Chris Ross

I assume you are trying to work out if you can use a Tokina 10-17 in an AOI housing with an OM-5 with the OM-D port system that goes with that housing. If you look at the AOI port chart you will see that the 8mm fisheye uses the 22mm extension with the DLP-01/02. If you look at the Nauticam charts you will the 8mm fisheye uses a 17mm extension with the 140mm port and to use the 10-17mm on a metabones speed booster you need the 34.7mm adapter and a 10mm extension to use with the same dome. Based on this for AOI you need (34.7 + 10 = 44.7) - 17mm = 27.7mm more extension than the 8mm fisheye to use the tokina lens with AOI. SO a total of 22 + 27.7 = 49.7mm. OM-D ports only have two extensions 22 and 52mm and the Pen ports only offer 24 and 34mm extensions. The 52mm might work but it could vignette. If you could go to a store that has the housing and extensions in stock you could try them out - you can tell if vignettes on land in the shop if you put it all together. A safer course might be to go with an Isotta or Nauticam housing it's more expensive but they have a full range of extensions to work with. The 10-17mm will work perfectly well in the Nauticam 4.33" & 140mm domes, the Zen 100mm dome and the Isotta 4.5"dome. I use the Canon 8-15 on my OM-1 with a 140mm dome on Nauticam. It's quite expensive to adapt these lenses on that system but the Isotta will be significantly cheaper. From everything I hear the Metabones speed-booster/smart adapter is the better option for adapting canon mount lenses to Olympus. The smart adapter is for the Canon 8-15 while the speed booster gives a 7-11mm fisheye with a Tokina 10-17.

One thing that seems to be quite a negative to me for Sony is the flash connector, there have been a few posts around the fragility of that connector with those tiny pins that are used to make contact. I'm wondering if it could be connected to that? Why it would be random I don't know, but it could be a marginal connection there?

The mini flash works quite well as a manual trigger set at 1/64 power on my OM-1 and with the larger batteries in the OM-1 and EM-1 series battery drain is a non issue when used at 1/64 power and recycle is very quick. SO if you only want to trigger strobes in manual it makes a perfectly acceptable trigger. It will also work in RC mode to trigger compatible flashes. I've never used anything else UW.

I would suggest you are approaching this a little bit backwards. You are happy with what the A7RV produces on land and want to see how it compares to your A6300 UW. First thing I would suggest is take the same shot above water with A6300 and your UW lens to compare to what you get out of the A7RV. This will show what sort of improvement is possible. Next I would look at what your camera can resolve: 61 MP - 9504 x 6336 pixels - 807 x 536mm @ 300 dpi 24.4 MP - 6000 x 4000 - 508 x 338 mm @ 300 dpi The 24.4 MP image will 594 x 396 @ 256 dpi it's not a big deal to up-res an image from this to 300 dpi for printing. A2 is 594 x 420mm. Next I would look at expectations, guidelines for printing at larger sizes are about viewing at normal viewing distances. An A4 print viewed for example in an album probably needs higher resolution than a large print on a wall viewed from further back. If you want to look at a very big print from very close distance that's a different story. On the subject of what makes a good print - this is somewhat subjective but the examples you posted just won't make good prints they are muddy and lack contrast. Your eye adjusts for this when you are underwater but the camera doesn't. Contrast is needed for the impression of sharpness. I downloaded your shot of the goatfish with the coral and while the foreground exposure looks good, there is something weird going on. There is a lot of colour noise there, like something odd going on with the processing. Hope you don't mind , i downloaded this image and processed it a little adding some contrast. Could you confirm what camera settings you used and what processing you did? Did you say this was with a 12mm Touit lens?: Taking a 100% crop from the image that was downsized 4800 px across: Looks like something odd going on with the processing on this image. I would suggest before leaping down a new camera path you have a look at how you are shooting and processing with your current camera? That level of colour noise really shouldn't be present, it looks like you are quite shallow and at typical settings I would think the water should be quite noise free for a shot like this. I would suggest you need to get this sorted before looking into prints or upgrades.

Several things can cause problems with syncing - not dealing with the pre-flash properly is one. If you are in manual at high power if the pre-flash triggers the strobe it could exhaust the capacitor. Another is a optic fibre cable issues. Is it every now and then one exposure doesn't sync or is more like mostly it works but on some dives it gives problems for that dive?

Looking at the port charts it's about 50mm long, that's how much extension you add to a 180mm dome port to use with lenses that are used in the 6"dome. Bear in mind that the 180mm and this dome include some amount of extension in that tapered section above the section outlined in the red square compared to ports that have a flat back like the 230 and 140mm ports.

This is correct, I believe the OP is already aware that the the larger port has an advantage for over - under shots. If you are not planning over unders, the small ports are fine for the fisheye lens.

Standard sizes are generally around 200mm arm segment lengths. On the topic of floats, for the same buoyancy - float arms and stix floats plus regular arm take up the same volume and weight would be quite similar. For example 3 stix jumbo floats are 6.5 x 6.5 x 5.0 x 3 is 633 cm3 for 543 gr buoyancy 90 pr weight in air. Place these on a 220 mm INON at 85 gr air 50 gr water. It weighs 175 gr with 493 gr buoyancy. An Isotta 180mm x 70mm float arm is 692cc and has 540 gr of buoyancy (assumes a 70 x 180mm cylinder) the dry weight might be a bit heavier than a 180mm UCLS or Nauticam arm section plus the stix floats, but it may be around 75-100 grams heavier. Estimated weight in air is 245 gram. Weight savings for 2x stix arm compared to 2 x Isotta arms about 140 gr. I use float arms and pack them with my dive gear generally.

I should add that the min focus distance grows quite a bit on at the tele end to 45cm. Probably not ideal for UW work. The 12-40 and 12-45 lenses are better suited to UW use as the focus much closer.

A Manual flash trigger might be a solution? If it doesn't recognise the trigger as a flash then it won't restrict shutter speeds. You could then point the strobes away till you want to use them again. The Nauticam manual trigger for example allows the Olympus cameras to shoot at higher than flash sync speed this way.

Thanks so much Alex!

The AOI port chart specifies the 52mm extension ring to use the 12-100 lens. I see no reason it wouldn't work well with the correct dome setup, the 12-40 and 12-45 lenses work quite well, the issue is situations when you might to use a 12mm lens. I use a 12-40mm lens with a 170mm dome port, images are nice, but it mostly gets used around Sydney in temperate waters, for many situations you might need to back off too far to frame subjects with a 12mm lens meaning more water between you and your subject and the strobes are further back. I don't see the 12-100 being any different.

Not a lot of people adapt the Nikon 8-15mm, but a great many adapt the Canon 8-15 usually on Metabones. Historically it seems the Canon lenses have been easier to adapt and only recently have Nikon adapters appeared. I have heard some say that that the Canon is the sharper lens - it really is an excellent optic. Many people use it with the 140mm dome - the 230mm doesn't give any advantage, possibly partly because it is not a full hemisphere. Nauticam recommend the 140mm dome as most optimum. A cheaper option might be the Sigma 15mm fisheye in Canon EF mount on a metabones or sigma adapter, if you don't feel the need for the circular fisheye. The standard setup is as recommended by Nauticam in the port charts. The last line item on the chart for Sony is the N100-N120 35.5mm port adapter for all Canon EF lenses. You use the 35.5mm adapter plus the extensions/dome recommended for the lens in the Canon EF port charts, the Nauticam zoom gear also matches up with the control knob on the adapter. So the recommended setup for the Canon lens is 30mm extension plus 140mm dome with the 35.5mm adapter. Nikon would use the 20mm extension ring as per the Nikon F mount port chart. As mentioned by RVbldr the side knob on the adapter works but feels coggy and sometimes disengages, my example ( on m43-EF adapter) required inward pressure to avoid dis-engaging the gear. Just doesn't seem as smooth as other lenses which use the housing zoom control knob. Some people just set the lens at 15mm and leave it there unless they specifically plan to use the 8mm end for circular fisheye images. The lens is effectively either a 15mm or an 8mm lens - in between on full frame the corners vignette and the resulting image looks alittle odd.

Hi everyone, Announcing that today our 1000th member joined the Waterpixels community. New member@Grega signed up to the forum a couple of hours ago becoming our 1000th member to signup. A warm welcome to Grega! Thanks to all those who have signed up since we started in Dec 2023. We reached our 500th member Feb 2024 and have seen a continuous stream of people signing up since then. It's everyone's contributions to the site and willingness to share experiences that has allowed the site to continue growing. Look forward to everyone's ongoing contributions and to many new members coming onboard.

Possibly a little early as it's newly released. The port chart shows the details of magnification and focus distance: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FmfFKRmxF8aFsCdF97nBk1QIIAVbjlsI/view

The extension required for the N120 170mm Zen dome is the same as that required for their 230mm dome based upon inspection of their port charts. Looking at a couple of lenses it seems the Nauticam 230mm dome and the Zen 230mm dome have the same dimensions and and the same recommended extensions. If you look at a few lenses in the EF port chart you'll see that the 140mm dome and the 230mm dome recommend the same extensions. In this topic people have been using the 35mm lens in question in the 140mm dome with no extension. Logically then the 170mm dome with no extension should give equivalent performance. You can also do some calculations on placing the dome centre of curvature at the lens entrance pupil. This involves basic trigonometry once you know where the entrance pupil is. There's lots of website to show how to find the entrance pupil/nodla point/no parallax point of a lens. You can also take a split shot in a tub shooting a stick or a board above and below water The stick should be straight through the water surface. This topic includes this method:

might be a good solution for you to try the wired connection. It's a 36 mile trip from MIA to Reef Photo which could work if you land at right time of day and day of the week. Their website says they help accommodate you within reason to get gear, suggest you contact them if you decide to go that way.

If no flash symbol shows up and apparently the trigger is not recognized by the camera as a flash, this is the behavior expected of the Nauticam manual flash trigger. Basically the camera internally closes a switch connected with the shutter release timed so that it syncs with shutter first curtain. If this is the case it implies that there is nothing that can be done on the camera end and it lies within the trigger. I think it also implies that any sort of pre-flash logic is not the issue. If the camera is X-syncs like a regular camera it uses a single electro mechanical switch to signal to the flash trigger to light up and bypasses any other logic in the camera. I note you say an electrical connection works fine - presumably this is using a flash hotshoe connection to have a cable connected to the socket on the flash (no fibre optics involved). So this is completely leaving the flash trigger out of the equation if I understand correctly. THis also points to the flash trigger as your problem. It basically confirms the switch in the camera closes for every frame to trigger the flash.

A Nauticam manual flash trigger should just work from the x-sync contacts, this is why they allow for example the olympus cameras to sync at higher than rated shutter speed. Does the Z8 recognise the trigger as a flash - that is to say does it show any of the flash functions in the menus? When working with fibre optics both the camera/trigger and the flash need to be set correctly. If I recall correctly the Z8 doesn't have a shutter so may not have classic x-sync contacts, but check if the camera recognizes a flash as being connected, If it doesn't the fault seems like it must lie in the trigger. If it is recognised by the camera then maybe some adjustments in the camera might help?

If you would like to test the YS-D2 strobes electrically, it sounds like you have access to ikelite cables, if this is the case you can simulate manual triggering by the cables without the camera by following this FAQ from Ikelite: Wiring Diagrams + Test Firing Strobes Find your cable and bridge the terminals they recommend to fire the flash - you can use a paper clip to do this. Do not use the TTL converter - just attach the cable to your strobe and set it manual - no pre-flash mode. If you try this test and the strobe won't fire at full power it seems there is a problem with your strobes. Regarding Olympus I use an EM-1 Mkii and the mini-flash unit that came with it to trigger my INON Z240 through fibre optics. On the camera it is manual exposure, manual flash set at 1/64 power. Double check red eye reduction is off and that's it. On the flash you want the non pre-flash single lightning bolt option. For the Sony flash triggering - I assume you are using a trigger to fire your strobes, You can set the WL mode as suggested above. You could also check if the previous owner changed the custom mode of these strobes. Go to the back of the manual to find out how to change this to the right setting for your camera. It shouldn't matter for manual triggering but it can't hurt either to set it to the recommended setting.

As I suspected, though I'm not sure what the basis for saying it is not compatible is as it clearly works with a 20mm extension and will be quite close to the correct position for your lens. Without actually having your dome in hand it looks to have the same dome shade as mine and the adapter adds about 10mm of extension, so it is pretty close to the right extension for your Olympus 8mm. Perhaps the translation of their response is we haven't done the testing/measurements for your lens and this particular version of the dome?

Did you have a look to see what the image quality was like? Cheap diopters were renowned for making images a little mushy. Better quality diopters like those from B&W have a better reputation.

I wouldn't assume that the USB socket is immune to shorting, The salt water is certainly enough to make a connection between two wires. There's two components to make a phone waterproof, first the physical seal that prevents water ingress, second electrical protection so that shorts do not impact the device. for example an iphone: If you see a liquid-detection alert on your iPhone - Apple Support detects water and shuts down the charging port. It allows it to be rated IP68 which withstands 6m or water for 30 minutes. An OM-1 is rated IP53 which is resistant to water spray from "certain angles" - not submersible, so I expect doesn't have this protection. I believe OM is the only camera maker to have IP ratings on its cameras. And the camera is the one that needs to be resistant. Above someone mentions they shorted their Canon R5. So yes it will short if wet. But again as you say it's low risk, I only raise this as I have seen a lot of people be quite cavalier with their housings and a bit of simple attention to the cap o-ring will make this a lot less likely.

I'm not sure what this one actually is, but the solution is less extension. I think there are lmited extensions available in N85 so possibly a 20mm? I measured 22mm from the dome shade, this one has ~22mm from seam below the dome shade to the flange.

based on experience 1.8kg is a lot of lift. I tried out using about that much lift on my system with float arms and it created a lot of torque trying to point the rig upwards or downwards, the big floats did not want to sink. I had two 670 gr and two 210 gr float arms (1760 gr total). I found it unmanageable and pulled the two 210 gr arms swapping to standard arms and it worked better. You could try it out with two 650 gram INON mega float M arms, they are reasonably priced. You'll probably need long clamps at the middle joint to use them effectively. It's probably worse with macro as you need fine control of the pointing, If you want to get close to neutral with that much lift needed I think you need to place some bouyancy on the housing itself - something like a 200-400 gram block of foam under the housing tray. Note too that to cancel out this much UW weight you are looking at a volume about equal to a giant 2l bottle of soft drink, no matter which type of buoyancy you use. - it's not small.