Chris Ross

A likely cause at high power is a pre-flash using enough capacitor capacity to prevent the strobe discharging.   The devil is in the detail of the settings you are using.

1 hour ago, Isaac Szabo said:

 

I have seen it cause fogging in other circumstances. Most recently with Nauticam optics like the WWL-1 and EMWL. After they have heated up in the sun they can develop internal fogging when you take them into cold water. It can take quite a while for the fogging to clear (30 minutes or more). 

 

I think I have also experienced this kind of fogging with regular wide angle lenses and dome ports, but it has been quite a while ago, so the details are not clear in my memory. 

Yes but this can only happen if there is water inside to vapourise.  Heat causes water to evaporate, not condense.  If it was just humidity then you would expect fogging when it was already cold.

If you are using a RX-100, you would be shooting wider apertures about f5.6 max so your strobes have an easier time of it.  F5.6 on a 1" sensor has equivalent depth of field to about f16 on full frame .  Stopping down further just sends you into diffraction.  If it were me I'd get a second S-220.

Air from a scuba tank is very dry and if you blow some in as you seal up it will help. Have a clean lint free microfibre cloth to wipe drops from the o-ring when you open it to stop them getting in the housing.  Closing it up in the coldest air will have the lowest moisture content.  If the air temperature is less than the water temperature the housing won't fog as long as long as no liquid water is trapped.  The key is that cold air holds less moisture than warmer air before it starts to condense.

Leaving the housing in the sun only causes a problem if there are liquid water drops inside - trapped by the o-ring.

I suspect the wetlenses would be fine, the WFL-01 says it's designed for the m43 sensor.

The DS-51 strobes are wire triggered as I understand it you would need to ask how they are triggering the strobes.   The AOI EPL-10 housing has a built in LED trigger and to use this you would need a optical to electronic trigger converter.  The LED trigger in the EPL-10 housing is manual only if I recall correctly and the design of the housing would make it difficult to use a third party trigger to get TTL. 

So with this setup you take the electric signal ex the hot shoe convert it to optical with the LED trigger then have the opto-electric converter turn it back into an electrical signal.  You need to maintain both these items plus the o-rings on the trigger cables.

If you definitely wanted TTL you might have to look into a housing for an EM-5 III, OM-5 or similar.  The AOI housings for those use the small accessory flash that comes with the camera to trigger and that is capable of TTL.  AOI OM system housings are here:

https://www.aoi-uw.com/products/housings.html

the AOI housings don't have a optical viewfinder installed and you need to use the Rear LED monitor.  On the topic of viewfinders, for many years I used the standard viewfinder in my Nauticam housing, you needed it right up against your mask but it was usable and you could tell if the camera had grabbed focus generally.

5 hours ago, ChipBPhoto said:

Hi all,

 

Has anyone in the US purchased strobes shipped from Europe?  If so, what did you pay for US import duties?

 

Specifically, I am looking at strobes with a value of $2600.  I’ve done a good amount of research, but I cannot find anything other than a range from exempt ($0) to 10%.  I’m looking for something more specific.  
 

Thanks for any info you can share!

chip

 

You could try the DHL shipment planner, you need to create an account , but I tried it and it seemed straight forward:

https://mygts.dhl.com/pre-shipment-planner

You need a HS code to determine what it is, I found this:

https://www.tariffnumber.com/2024/90066100

the US and European codes are similar, just read the sub type descriptions.

Give it a go and see what it comes up with.

59 minutes ago, Susa said:

Does anybody use a Sony A7r5 with this flash and TTL (in Isotta), please which trigger are you using? And is it possible to do HSS?

The two main suppliers of TTL triggers are UWT and Turtle, the trigger needs to be made to be compatible with the camera body and it needs to be able to communicate properly with the chosen flash.  Once this is done it needs to be adapted to the housing the considerations there are fitting the LEDs to trigger ports of the housing and mounting the trigger.  Basically if the triggers are working for your camera body/flash combination the only additional criteria is if the supplier has engineered a good fit to install the trigger and the LEDs. 

The triggers in question have been widely discussed in the forum I believe from both of these suppliers for Sony, getting it working properly with the Backscatter flash will take time for the vendors to develop their protocols to work with the new flash.

I would message the vendors where they are with supporting the new flash, both Pavel from UWT and Balage from Turtle are on the forum so you could PM them to ask.

On 9/28/2024 at 6:18 PM, Luko said:

Problem is that the nudibranch taxonomy is continuously evolving (I won't even mention the disagreements between different "schools" and various attempts at categorizing nudibranch families) if you ever compare older books like the ones you mention from Coleman or Debelius (first published 20 years ago or so) with newer ones (say NSSI2 Gosliner, Valdes, Behrens, published some 5-6 years ago) it's completely different, you won't find the same names, even the families are completely different. Hence the older Nudi Id. books are outdated and somehow useless now.

 

I guess the awaited NSSI3 will correct some errors, allocate new names to unnamed sp. nudibranches (about 20% of the nudibranches illustrated inside NSSI2 only get a family name with a sp. number, say Goniobranchus sp.25 for instance) or even propose new families (like Bermudella or Ceratodoris which are already in use but missing in NSSI2).

 

My recommendation would be select some good Websites that are updated to new species names, some of my favorites (but there are many more, depending on your location) :

Erwin Koehler's multi location http://www.medslugs.de/E/Pac-W/select.htm

S&J Johnson from Kwajalein for Pacific slugs https://www.underwaterkwaj.com/nudi/nudi.htm

For Indian Ocean, Ph.Bidgrain's http://seaslugs.free.fr/nudibranche/a_intro.htm

 

There are also excellent Facebook groups like Nudibase where any nudi will be identified by marine biologists.

 

Re- the initial question these are Mexichromis trillineata.

All true, however if you enter the species from these outdated books into Google, it will often point you to the new name.  The Facebook groups are very good, though there are many entries that are ignored in my experience.  The experts do a good job on there , but it's not like they are getting paid. 

In a great many cases of re-classification the specific name (second part of name) remains the same (apart from gender changes due to it being in Latin)  but the generic name (first part of name) changes indicating placement into a different genera .  For example the Australian slug Chromodoris splendida became Goniobranchus splendidus.  If you google the first name the first entry popping up for me is the new name.  I have heard though that some of the names in the Kuiter and Debelius book are just completely wrong.  Then of course you will find some slugs that are completely un-described.  The Seaslug forum site is full of old names but to me is still quite useful as it has a great many images so you can thee variations within the same species.

On 9/16/2024 at 10:45 PM, Architeuthis said:

 

As I see it, dual gain is implemented in several sensors, as you mention. In these previous models, however, the low gain A/D conversion is working at low ISO and at some, higher, ISO value, the high gain A/D converter replaces the low gain one (resulting in 12- or 14-bit raw files)...

 

The novelty with GH7 is that both low and high gain amplifiers work in parallel and from both signals a 16-bit raw file is generated (16-bit to allow encoding both the more coarse steps derived from low gain (what provides high DR) and the smaller ones derived from the high gain A/D (this one provides the smaller, lower noise, steps derived fro the shadows)...

I find the photons to photos site difficult to use, getting a clear explanation of what the various plots are showing is not the easiest.  Having said this maybe this plot shows the shadow improvement capability of the GH7 better:

https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR_Shadow.htm#Panasonic Lumix DC-GH5,Panasonic Lumix DC-GH7,Sony ILCE-1,Sony ILCE-7RM5

I threw a couple of Sony cameras on for comparison, I think ILCE-1 is an A-1?  The GH-7 seems to do very well at getting shadow improvement if this chart is showing what I think it is.

and.......having said all that just how much value is extra dynamic range anyway?  Apart from sunballs most UW photos have a pretty low dynamic range and the first thing I do in processing is set levels and increase contrast.

Depending on what housing manufacturer to some extent the overall cost of housing a camera scales with sensor size.  You might be able to pickup a good bargain on a housing but you might need to spend $$ for a new port depending on what sort of deal you get.  In general smaller formats mean smaller ports which take yp less space when travelling and are generally cheaper.  I'm talking about housing manufacturers with a system - they sell housings and a complete range of ports and extension rings that are matched well to your lenses.  Wet lenses break this mould to a certain extent as some like the WWL can be used from m43 all the way through to full frame for specific camera brands that sell suitable lenses for them.

As far as image quality is concerned anything from m43 will provide decent image quality.  The EM-1mKII and OM-1 are very close in quality to a Nikon D500 for example and are good enough for many people.

Your other consideration is strobes.  For wide angle work you need a lot of strobe power , but smaller formats can generally shot at wider apertures so are less demanding of strobe power - this means you can get away with cheaper strobes, the INON S220 is a bargain in strobes and is quite suitable for wide angle work on m43 cameras, but quite marginal for full frame.

The main point is look at the complete picture of what you would need to house a camera, buy the appropriate ports and extensions and strobes.

Having said all of that a housing for a generation or two old camera should sell for about 30 to at most 50% of the new purchase price.

14 hours ago, makar0n said:

 

Personally still shooting Z-240s with OM1 as well. Looking into upgrade options from time to time but to be honest not seeing a clear choice - all is way too travel unfriendly to start with (size/weight), or costs silly. I am nowhere near maxing out my camera skills hence prefer to spend money on trips than splashing 4-5 grand on a pair of strobes, benefits me more me thinks.

Waiting if Inon will announce something new, otherwise might one day go with S-220 even. Or just continue another decade with Z-240s, these are unbreakable and will survive about any travel adventures.

 

I'm in a similar position, the Z-240s are working well for me, but a little more power would be great for pelagics etc.  The cost to upgrade is the cost os a trip more or less.  There's a lot to be said for buying better water.  The new INONs if they appear maybe interesting??

This seems like an issue that needs to be corrected by Sony.  There is typically a setting to increase the viewfinder brightness setting to cope with for example flash photography so you can frame your image properly when using it as a viewfinder.  But when you review the images in the same EVF, this should be disabled.  I use Olympus and changing this setting to the auto brightness setting the viewfinder image is nice and bright, but when it flashes up the review image this setting is disabled and it shows the image as taken.  Does Sony not have an option like this?

2 hours ago, Dave_Hicks said:

Maybe so if deep enough, thus the cap. Aren't these rated to 300ft? I have seen a few friends diving without the cap by mistake. That is really fun to point out to your buddy at 60feet under! 😧

 

BTW, i had the o-ring go loose on my pressure valve after a number of years. Be sure to check it and replace if it shows wear.

You can calculate the downward force on the button based on the diameter of the stem, assuming it's 5mm dia the force pushing down is around 0.5 kg at 30m.   I would guess there is close to the limit.  There's probably some sciction from the seals on the stem which would help, but it's still a risk diving without the cap.  The o-ring seal for the cap also should be serviced periodically - a touch of o-ring grease will help.

The dive shops run trips out to Catalina Island and nearby areas, but it's nothing like what you get in areas like the Red Sea, they are only on weekends and the one I went on was basically just a ferry to get you to the dive site and they provided food and air fills.  It was up to you to sort out buddies etc.  Water will be dry suit cold in April most likely.

This dive shop is located near the pier where the dive boats leave from:

https://pacificwilderness.com/?page_id=521

I would suggest messaging them as a starting point for LA diving.  I believe you should find similar dive shops around Monterey.

It seems opinions are split between those that don't see the value in spending extra for the Retras and those who don't mind spending more for what they see as incremental lighting quality.  Either you the see the value or you don't, not saying either is right or wrong, everyone has their price point and quality standards. 

At the moment there's not a lot in the size range of the Z-240s - there's used Z-330s, the S&S YS-D3 and the Retras.  The Supe and Backscatter strobes have their fans but they do weigh more and the Supe and to a lesser extent the backscatter is bigger.  Ikelite strobes are good but very bulky and heavy.  The Retras are approaching the weight of the Supe and Backscatter if you use the booster and are a little bigger than a Z-240.  You would likely be shooting at a wider aperture on m43 so a little less demanding on power and the booster may not be necessary.

The Z-240 are right on 700 gr with batteries and anything else comparable will weigh more I think YS-D# slightly more, the Retras about 180 gr more.  The Supe and Backscatter are 1kg or more.

A number of approaches - the easy way is to use google lens, feed it the image and it will come back with suggestions.  I tried it and it suggests this is Mexichromis trilineata.  You can post it to one of the Facebook Nudi groups, Nudibase or Nudibranch Central ( read the rules first - they'll delet your post if you don't provide the right info).  Lastly buy Nudibranch & Sea slug identification Indo Pacfic  by Gosliner, Valdes and Behrens.

It often pays to try a number of avenues, some species are difficult to ID or are undescribed so don't have an official name.  Google lens even if it doesn't provide a correct hit first up often will get you to right family to start looking in your guide book.  Be careful it is a slippery slope to nudi obsession😂

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/

On 9/6/2024 at 3:54 PM, John E said:

I wonder if anyone knows what is special about the S+S correction lens or is it like other low power achromatic diopters?

 

My limited understanding is that single lens diopters (filters) impact image quality whereas achromatic ones are much better. Both just act to reduce the minimum focus distance, helping the lens focus on the virtual image which is close to the sensor and curved.

 

So if the S+S is not available, or is not a suitable size for a particular lens, another weak achromatic filter would likely do the same thing?

 

There are several high quality low-power achromatic filters including the Canon 500d close-up lens, Nikon 5T diopter, and Sigma close-up lens AML 72-01 (which I have and is 72mm threads) which seem to do the same thing but are in different diameters due to sometimes being intended for specific lenses. 

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.

On 8/29/2024 at 3:41 AM, bghazzal said:

All that said and done, Inon dive lights - used by all my Japanese colleagues - are even more sturdy, and also serviceable (which the Archons were not) and offer a way better light quality, so more of a once-in-10-year investment...
It's a choice...

 

cheers

 

ben

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.

18 minutes ago, jlaity said:

I heard back from Marelux sales department that Nauticam (and Inon, etc?) eyepieces are not supported. Also Nauticam ports are supported with a 20mm extension, but that makes it incompatible with a fisheye lens. Since I would need to replace 3k+ of glass, I guess I’ll keep saving and searching. 

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.

My website is built with Jalbum, a web gallery builder that has many skins built to use with it.  It's mostly straight forward to use, just point it a folder structure and it can build a web gallery with any hierarchy you like.  The software has a licence fee which is not too high and a decent support forum.  I use the Mercury skin which uses a responsive layout which scales itself to match the device accessing it. 

Jalbum mercury:  https://jalbum.net/en/skins/skin/Mercury/wicket:pageMapName/Dogs

my website:  https://aus-natural.com/index.html

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.