Chris Ross

My take is it is more useful on FF than APS-C at least from what has been presented so far. Alex likes it specifically as a small increase in magnification. The EF 100mm increases magnification to 1.2x with the MFO. In one of the videos on close up lenses a while back Alex mentioned that his most used diopter was about a +3 unit and it had about a 1.2- 1.3x magnification and this was the original premise of the the MFO. The diopter Alex used was a standard 2 element doublet design, the MFO optics will be superior to this type of diopter more than likely as the MFO has built corrections for the flat port interface. The problem as you go up in magnification is specifically finding small enough subjects to use them on. If you stay at APS-C then you've already got a 1.6x crop factor over full frame if you use the same lens, so even less critters findable that can use that type of magnification.

Unfortunately the forum software reduces these images to 1200px wide - even if you donwload the image it's 1200 px wide. The best way to compare views seems to be as follows: Open link in dropbox go to top RH corner and choose magnification I picked 50% gives you a better sense of image sharpness I think Scroll around in top LH corner of each image to bring up a polyp that appears to be in focus. swap between tabs to compare. Here's a small crop snipped from each of 24 and 26 images side by side. I just picked an area with polyps that looked in focus. Top LH corner. To me there's not much to pick between them, maybe an edge to 24, you can make out texture on the polyp arm coming up towards mid frame.. Didn't include 28 as it has a quite different image scale.

Agree, when I first started I had the idea to use TTL as it works so well on land, but soon found manual was nowhere near as hard as it seemed, the key is recognize that the flash exposure remains constant if the distance doesn't change to your subject. Realistically for most macro subjects from fist sized down to small nudis, the distance doesn't change that much and as you get closer the increased magnification reduces the exposure somewhat (varies with the lens you use of course) which kind of compensates. The end result is I rarely change flash exposure very much on a dive - maybe only when I'm shooting something like the size of a weedy sea dragon and opening up the aperture to do that is viable as you don't need as much DOF.

Looks like a great project, presumably the idea is to get the rig neutral and move the weights to change from horizontal trim to pointing up/down. It's an interesting 3-dimensional balance problem, the weights/housing want to stay at the bottom and the floats want to stay at the top so it takes increasingly more torque to twist the whole rig to point upwards. I discovered how much using about 1.4kg of floats on my strobe arms with my rig - it was close to neutral but did not want to point up. The point is if your angles are small then it won't take much to change the trim but pointing something like 30-45° up will be more of a challenge. If you increase the weight of the balance weights to assist you need more buoyancy up top which makes things worse. I faced a similar issue balancing a fork-mount astronomical telescope - they work best if well balanced and you can point them anywhere in the sky and they will stay with only slight friction on the clutches when done properly. I had a smaller guide scope piggy-backed on top and to achieve balance I needed weights equivalent to the weight of the guide scope on the opposite side of the main scope and a much smaller sliding trim weight. Thinking about how to achieve something similar if that's your aim you would need to split your flotation 50/50 between above and below the housing. An additional complication is if you have lights on arms, the balance will change every time you move them. The solution might then be to make the lights neural with a float collar on each of them. You could for example make your lights neutral, then balance the housing with buoyancy split between the arms for the lights and the other 50% strapped to in the inside of your rails. you could move the bottom floats back and forward to help with front/back trim. Just some thoughts on how to make it balanced in most positions.

The CMC-1 is slightly more powerful than the SMC-1 as I recall and the CMC-2 a bit less powerful. In previous versions of the port charts there were a few lenses listed with both SMC and CMC and you could see slightly more magnification with the CMC-1 compared to SMC-1.

Did you read the MFO thread? mixed opinions there but seems most useful for full frame, though it does add an extra lick of magnification which may be useful depending on your subject.

The issue is the D2000 won't sync without the magnet, you can buy replacements. Might be easier to just start using the MF-2. it will force you to use manual, though it's really only a macro flash. If you do nay wide angle , you will need a different strobe/strobes.

Good to hear you are getting it sorted. What was the damage for the housing service? Assume it's a Nauticam?

You didn't say which camera you were using, generally it has to be set up correctly along with the trigger and the strobe. The camera knows nothing about the strobe and the strobe nothing about the camera so all settings need to be sorted out. If you have an MF-2 and don't have an Olympus camera and you want to use the MF-2, manual is the only game in town unfortunately. I think if you want to make use of the MF-2 you probably need to bite the bullet and work out how to use manual and you might as well do that now with the D-2000 as well. An outline of manual mode - first on the camera set it to manual SS/Aperture, pick your aperture maybe f11 on a Sony APC-C maybe 13-16 on FF, choose your ISO. Shutter speed should start at your flash sync speed assuming macro and no ambient contribution Set your trigger to manual - I assume this will only emit a single flash from your trigger - No pre-flash Set the strobe to manual and pick a high to mid range setting. On the D-2000 you want the magnet in. Take a photo with the rig setup in a mirror pointing the strobe straight ahead - you should see the flash in the image. This confirms sync. Take a test shot of a small 3D object about the size of your usual subject - setup on a table so you can repeat easily and adjust exposure up or down till you get the subject properly exposed. This is you starting exposure for macro. For things around this distance that exposure stays constant . If you double the distance from the strobe either open up one stop or increase flash power one stop. For wide angle with the D2000 try it out at maximum on the dial without going around to full power on the mode dial. If you are using the MF-2 on manual it reads the first exposure to work out if it needs a take into account a pre-flash or not. Until you get used to things keep your aperture constant and just adjust flash strength - it's one less thing to think about - once you feel confident start moving the aperture around if desired.

There's some discussion of using the 140mm dome with the 10mm in the thread on the Laowa 10mm here: If I recall correctly @DreiFish did some testing of the lens as well, might have been in a 180mm dome.

No worries on the info. The video AF it seems is a little neglected and nowhere near as good as stills AF. I suspect it's because with stills it can use the AF pixels, take the data needed for AF and subject tracking and refresh the sensor and take the shot, while video it has to work with the the data stream coming from the sensor. primarily MF is used in video to stop it hunting if the AF points moves off subject.

This is really comparing apples and oranges, a 12mm rectilinear lens lens is nowhere near as wide as a fisheye lens and doesn't have the fisheye barrel distortion which makes closeby objects in the centre of the frame pop from the background which appears to recede. The frame width is about 112° with the 12mm and 144° with the fisheye at 15mm. Using the Nikon adapter for an F mount lens on a Z camera is not a problem, it only acts as a spacer and doesn't impact image quality at all. Very wide rectilnear lenses also have an odd perspective effect with objects on the edge of the field seeming very large, this was discussed on the post about the Laowa 10mm lens. This doesn't mean it's a bad lens - just has different characteristics to a fisheye. Fisheye lenses are popular UW for good reason.

Thanks Tim, don't believe the patches are available in Australia, only the pill form is available. I believe the concern was that the patches did not reliably provide the dosage required if I read the article correctly. it says: "which has been used internationally for motion sickness but has been unavailable in Australia due to issues with manufacturers unstable delivery mechanisms. " I'm guessing it delivered too much initially for them to ban it. Wonder if that may be something that makes this problem worse? I got pretty bad sea sickness on a (rather rough) the trip out to Rowley Shoals and we had a doctor on board who suggested I double the dosage ( I'm a fairly big guy) Really noticed the drying of the mouth compared to just one pill when we did a second open ocean leg and seemed more effective. Of course check with your doctor before doing this. With hindsight a better solution to sea sickness may have been to not have dinner that night - much better after it came back up again!

Hello and welcome, hope you find the forums useful. Regarding posting we are primarily here to help people solve issues and have UW photo questions answered, the Classifieds is a bonus for our members to off load gear they no longer need and a chance to pickup gear at a good price. We require 3 posts which is not particularly onerous. Once you have posted your introduction you can browse the forums and answer any questions you have an opinion on. Initially you are locked out of all forums apart from the intro forum and feedback and this unlocks everything bar the classifieds forum when you have made your introduction. We have had a lot of scammers try and join recently and we find this is a good way to weed them out. Regarding the post you made in feedback, I would suggest posting that in Classifieds once you have your 3 posts up, feedback forum doesn't get a lot of traffic.

The solution to me is simple don't dive there, I know it has some things that are somewhat Unique but still. Easier for me to say when I can land in Indonesia after an 8 hour flight compared to 14 hours to the US and connecting down a welcome like that.

To clarify further a dome in itself is not sharp, the results you get are the combination of the specific lens and the dome. Some rectilinear lenses will work better in the 180mm dome than others. For example the Canon EF 16-35 lenses are quite soft in the corners with the 180mm dome and work much better in the 230mm dome, but even there the corners have some softness. The newer Sony lenses in this zoom range actually perform quite well behind the 180mm dome. It's not that the 8-15 won't work with a 180mm dome it just won't be as good particularly in the corners compared to the 140mm. Depending on your usage (if you are shooting big animals in open water with only water in the corners for example) you might find you are happy with the results. Typically the port charts show that the 180mm dome needs 10mm less extension than the 230mm dome. However the limitation when deciding extension with the 8-15/180mm dome will be vignetting rather than placing the entrance pupil correctly. The geometry of the dome which is not a full hemisphere means that the entrance pupil is forward of the optimal position to avoid vignetting. The dome is designed such that a lens at the centre of curvature can see the field of a 16mm rectilnear lens. Any wider and it needs to move forward to avoid the vignette. What this means in simple terms is that you will need at least 10mm less extension but will need to test to check if it vignettes which can be checked on land. Even if you do this you will only be able to use the lens at 15mm, it will vignette badly and the dome port shade will appear in the image if you try to use the lens at 8mm.

Hola and welcome to waterpixels, it's good to have you here.

The other thing with the Nauticam trigger is that it can do up 1/400 flash sync speed on Olympus as it does not report to the camera as a flash, I'm not sure that the other triggers could do this. They would need to be able to turn off TTL mode and not report to the camera to do so. Note this is not HSS - it just exploits the shutter travel time which actually allows shutter speeds this high to be used. The advantage if that you don't lose power through HSS, though some strobes with a long flash duration may not quite reach full power. For some reason Olympus lock out shutter speed above 1/250 I expect it may be because you can't always reach fill power or perhaps it can only work in manual with first curtain sync or some similar limitation.

As Wolfgang has said, Nauticam do not recommend the 180mm dome with the fisheye as it is not a full sphere and requires the lens to be positioned well forward of the centre of curvature of the dome. Fisheyes are surprisingly tolerant of this, though I believe they will lose some field of view though you may be OK with this. A bigger problem is that the dome shade is not removable on the 180mm I believe - which means you won't be able to use the circular fisheye (8mm) as the dome shade will be in the pic. The 140mm dome is the recommended dome for this lens, you need to be sure to order the version with the removable shade. The 230mm dome also works but it also is not quite a hemisphere, though the mis-positioning is not quite so bad compared to the 180mm as the 230mm is closer to a full hemisphere. An alternative to the 140mm dome is the Zen 100mm dome, some people use this combo although the edges may not be as good as the 140mm dome. Again fisheyes are quite tolerant of smaller domes and the there is apparently no improvement using the bigger 230mm dome, probably as the lens has to be positioned a little forward of the centre of curvature. The 100mm dome is good for CFWA work as you can get closer to the subject. On the question of the 1.4x TC this is included in the port charts and requires 20mm more extension and also the appropriate zoom gear if you choose to use one. The lens is either 8mm or 15mm on full frame, the in between focal lengths are oddly vignetted and some people just set the lens at 15mm and leave it there if not planning on using the 8mm end. It's all in the port charts for the recommended ports and this data is in the N120 EF port chart that Wolfgang linked.

That's pretty bad if that's what happened. Don't know what your boat arrangement is but I generally have the crew take my camera get out then as soon as I've dropped by dive gear go and grab the housing to keep other people doing bad things to it. When travelling I've been taking a collapsible cooler bag, on the local dive boat in Sydney I have my own tub, so I can look after the gear myself. I know it's 20/20 hindsight, but I'd much prefer to be the one looking after my gear on the boat.

It'll certainly work on an APS-C unit. Feel free to drop a PM.

I don't know that the 15-45 would necessarily be sharper than the 10-24 in a dome, only could happen if it was significantly sharper in air at least in the centre. Having said that rectilinear lens is not really a substitute for something like the WWL which has barrel distortion and goes wider and I expect probably focuses closer, though at 240mm min focus the 10-24 shouldn't be too bad. I would also try to check why it showing a black dot, try pointing it into a light source and taking an image to see if it flares and try as Dave suggests to see if will polish off. Also give your dealer a call to see if you can get a quote for replacing the dome. I see a complete WWL-C is cheaper than a 180mm dome in N100.

I tried using it to see if I could focus stack UW and it behaved quite differently there as it was on electronic shutter I think and fired very slowly, but clicking for each frame it behaved quite differently, like it was saying you can't possibly expect me to keep up with sequential shooting even though it was barely discharged and would have fired if you could click the shutter button fast enough.

sure no problem I think the main expense then would be domes to house them as they will need a bigger dome than the 10-17 - but maybe you already have that.

I know it's crazy expensive and annoying, but I'd still encourage you include it in an analysis to work out the best value of any rig you set up, you are still cheaper than your full frame option in Nauticam and FF doesn't readily allow you to use something like the Tokina 10-17. A quick back of the envelope calc shows camera/housing/adapter to be $1500 less than and R6II plus housing and $5K less than an R5II with housing all in Nauticam and that's before considering you would need to buy new lenses, maybe extensions etc to get a fisheye solution in FF. It's too bad Isotta doesn't do an R7 housing. All new prices pulled from the web in Australia. For info the way the Nauticam setup works is that you use the R100 Canon port chart which advises that you use the N100-N120 adapter then refer to the Canon EF N120 port chart where you use the same ports/extension rings and zoom gear that used with your previous housing and lenses. So if you went that way it you would only need the Housing/camera/N100-N120 adapter plus a flash trigger and you could kick off using your existing lenses. It's hard to see anything else competing as anything else needs new lenses and possibly ports. You could get an OM-1 for similar money including buying the macro port and lens but you'd still need an expensive N85-N120 adapter and a couple more bits and pieces to get a complete setup. So if you plan to use your existing EF macro and Tokina 10-17 I think It's probably no contest for the r7 solution and biting the bullet on the expensive adapter, compared to anything else you might do. You are missing a video lens, and while fisheyes and video aren't a common combo and I have seen many times people say something around a 16mm rectilinear is good for video and the Tokina zoomed between a 16-22mm equivalent would probably be fine for wide angle video as the fisheye distortion is equivalent to what you get with a WWL which many people use for video quite happily. The barrel distortion decreases quite dramatically as you zoom in.