Chris Ross

The standard approach on Nauticam housings for adapted lenses has been to specify a port adapter which allows use of the Canon port charts as well as using the Canon zoom gears directly. I seem to recall in the past older versions of the n85 port chart included this line item for Sony N85, but it is not there on current versions. For the 60mm macro I see the lens specs state the lens is 73mm in OD and this means it won't fit through an N85 port, the macro ports are 70mm ID, so you would be looking at combining an N85 - N120 adapter with an N120 port. This port adapter is listed to allow use of the Tokina 10-17 lens: https://www.nauticam.com/collections/port-adapters/products/n85-to-n120-60mm-port-adaptor-for-sony-e-mount-system However it doesn't say which port it designed to be used with and the port chart for Sony N85 does not include this option. You best bet might be to contact Nauticam to confirm if there is an N85 - N120 converter which allows use of EF lenses on the metabones adapter on Sony N85. If you confirm this then the Canon port chart can be used to specify which ports and extensions to use.

I had a look in Picture information extractor, which seems to include all of the mode information from Olympus cameras and I couldn't find it there. It seems to reliably extract the focus distance both in metres and in focus step count, which you could probably use to infer the mode: Below is a the reading from a shot taken on full range mode: It shows different focus step counts for near and infinity - so it looks like you could infer it from those readings?

i would start with macro photography using the capabilities of the 90mm first which will get you up to 1:1. this covers a scene 36 x 24mm and the depth of field is already razor thin. As you add diopters you add an additional degree of difficulty with holding the depth of field on the right spot on your subject. an additional problem is finding suitable small subjects which can take some practice depending on what can be found on your divesites. once you master that maybe start with a +5 and work towards smaller subjects. In the wetpixel live video on this subject Alex Mustard mentioned his most used diopter was the lowest power one.

best bet is probably a used Z-240. Much easier to keep them on the same setting so the illumination is the same from both sides when used conventionally with a strobe on each side and symettrical.

Regarding the INON , a review here of the original Nauticam and it mentions it's better than the INON: https://wetpixel.com/articles/thoughts-on-viewfinders-and-mini-review-nauticam-45-degree Sounds like the original Nauticam 45° can work OK on the Z8 but other makes may not have that option. I have an original Nauticam 45 and the corners of my EM-1 MkII and my OM-1 are a bit blurry.

Ikelite is not really setup for fibre optic triggering their wired TTL system is their "thing". The only reliable way to do it would do it would be to find an optical bulkhead -something like this: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4455817 I know that UW technics will provide a optical bulkhead something like the link above for the Sea Frogs housings, however unlikely to fit an Ikelite housing as they use imperial threads while the rest of the world is metric. I do see they offer a TTL optical bulkhead for Canon only, maybe a Sony one is might appear? Note though they only talk about fibre optic triggering of Ikelite strobes so you would need to confirm it would work with any other strobes. You best bet would be to contact Pavel to see if he can provide a suitable bulkhead for Ikelite.

If you are using the light with the go-pro the light would have to be close to the go-pro with a triple clamp and would definitely light up any particles. You could consider mounting the go -pro in the hotshoe and mount the light from one of the housing handles - or is you have strobe arms mounted you can get ball mounts that attach part way along the arms. this way the laight can be off to the side of the go-pro. lots of methods to attach a light to an arm here: https://reefphoto.com/blogs/lighting/i-want-to-add-a-strobe-to-my-housing-what-arms-do-i-need?srsltid=AfmBOooyXy8u63TueWYsg6pyOlUJ6pPsybqWOMXKXAHWgHdbLfJPTZ6a The quad ball might work well on the S&S at it has T plates I believe: https://www.bluewaterphotostore.com/xit-404-quad-ball-adapter-kit-w-2-ball-mts/

The new viewfinders are designed for the electronic viewfinders of newer mirrorless cameras, which are physically larger so need a viewfinder with a larger field of view to render them sharp across the frame. The net result is the older viewfinders are blurry in the corners on the newer mirrorless cameras. The older viewfinders are fine on DSLRs generally.

The screen is supposed to be flippable: https://www.retra-uwt.com/products/retra-flash-pro-max?srsltid=AfmBOooOSX45hVriyk1kCezfA8lVTTvdBWtdCbm7l-Tu0dXEQsKtQ9Bd it says: "You can also flip the LED screen on the Retra Flash Pro Max by 180°, allowing you to use it in any orientation." I assume it should be in the manual, otherwise contact Oscar by PM, he's generally very helpful.

Welcome aboard Jon, good to have you here.

Sea Frogs is a you get what you pay for situation, dome and extension choice is limited. The setup will take photos and generally work as you expect but the image quality may vary depending on which lens combination you are looking at. The min focus distance is 28cm and the Nauticam port charts recommend a 230mm dome, there is every indication that that lens needs the big dome to give its best.

The entrance pupil is where the aperture blades appear to be. It can however be a bit tricky translating that to a spot on the lens barrel for calculations, but should be possible to get reasonably close. There are various ways of determining its position including , looking it up on the Pano tools database, https://wiki.panotools.org/Entrance_Pupil_Database#Entrance_Pupil_Measurements testing for the nodal point as described on a number of websites or eye-balling it by looking into the lens. As to what lens to use it is basically determined by reach - how close the animal allows you get to it and this will vary by location - shark feeding shots, they could be very close and some manta feeding stations or they might be quite shy. For shy creatures something in the range of a 16-35 or 14-28 lens range is normally suggested or a WWL variant with a lens that allows some reach, 28-60 with a WWL gives equivalent to about a 14-30mm lens. The fisheye is generally judged to be not have the reach for shier sharks in particular, even if you were to use a fisheye I wouldn't de-fish it, sharks, mantas etc will look fine shot with a fisheye.

Welcome on board, hope you enjoy the site!

This is the correct "dictionary" definition of vignetting. Probably best to clarify the cause when referring to this phenomenon as you can't "fix" this type of vignetting which is caused by the limited image circle of the lens, while classic vignetting can be solved possibly by changing extensions or in some cases removing the dome shade.

You could also use the WWL-C, it's on the port charts and it weighs 1.05kg (vs 1.4kg for WWL-1) and is 156 dia x 78mm with an integrated buoyancy collar. It requires a different N50 port but it has less zoom range, the reported zoom range is 130-112° (24-30mm zoom). This compares to the WWL-1 which gets 130-99° coverage (zooms 28-40mm). The WWL-C would give you the equivalent of around a 14-20mm lens field of view on the LX-100 II, based on horizontal field of view.

I'm not sure such a table has been developed. One of the few sites comparing Nauticam and INON can be found in the this video: You can use this information to place the magnification of the INON lenses against the Nauticam lenses. You can compare the CMC and SMC by combing the port charts in particular the magnifications of the CMC and SMC lenses on the same lens the EF 100mm macro can be found in Canon RF port chart here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bvM2qfMy_r1Z4TNP5mH2ojJztrSv6tcF/view It allows you to see the relative differences in magnification on the 4 Nauticam offerings, combining with the above video data to see where the INON lenses fit in regards to magnification. It won't give you the exact magnification of any of the lenses but will allow you to rank them. The fact that they are on different lenses and sensor formats doesn't really matter , the best that can be done without conducting a full scale test would be to rank them in order of magnification and then use the more complete data in the Nauticam port chart to estimate where other options might lie in comparison.

Probably not many who have shot both your candidate cameras. Probably also depends on which lens you are using. I shot for some time with the EM-1MkII and found the AF pretty good and used C-AF plus tracking UW. I'm now using the OM-1 UW and it seems to snap into focus fairly well, I find C-AF works quite OK. Much of my shooting is on reefs around Sydney in temperate waters where mild surge is a near constant challenge. I get a decent hit rate on tiny pygmy pipe horses swaying in the surge among weed, hydroids and other fixed life. I don't shoot a lot of fish portraits but when I do I seem to have a reasonable hit rate, mostly with the 60mm macro lens. Here's a larger fish, a Rainbow Cale, about 180mm long, shot with OM-1/60mm macro 1/160 @f10 ISO200: And here's some southern Hula fish, same setup and settings, these little fish about 80-100mm long squirm a lot as their name suggests. my hit rate on them is probably not as high: Last, here's a pygmy pipe horse, which was swaying back and forth in the surge along with the growth you can see in the shot, these are about 50mm long and 5-6mm diameter. Same setup/settings:

The RF-EF converter does not change the position of the entrance pupil relative to the sensor for EF lenses, so you can use the same EP distance in your calculations. The 1.4x or 2x however does move the relative position and you need additional extension equal to the flange-flange length of the tele-converter. I'm assuming you are talking about change of entrance pupil position as the 8-15 lens zooms, it appears to be a minimal change for this lens.

The main difference for UW photo purposes is you don't need to use microscope mode for macro. Microscope mode imposes some limitations compared to be able to use Av. On the TG-6 you can use supermacro AF which basically means you can between shooting larger subjects and small subjects without changing modes. Probably a good advantage for a camera you want to use when you cant use your full rig.

The missing data is what focal length you shot at, you need to zoom into 10mm on APS-C to get the full 180° diagonal, or whatever field you get with the 8-15 at 15mm and at a 1.2x crop need to zoom into I estimate 12.5mm to fill the frame. The fields of view would be: 1.2x crop horizontal vertical diagonal 12.5 147 94 178 13 141 90 169 15 120 78 143 APS-C 10 144 92 180 13 107 70 132 15 92 61 112 You can see on APS-C the field is very close to a WWL at 13mm zoom and at 15mm on the 1.2x crop you are slightly wider than a WWL. 15mm zoom on APS-c lands you with a similar field to an 18mm rectilnear across the frame. The projection of a WWL is very similar to that of a zoomed in fisheye lens and people often use the Nauticam wet optics for video. The very worst distortion is in the corners on a fisheye and this rapidly reduces as you zoom in. I would think a full 180° fisheye would be an issue on video - on reefs you have fish coming from all angles and if one swam in from a corner it would change shape quite dramatically as it crossed the field. On the WWL and zoomed in fisheye the corner distortion is less extreme and changes in fish or other subject size is not noticeable and I think this is why you find it usable for video and of course the curved horizon is less noticeable as well. The real test would be to have a shark or turtle cross the frame diagonally to see how that looks . You can of course edit out extreme changes, but it would be nice not to have this as a concern.

We have some!

Nice work, a cool looking fish, i guess you didn't test out it's electric capabilities? We have numb rays around Sydney which can deliver quite a jolt if you step on them, they bury in sand and can zap divers who accidentality touch them.

If you find some old Canon FD lenses, they sit with the aperture at f5.6 when not mounted to a camera, so stopped down a little more than many wide angle lenses and available quite cheaply. You can also find accessories in the FD system the macro auto ring which attaches and allows you to stop the lens with a double cable release, though using that UW would be an issue of course, but it might be possible to adapt it to hold the aperture open? The Canon FD system had a really complete macro system with huge number of accessories, here's an old brochure: https://www.galimbertipaolo.it/CanonFD/MacroBrochure1982.pdf

The 12-50 really isn't a great wide angle solution - 24mm equivalent is not that wide and through a flat port it has the field of a 31mm lens. You could possibly use the WWL-C with the 12-32 lens, but it appears the ports offered by Aquatica are too long. You could use it with the 12-50 lens on your macro port assuming it fits the the same port as the 60mm macro, but the range is less and on the wide end would be around 16-17mm full frame equivalent and you would need to figure out a way to attach the bayonet.