets the magnification in the right ball park so the depth of field should be close to right. This shows that focusing on something 1m away at f8 is sharp from 0.5m away from sensor to infinity. The calculations show though that it is very sensitive to getting the focus distance right. At f8 focusing at 0.95m gets 0.49m to 13.8 in focus. focusing at 1.02m gets 0.5 to infinity in focus. At F5.6 it is closer to focusing at 1.5m away to get 0.7m to infinity in focus.

I must say I agree, it is no doubt possible to make good looking go-pro footage but there is an endless supply shakey, jittery poorly lit clips with no apparent point to them and which are way too long floating about on the internet. There is a fundamental problem of course with bigger sensors, the tiny sensors have a lot of depth of field even with fast lenses. As the lenses get bigger magnification on chip increases and minimum focus distance grows and probably also runs into limitations if you use a dome port with actually focusing on the virtual image. So some type of focusing becomes essential, it might even be as simple as a near and far dial and you switch to close focusing for UW behind a dome.

They have moving parts but they really don't impact the seals. Nauticam ports push straight in without the need to rotate, while the original extensions are press in and turn, the locking mechanism is internal to prevent it rotating back, it is activated by a locking lever no different in concept to a ZOOM gear control or the control to move one of the dials on your camera. Some extensions such as the N85-N120 adapter have a push and turn system which is no different to buttons on the housing or controls that you turn and would probably be serviced on a similar frequency to the housing itself as the mechanisms are quite similar. It's really no different to extra controls on your housing. The new Type II extension rings have the same internal locking ring as the housing itself and it appears to be an identical mechanism to activate and turn the locking ring, so again same maintenance requirement as the housing. The type II extension rings don't need to rotate after being pressed into place (except I think the 10mm ring). My EM-1 MkII housing is now 7 years old and has not been serviced and still working well. The downside is the internal controls are quite complex so after a few or many years you might send the housing in for refurbishment which involves a complete strip down. They are reported to come back looking like new.

I always google around for reviews before I buy from a new supplier I googled and found MPB seems to have a terrible reviews record. Always worth spending a few minutes reading some reviews.

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.