Chris Ross

The typhoon season is extended if the waters stay warm, this is what drives them , so not unexpected that late season typhoons are becoming common with warming oceans.

I assume you have tried it out for fit, I would expect the macro lens to work fine as is without accessories, vignetting seems unlikely with that sort of focal length. The power of a diopter generally reduces if it is mounted further from the lens, so magnification would drop a little, whether it introduces other issues is hard to predict. If you already have the lens you can always try it out before buying a new port. The port designation indicates the nominal port length 87 vs 80 as you saw with the Z lens having around 7mm gap comapred to the F mount 105mm. Looking at the port chart if you happened to have a Macro port 60 you should be able to add a 20mm tube to get the equivalent of the macro port80. The port chart actually lists the macro port 60 plus a 30mm tube for F mount 105mm - which would leave about a 3mm gap. For that combo they show the same magnification and working distance for use with an SMC-2 on both macro port 87 and the Macro port 60 plus 30mm extension. You are looking at a 7mm gap versus a 3mm gap which doesn't seem like it will change things much. There's some discussion on the MFO mounting in the thread about using the full or reduced range on the 90mm Sony macro, discussing an adapter that comes with the lens to screw it in.

On the Zeiss macro the main point would be to check if it has the same impact it does on the 90 macro. I only say this because others are reporting in this thread they are pleased with how the MFO is auto-focusing with the 90mm macro, plus Alex Mustard is using it as well, though maybe with the A1 rather than the A7RV. It's always possible your 90mm is playing up. on the focus limiter, second post of this topic says that is what you should do. Infinity focuses on something just over 1 meter away with the MFO according to the port chart.

Yes it seems significantly heavier than my setup, the backpacks are a similar size and weight mine being 65mm narrower. Mine is lasted at 2 kg empty so not a lot of weight that could be saved. I pack mine with camera/lenses/housings/ports and batteries only. Other bits and pieces including strobe arms etc go in the checked bag. My OM-1 + housing is 2.6 kg while the R7 is 2.85, a bit heavier but not that much. I think you had the Supe zD-pro strobes, they are double the weight of my Z240s, but I seem to be carrying more lenses and ports than you do.

I can see the argument about AF getting better with the MFO, but not sure how it could make things worse? I think you said the sharpness improvement was there so it seems to working as advertised there, but I'm not sure how it could cause the camera/lens combo to hunt and be slow to AF, I may to be totally missing something But I would look in the direction of the camera/lens more so than the MFO as it is "just" a mild diopter with air/water correction turned on. You could perhaps try it with the Sony 50mm macro - it is on the port chart for the Panasonic (m43) 45mm macro so you would think it would work on either of the 50mm macros to see if it degrades the AF there as well. The other question is if you popped the MFO off during the dive to see if the the bare 90mm was an improvement? Perhaps a good first approach would be to compare camera/AF settings with others using the 90mm/A7RV combo.

Not a technical pack but shares some of the features like a waist belt and a sternum strap, I use the think tank Streetwalker harddrive pack, which meets carry-on dimensions but perhaps not the weight once it is loaded up. In the pack I've got Left to right: EM-1 MkII housing, spare batteries Macro port for 60mm macro, INON Z-240 x 2, Zen 170mm dome Zen 100mm dome for fisheye, Panasonic 8mm Fisheye, 60mm macro,Olympus 12-40, Panasonic 7-14 I also used to take my OM-1 housing, 140mm port/extension/n85-N120, macro port, 8-15 fisheye 60mm macro, 12-40 lens and strobes to PNG last year. Weight as shown is about 10-12 kg, it has a laptop sleeve under neath as well. I've had it at least 15 years now and still going strong.

I don't use Word, I've got Libre Open Office Write, here's copy and paste: This is a comment written in Libra open office Write checking to see if it will paste into Waterpixels It pasted but ignored an Indent on the second line. I just used Ctrl-C and then right click to paste. Not sure why it wouldn't work for you. I'm on Win10 and using Firefox.

No problem. On the topic of cyclones they are more likely at the end of the season than the beginning as water temperatures are lower then. The Water could still be cool in Fiji in November, though Thanksgiving is closer to December, cyclones south of the Equator are rarer then, but not unknown. Heard good things about Okinawa, however they do have a maximum age limit for diving, a potential issue for me, perhaps not for you. When I visited Lembeh it was second week of November and rain had just started, but it didn't impact us at all. Being close to the Equator you just have the wet and dry seasons and cyclones are not an issue.

It's been done with a Sony 1.4x, and the Canon 8-15 on Sony cameras as reported on this site, so I can't see a reason it won't work as long as the RF 1.4x plays well with the 8-15. There's quite a few sites saying it can't be done, citing the reason that the extenders have an extra tab on the bayonet which only matches the bayonets of compatible lenses. The Commlite adapter shown obviously is setup to deal with this issue, but other brands might not be. You would really need to give it a try to see if you can get it to work.

The better solution is to keep the ports wet, until you get back from the dive. For a dome, install the wet dome cover, for a flat port keep it under a damp towel or source a neoprene cover of some sort. If you have the option a dunk in a fresh water rinse tank is a good option, then continue to keep it wet using an old towel to cover everything. After soaking blow off excess water and use a microfibre towel to dry everything off. You can use an air pistol on your tank or at home I use a large blower bulb to get water out of grooves etc where it tends to accumulate.

see my post above, my friend reports he is using the DG AfD version on his Z8.

Welcome on board Maria, great to have you here.

Never used them either, I think I recall threads talking about using sheet filters to place between the WWL and port or inside. Note Magic filters don't recommend using their filters outside. Ballistically they allow you to shoot with a custom white balance and are well balanced between 5 and 15m depth maybe up to 20m. On the topic of blue filters, you lose a lot of flash power when using them as you lose light through both the blue filter and the magic filter. The flash acts like fill flash and doesn't really brighten up the image colours at all and will have the same look as your shots without flash , just the shadows are filled in. Basically you are trying the match the light spectrum of your strobes to ambient light at your current depth with the blue filters This is quite similar to the mixed light problem with video which has been discussed at great length on Wetpixel: https://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?/topic/69260-solving-the-mixed-light-problem/ The basic summary is the blue filter needs to be selected according to depth and match the magic/red filter and it only does this properly within a certain depth range. Hopefully you can access the old wetpixel site as it is blocked unless you are logged in. The result you get is balanced images but to me from some of the videos posted the the colours are a little muted. You can of course adjust WB in raw but you can only adjust it to ambient or flash lighting not both unless they match.

I've not been, a friend of mine Don Silcock had great success late last year, only references I can find online are his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AXMUUjrAf/ which has a series of photo posts, which you should be able to get to from the link, He doesn't mention specifically but appears he used Indigo Safais, which is also mentioned in this article from Walt Stearns: https://www.underwaterjournal.com/diving-with-the-sperm-whales-of-dominica/

Tried it out in the water a few days ago, and it worked seamlessly, zooming was as smooth as with a Nauticam gear on my 12-40mm.

The changeover is relatively easy in Singapore and there is a transit hotel inside security - kind of beats staying up to meet the 2:00 am flight out of Jakarta and trying to sleep on the 3-4 hour plane flight to Sorong. You could even spend a day or two in Singapore shopping and trying out the local food. Very easy to get around there.

There's all sorts of options available. Things to consider include that November is in Typhoon season, which could impact the Philippines. The seasons are quite variable throughout SE Asia depending upon how the Monsoon winds impact the area. In Thailand the wind is just switching to the NE Monsoon and it's starting the dry season for the main part of Thailand and beginning the wet season for the islands further south in the gulf of Thailand for example. In Indonesia, you've looked at Raja Ampat but there's quite the journey from NA. You could get to Lembeh Strait on Sulawaesi through a connection from Singapore on Scoot. Looks like a direct Vancouver - Singapore flight is available so that's a plus no transit in the US is probably a bonus. The diving there is always calm and not too much in the way of current. November through April with the change in winds you start to be able to access the reefs on the south side of Lembeh Island which have nice visibility and good conditions for diving around then. For example Divers lodge Lembeh goes out to sites on the south side: Divers Lodge LembehDiving in Lembeh Strait With Divers LodgeAt Divers Lodge Lembeh, we specialize in diving in the Lembeh Strait, an area known worldwide for macro photography and muck diving. I stayed there a few years back and enjoyed the diving- though be aware some of the sites have a lot of plastic pollution and there's a lot of stuff dumped in the water as it is right by quite a large city. Alternatively you could muck dive there and transfer to Banka or Bunaken on Sulawesi for reef dives. Some sites can have currents there. Another option might be PNG , though access is not the easiest. I dived Walindi last year and it features sea mounts in very deep water, currents not usually an issue. November is a good time there. Access via Sydney or Brisbane with a 3-4 hour flight to Port Moresby and a domestic connection to Hastings on New Britain. See: https://indopacificimages.com/papua-new-guinea/guide-to-diving-papua-new-guinea/guide-to-diving-new-britain/the-complete-guide-to-diving-kimbe-bay/ That site has an outline of the diving and logistics you really should be qualified for 30m and Nitrox helps with bottom times on the sea mounts. You could dive in Sydney as well on the way through if you came that way - good spot for Weedy Sea dragons. Water temperature about 18-20 that time of year , but subject to swell being low enough.. Any questions - let me know.

I believe you should be able to replace the glass/acrylic element in most ports I recall seeing a replacement element fro one of Nauticam's domes advertised on a website some time back. Best to contact your dealer to see what can be ordered. You would need to order a dome and a replacement seal - it's usually an o-ring. Of course if the dome is acrylic you may be able to polish it out.

If you don't mind cold water Sydney has great macro opportunities - though there is nothing like macro guides available. You could also find good things on the great Barrier Reef . I thought of Thailand, but the good health care is centered round Bangkok precisely where the good diving is not. The other thing to consider is if there are guides who are good at finding macro subjects, they can be notoriously hard to find. The other thing to consider is any restrictions that travel insurance might impose, not to mention that it's probably a little early right now to know how the pregnancy will pan out - that is to say if any conditions arise that increase risk.

I leave batteries in INONs almost all the time and I have had zero issues, diving 3-4 times per month over nearly 10 years. Springs also tend to fatigue from repetitive flexing flexing once and keeping it that way is less likely to cause an issue. With INONs at any rate you can replace the spring clips or work on them as they are a separate piece.

I keep forgetting the expense of doing anything with the N100 port system with the expensive adapters plus rings. They really need an N100 small dome so you could use something like the sigma fisheye lens and the sigma adapter. The flat port they offer is around the same price as a 4.33" N120 dome. The only native N100 dome is the 180mm dome or you can get a N100 WACP.

Depends on how fussy you are about image sharpness, 105mm is generally regarded as pretty good through a flat port and 60mm starts to show degradation towards the edges on full frame, but even the 105mm has some degradation which is part of the sales pitch for the new MFO to correct this. Something like 35mm is probably OK. In smaller formats a lot of people use 24-28mm equivalent lenses with flat ports, but would probably be pushing the limits of full frame. It gets progressively worse as focal length reduces and as you go from centre of frame to the edges. So there's no true line in the sand beyond which it suddenly becomes unacceptable. It also depends on what you want to shoot, 28-40mm range is a bit of a no mans land UW not particularly good at anything except perhaps fish portraits, so could be disappointing potentially. For not a lot more you could perhaps find a small dome and fisheye to do CFWA and wide angle macro shots, which may align better with your macro interests?

Thanks for the update

Doesn't seem that way when travelling and resorts in Asia set prices in $USD or Euros, the currency markets obviously has different ideas! But seriously, it's down to high markups by the distributors, small populations mean small markets and the distributor has effectively a protected monopoly to bring stuff in. It used to be really bad before but now prices seem to be set by the cost to import through grey channels more or less.

I find it generally better to compare horizontal fields as a lot of the stretching of the image in a fisheye is in the corners. As to whether a fisheye will be a good option -, it really depends on what you are shooting. I know Alex Mustard has chimed in a number of times with the view that just comparing fields doesn't give you the full story, it's the subject pop which brings it forward in the frame that is what you are after. As you zoom in this impact slowly goes away and is quite mild at the equivalent of the the WACP at it's widest. The WACP has similar distortion to a zoomed in fisheye. This table shows the fields of view at the extremes of the the 8-15 with 1.4x and the WACP. You can see this in zoom ratios. The 28-70 is a 2.5x zoom but in the WACP the zoom ration is 3.1x. Similarly the 8-15 is a 2x, but becomes 2.6x and this is at a reduced zoom range of 11-15 on the zoom ring. as an aside using the full zoom range on micro43 gives a 4.3x zoom ratio. This is due to progressively cropping the stretched corners, these corners stretch more the further you go from centre. You can see there is minimal overlap between the two in terms of horizontal field which is what sets what you can fit within the frame much of the time. I've added rectilinear equivalent focal lengths as well - this is the rectilinear focal length with the same horizontal field. In terms of fisheye effect, if you are at 15mm whether it's just the lens or it's the lens plus 1.4x (~11 on the zoom dial), the fisheye effect is there. As you zoom in it reduces because you are progressively cropping out the stretched corners.