Chris Ross

There have been various posts talking about the pros and cons of the various combinations of lenses and Nauticam wet optics as well as comparing performance of rectilinear lenses behind various domes. Few points you might consider: The recommended dome for the Canon 8-15 in Nauticam is the 140mm dome. Fisheyes are much less sensitive to dome size compared to rectilinear lenses and smaller dome sizes help with getting closer to take CFWA shots. You can even use the 100mm Zen dome with the 8-15, though corner quality might take a small hit. There is an extensive set of tests of various Canon optics in this post: It tests the Canon 24-50 behind the WWL and doesn't have good things to say about it. The Nikon 24-50/WWL-C combination is generally rated quite well, however the Canon 24-50 kit lens seems to be significantly poorer in optical quality. Now this is with the WWL-C, however I recall other posts stating there is not much to pick between the WWL and WACP-C with other lenses. Bear in mind too that the 24-50 needs to zoom into 28mm to remove vignetting with the WWL-1 - the WWL-C is designed for 24mm lenses. Rectilinear lenses generally require big domes, though some of the newer lenses that focus much closer work well with the 180mm dome. They lack the barrel distortion which enlarges the subject in the centre making fisheye images pop. On the subject of teleconverters with the Canon 8-15 you mention the Sony 1.4x/2x with the Canon 8-15, these work because they place the Metabones adapter between the teleconverter and the 8-15. Optical quality is better than using the Kenko 1.4x. It needs this order of assembly as the nose of the 1.4x fits inside the the empty spacer of the Metabones adapter. In this case the metabones acts like a 22mm spacer. In theory you could use the a RF 1.4x- Canon RF-EF -Canon 8-15, but the RF-EF won't work with an RF 1.4x. In theory again a Canon RF-EF-Canon EF 1.4x- aftermarket EF 12mm or 20mm extension tube- Canon 8-15 might work, but you'd need to test it. In general I would say the Canon 8-15 is an exceptionally sharp lens and very hard to beat behind a dome as fisheyes naturally work well behind domes and is a great solution if you don't need extra reach. The last point is that comparing diagonal field of view is a little misleading - you normally don't place subjects on the diagonal and fisheye lenses have the most stretching of the field in the corners. The WACP/WWL is like a zoomed in fisheye lens in terms of barrel distortion present. The horizontal field of a 180° (nominal) diagonal fisheye is about 144° while a WWL with 130° diagonal field has about a 106° horizontal field. The 8-15 is reported to achieve 175° diagonal field. This table compares horizontal and diagonal fields: Horizontal Diagonal Rect Equiv 15mm fisheye 141 175 4.5 15mm x 1.4 97 118 16 WACP at 28mm 106 130 13.5 WACP at 80mm 44.7 54 42 The Rectilinear equivalent is the focal length of a rectilinear lens with the same horizontal field. You can compare the field you would get from a Canon 8-15 with 14mm FF equivalent rectilinear here, it's on m43 sensor so the comparison is the 8-15 at 8mm and the 7-14 at 7mm. This is equivalent to the 8-15 at 15mm and 14mm rectilinear on full frame.

I recall you said that you had a steady red light which is the battery. If you lose the vacuum it's a blinking red light and it should go through yellow first . You can test this by pulling a vacuum and then immediately releasing it and observing what the lights do. It's always possible the valve has had it, if it uses a soft seat for example, that will eventually wear out. But to be sure about this see if the circuit does as described when releasing the vacuum as you would do if you wanted to open the housing. Another way to test if to see if you can fit your friends valve to see if it comes good with that. BTW the tool you showed is for the new model vacuum valve, you model without the press button uses a wrench with a little pin that fits in one of the holes on the valve. scroll down to the bottom of this link, above the pic of the pump: NauticamNauticam Vacuum Check and Leak Detection SystemNauticam is pleased to announce an exceptionally comprehensive vacuum system that allows the underwater photographer to confirm watertight integrity before entering the water. This system provides add If it doesn't do this as described, you have a different problem. A fresh battery not fixing it does not necessarily it's not a battery issue either, You might have bad battery contacts or the wire or switch has some issues with extra resistance or it could be a problem with the pressure sensor. A new valve/alarm system should certainly get you back in working order if that's the case.

apparently the vacuvin pumps for resealing wine work??

I notice that unhelpfully the SMC-1 is no longer in the port chart so you can't compare working distances any longer. Depth of field increase I'm not sure hoe they would increase this - it's generally proportional to magnification.

First suggestion is fresh battery. Though it should blink red/blue when switched if low. If you lose vacuum it signals this by flashing red not solid red. I found another reference online which indicates that solid red is dead battery. That's you best bet I think.

the port chart provides this information. My understanding was that the 1 and the 3 were very close in performance.

Depth of field is a function of magnification, if you reduce the magnification on the sensor you get more depth of field at constant f-stop. There are special cases with wet lenses but shouldn't apply to a simple diopter. Bearing in mind of course that the depth of field is already razor thin at less than 1mm with the bare lens at 1:1 magnification.

Yes, though it's surprising how little info there is on many species!

Welcome aboard Kip, good to have you here.

Same here, I have not had a housing serviced as yet, my Em-1 MkII was 6 years old and not serviced in that time, My local dealer said it was needed unless you had issues.

The MFO3 turns a 90 into a 50 and a 105 into a 60mm They report the Olympus lens becomes the equivalent of about a 35-37mm range of lens, which matches my experience.

This is my shot of a Rhinopias frondosa: https://www.aus-natural.com/Underwater/Diver%20Lodge%20Lembeh%20-Sulawesi/Lembeh%20Selects/slides/Weedy-Rhinopia.html The dorsal fin looks quite different to yours, though it is fading into shadow in teh shot, it looks like a regular dorsal fin rather tahn a series of flag like spines. It is showing the start of the spotty pattern they have though. Inaturalist thinks it might be an ambon scorpionfish, but I'm not sure,

Really nice Ben, fascinating creatures to watch

I have a copy of this book, I have been told there are some inaccuracies in it, I think from one of the Nudibranch ID facebok groups and also that a lot of species have changed names like all the Chromodoris sp. that are now Goniobranchis for example. I still use to get a starting point and cross check by googling the species name.

As the R7 is APS-C you can approach the range available with the WWL by adding the kenko 1.4x to the 8-15 lens As a bare lens it is usable between about 10mm to 15mm and adding a 1.4x it is still wider than the WWL at the widest setting. The horizontal fields I find are best for comparing lenses as this defines the size of subject you can fill the frame with. This table shows the calculated horzontal fields of view of the 8-15/8-15 with 1.4x/18-45 with WWL along with the approximate rectilinear equivalent focal length. 8-15 Horiz- field Equivalent FL 10 141 fisheye 15 83 20 with 1.4x 11.2 114 12 21 59 32 18-45 - WWL 18 106 14 45 50 38 The barrel distortion in the fisheye zoom and WWL will be very close to the same at the same field of view, As you crop in by zooming the barrel distortion reduces progressively. The other point to note is I believe the WWL will have a little less depth of field at the same field of view, this was discussed on a thread on the forum recently. The 8-15 with 1.4x gives close to the same flexibility as the WWL combination, which has slightly more reach at the long end. Of course it doesn't allow adding a closeup lens.

There are various posts I recall about using the WWL in combo with a CMC. The biggest issue quoted is what to do with the big lump of a WWL when it's not mounted on the port, with some concern about the fact the lens has no way to attach a lanyard. I only recall one person saying they used the WWL/CMC combo and they thought it worked OK. I would add that the quoted field of the the WWL is a 130deg diagonal lens, though the barrel distortion means that horizontal field which reflects what coverage you can achieve is about the same or very slightly wider than a 14mm rectilinear lens. The Horizontal field of a fisheye will be about 145 deg while the WWL will be around 105. You can go close to matching the WWL reach with the 8-15 plus 1.4x or even an adapted Tokina 10-17 but of course you can't add a CMC lens to that setup. You can focus up to the port glass and this allows you to image subjects down to about tennis ball size filling the frame reasonably well for CFWA type shots. The CMC-1 will get you about 0.8x on the 18-45 and it only focuses between 44 and 81mm from the CMC glass, so it's not as easy to work with as a standard macro lens. Whether it suits you likely depends somewhat which way you are leaning with the majority of the subjects you shoot. If it's mostly wide with the occasional macro or occasional wide with mainly variable sized macro. A macro lens with a wide wet lens would probably suit a wider range of macro sized subjects better than using a CMC with a kit zoom.

I don't have specific information, the tightness of fit needed will vary depending the lens in question. The problem you are likely to see if any is vignetting. The good news is you check vignetting on land, so you try out what you have to see if it will work OK for you. It looks like it is supplied with two different thread options to try to accomodate different attachment methods. The part to mount a bayonet attachment to wet lenses is the Nauticam 83214. The backscatter page says it attaches to M67 lenses. Whether you can use it or not depends on the dimensions of the lens you are trying to mount , the thread is located further up the body of the lens on Nauticam wet lenses to get the backend of the lens closer to the port. You could try asking the vendor is the Kraken will work with this adapter?

let us know how you go!

Total bargain and still an extremely capable camera. For that you could add an adapted Canon 8-15 or Tokina 10-17 in a small dome and take it UW for less than the cost of a Nauticam housing for the Z8 or equip it with a fisheye lens and 4" dome and strobes and still be around the price of just the housing.

Yes it is spendy to take anything full frame UW, you can save a lot with a smaller sensor system and IMO it's good enough for what most people us their photos for. Most people don't go with rectilinears and big domes due to the size and hassle for travelling. You can also use less powerful strobes with smaller systems as you don't need to stop down as much. a m43 or an APS_C system would be a massive step up from a go pro for still images. Big animals is generally WWL/WACP or fisheye territory, if you want a compact rig you can use a m43 8mm fisheye lens behind a 4" dome. If you want some flexibility for that shark that won't come close enough a WWL or one of he fisheye zoom options is worth looking at. Looking at some options in Nauticam a Canon R7 housing is $1800 less than a Z8 housing while an OM-1 is $2800 cheaper. The domes are potentially cheaper in smaller formats depending which way you go and in m43 in particular the lenses are significantly smaller lighter and cheaper. I'd suggest throwing together a spreadsheet and pricing up a few systems down to the lenses, domes, zoom gears and strobes in each sensor size range and seeing how you feel when comparing the prices.

I was thinking specifically of flash settings, I assume you are not using R1C1 as that requires specific protocol to intrepret the signals. Presumably you would need to ensure red eye reduction is off and check the various flash settings in the menu. Regarding fibre optics I wasn't suggesting doing that with the subtronic strobes, just suggesting that many new strobes work quite well with TTL over fibre optics. I think the risk factor for new strobe sis quite small, many people are using both the mini flash and UWT riggers to trigger flash units both in manual and TTL. If you decide to go with new strobes juts put up another post asking about strobes that work well with the OM-1.

if you triggering using an on camera flash then either will work, the single connector with two cables may not work so well for a l LED trigger.

I saw some articles that said the optics are the same as the the first version of the 28-70 so i would expect that the it would be the same performance behind the WWL/WACP optics as the existing lens, so the 28-60 would likely still be the better choice.

You didn't say much about what you have the camera set at which can can make a difference. If you set the flash to second curtain sync on the camera you can use that together with a slow shutter speed around 1/2 sec or longer to tell if there is a pre flash as well as a main flash, that may help with trouble shooting. I'm not sure I understand how you would need soldering to use the old TTL converter. The fact that the strobes work with the old trigger tells you something is not right with the new trigger. I see a few possibilities, with the m43 you don't tend to need as powerful a strobe as in wide angle shooting at f8 is generally sufficient. You could buy new strobes ( huge selections these days,) pick ones that work well with the UWT trigger and OM-1 You could switch to fibre optic triggering with new strobes that will use that, plenty of strobes now work with R1C! olympus triggering, though ask here first there have been posts with some strobes proving troublesome. There have abeen a few posts on this recently. You could trigger with the UWT trigger of you you could try using the mini flash for the OM-1 - that will work better in manual triggering than TTL possibly. You could explore different cables as suggested by Pavel?

Fixed it - I copied and pasted the text, copy using ctrl-C then pasted using Ctrl-Shift-V. Did you paste the text in from somewhere? If so try pasting with ctrl-shift-V.