Chris Ross

To be fair, the main point of comparison was the ability to rapid fire in which the Apollo clearly was the leader and a couple of sentences of quality of light compared with the OneUW and the Retra. He does seem to like the strobe. I'm also not 'not clear on what MTL actually does - it seems like it's a reduced power setting to allow the strobe to keep up a rapid fire rate? Perhaps it activates additional components internally like a larger or faster charging capacitor to assist?

Wondering what are you basing this on? Generally speaking the voltage displayed by a cell is only part of the story, I would think you would want to know what happens to voltage under load for each of the cells, what sort of load it can produce (in amps) as well as a capacity test before drawing any conclusions. I should add that the larger beam on the retra means that you will use more battery power. Some back of the envelope calculations show that comparing a 100° beam strobe and a 130° beam strobe, all else being equal the 130° beam needs 1.7 x the lumens to achieve the same lux (to get the same exposure) on a surface assuming the cone shape beam is evenly lit in both cases. This means 1.7x the battery power is required. This is the price of a large beam that is evenly filled with photons. As I recall the Retras used to publicise a 130° beam and the YS-D2 for example was around 100 to 110 or so depending on the diffuser used. This of course is idealised but should be good for an order of magnitude difference.

It does seem like it would be a great compact option with effectively a wide m43 sensor. The $64,000 question of course is will anyone make a housing for it??

Agree that fibre is the way to go though there are some housing options where you can't do this, Ikelite is one, Seacam also though they have a full Canon or Nikon TTL built into their strobes which works over wire - apparently quite well.

USB bulkheads typically have a sealed cap on top to keep water out of the the connection. If you wanted to use the housing under the water, you would need a waterproof connection there. These connections are typically expensive. Dive and see make them, you would probably need a custom solution which would be quite pricey: https://diveandsee.com/connectors/usb/. Perhaps talk to them to see what they can offer, but the cost of components could be more than you paid for your housing!

To go with a TC you would need about 200 Euro +/- for the Kenko TC, the Nauticam 20mm extension to add on and a zoom gear. To me it seems quite worthwhile, but only you know your budget. If you decide to go with a Kenko, make a post here to confirm the correct version.

If you want to do this with something small, consider using something like the INON wet wide lens, which is quite a bit smaller, you'd have to work out if you could use the Nauticam bayonet to attach it to your system. They seem to have reduced the range of cameras they support recently, but the old UWL-100 worked with Sony lenses. see this page: 💬1 - The Ultimate Wet Lens Sample Post | Mozaik UW Scroll down to the sea fan pic here: It's taken with the dome, which you don't need if you only want medium wide, but gives decent quality with the view of an 18-20mm lens in a smaller package. The Quality without the dome should be similar. The image is large and you can download it and the EXIf data is included so you see where the lens is zoomed to, taken with the same 16-50 lens.

Yes you could preset when focusing very close and it works quite OK on land, but as you focus very close with the lens it becomes more sensitive and you can't use hyperfocal distance like you can on land. In CFWA you want to focus on one of the closest objects as more of your depth of field is behind the focal point. If you don't you might find parts of the nearest object are out of focus. The other thing to consider is with CFWA you may need to change distance a little due to obstructions or the size of your subject, which could be annoying. Long story short if you are going to use a MF fisheye lens get a focus gear. You'll probably need focus peaking to help you focus.

If you are using the 8-15 with a 1.4x you get a 11.5-21mm fisheye. The region from 11.5 to about 15mm is unusable effectively as it has big chunks of the corners black and won't do circular of course. So whatever you do I'd suggest it would be a shame not to have the full 180 deg diagonal fisheye available to you. Just to be sure you are aware the order is camera-Sony 1.4x- adapter - 8-15 Lens. This means the nose extension on the SONY 1.4x needs to fit inside the adapter. It is known it fits inside the Metabones, it probably fits in the MC-11 but it pays to check. You need someone with an MC-11 to put one on the other to confirm. This combination (sony 1.4x) needs a custom zoom gear if I'm not mistaken. The MC-11-Kenko 1.4x-Canon 8-15 has an off the shelf zoom gear available from Nauticam. There was a post from one of users, Gudge, who poste about this a while back and that will have the details for using the Sony 1.4x, I'm travelling now and don't have time to search. I think Wolfgang could also advise on the zoom gear. I'd suggest if you are wanting a WACP substitute zooming will be important and this may be the controlling factor that decides which way to go if time is tight. I would also suggest that using the standard extension recommendations will be fine, any improvement from fine tuning is going to be in the second or third decimal place.

😂Yes we both went off topic a ways but it's interesting stuff . We disappeared off into the weeds to show that millmeter precision in entrance pupil positioning is nice but not essential to use the 8-15mm lens and that you can produce pleasing images with sub-optimal setups as long as you are not miles off base.

Yes no doubt, but IMO not enough to worry about if you are in the ballpark, I'd be happy for you to post shots showing all this harm to your images and I don't mean chessboards, sure it's telling you something but how much impact does this have on the final image quality? the examples I've seen that were 10mm out vs a lot closer didn't set the world on fire withe differences in quality to my eyes.

Yes I know that, but not really an option if you have a camera in an Ikelite housing, the larger 8" dome they offer is not ideal either, a bit too big to get in close. The compact dome under discussion is really only for fisheyes for CFWA work where it lets you get in really close, It's a compromise to get that in your face CFWA perspective at the price of less than perfect corners. The fact it does as well as it does is quite surprising really.

Hi Adventurer, i'm sorry if you feel it's a personal grudge, believe me there's nothing personal about it. It's addressing the subject not the poster. If I believe a post is incorrect or misleading in someway I'll respond to it. I do believe you are missing the point, I am in no way claiming these are perfect to the corner, it's merely to point out these images come from a dome positioned a long way from the optimal point. Some people could care less about corners others want to be sharp to the corner at 100%. Myself I'm kind of in the middle, I want decent corners but recognise that there are diminishing returns. On the subject of the Ikelite port I am referring to the compact dome port. This one: The dome is said to be a small segment of an 8" dome and is about 158 dia x 46 high by the specs The dome only rises about 20mm above the edge of the plastic port. The 8-15 would need to sit right up forward in this dome to avoid vignetting with the entrance pupil almost at the edge of the plastic part of the port to avoid vignetting. The radius would be 100mm and this would place the centre of curvature somewhere around 70 -80mm behind the entrance pupil of the lens. I could see the regular 8" dome having the entrance pupil around 43mm out as you said as that dome is also not a full hemisphere. I'm not saying I would want this situation with a badly mis-positioned dome just that people use this lens/port and are happy with it. I don't doubt for a minute your findings with the chessboard test, I'm just suggesting that the results in the images taken are not that terrible if they are out by 5-10mm. If you want to fine tune the positioning of your dome, more power to you. In the examples you referred to, my eyes I couldn't see a huge improvement in changing the dome position.

I think we need to recognize a few things when comparing strobes. First GN is generally measured in the centre where it probably least useful and of course there is no standard for measuring and reporting GN, it will change for instance between indoor and outdoor test as the walls bounce light back in. GN are regarded with suspicion even on Land based flashes. Second to compare how much we are getting out of the strobe we need to include beam angle - the 580 EX which I own has a GN of 58 at maximum zoom concentrating the light into the field of a 105mm lens. It shrinks to GN of 15 when covering the field of a 14mm lens which is commonly what the UW flashes achieve for field coverage or a little more. Looking at the light required to fill a 100deg cone with light versus a 130 deg cone, and plugging the results into a lux calculator, then assuming 1000 lumens illuminating the circle at the end of a 110 deg cone gives 103 lux and a 130 deg cone gives 61 lux at the same distance of 1 meter. Back calculating, you would need 1700 lumens to achieve the same the same illumination on the subject (as a 100 deg cone) with the bigger coverage of the 130 deg beam angle. So this means to achieve the same GN, assuming even illumination over a 130 deg cone, as you get from a 100 deg cone you need 1.7x as much light and hence 1.7x the battery power. This compares apples with apples and shows that while a 130 deg field might be nice it has a price associated with it. So the INON doesn't need as much power to illuminate the same subject but you have to be more precise in positioning its beams to fully cover a wide field compared to a 130 deg strobe. this demonstrates why the Retra chews batteries faster.

yes this is true, but only if you use it. If the Z-240 is giving you enough light then the Retra in the same situation should also draw less as you've turned the Retra down from full power. So only if you use the extra power the life will go down. There is also variation in how efficiently the strobe uses the power it draws, I recall discussion that the Z330 had higher guide number full power but had very similar number of full power flashes confirmed by someone doing some testing. It was a long time ago now, so I may have mixed things up. The only way this could happen is the efficiency of the charging circuit improves. You have a number of steps in the circuit, first up an oscillator and inverter to increase voltage to capacitor, then the triggering circuit with it's own high voltage transformer and a thyristor to control the cut off of the strobe. All have thermal losses associated with them. However fundamentally a higher power flash is probably less efficient unless you make change to the circuit charging the capacitor. If you draw more current you lose more to heat passing through the same resistance by the equation Power = Amps^2 x R.

There are lots of reasons why the flange distance might vary between brands, it's only important to be consistent within a brand or more specifically a lens mount such as Canon EF, Nikon Z etc. For example Nauticam Canon RF housings place the camera back further in the housing such that the RF-EF converter if where the flange of an EF mount camera would be relative to the flange. This is important as it means the EF port chart applies to EF lenses used on the RF-EF converter and the same zoom gear is used. This means that the upgrade path is easier for a Canon EF user to upgrade to RF. Initially they can bring across their EF lenses, zoom gears, ports and extensions with no additional investment. Nauticam have done the same for Nikon Z mount housings. Other manufacturers may have done things differently. In the end it doesn't matter if they move the flange distance around between different lens mounts as they can compensate for it with different extensions. They probably start with the shortest fisheye lenses so they can be used without extension in the small dome ports. For example the Panasonic 8mm fisheye uses no extension on m43 housings, on Canon EF, the Sigma 10mm fisheye and Canon 15mm fisheye use no extension etc. The shortest lens they design for is probably different in each lens mount. They also take into account where they place the housing zoom/focus gear drive in the housing and the need to mate up with that.

First of all allow for the fact the Air Niugini may have trouble on connections. Read Don Silcocks account on the best time to go, you probably don't want to go in the wet season. Different sites have different optimum times - So for example, Nov is good at Tufi and also Walindi, where May is also good but it's not so good at Tufi. Here is a link: https://indopacificimages.com/papua-new-guinea/guide-to-diving-papua-new-guinea/ I went in May last year to Walindi and had a good trip. I did mostly wide angle with CFWA on occasions. Another diver did mostly macro. This was during the doldrums, though there was some wind. Quite hot and humid. November is also a good time. Some days were a little rough trying to get out to the sea mounts which are the real feature of diving there with big schools of Barracuda, big eye trevalley and massive schools of plankton feeders with various triggerfish and pyramid butterfly fish etc in big numbers. Also sea fans with pygmies, Colurful anemones with clownfish etc. The sea mounts are relatively deep and diving on Nitrox is an advantage. My trip report is here: Consider though that even though you are there 4 weeks you might lose a day of diving to transfers as you fly between each site and you could lose another full day to travel getting there with the risk of a cancelled or missed connection if going back through Port Moresby which you would have to do if you dived Tufi /Tiwali with Walindi/Lissenung Island and possibly also travelling between Tufi and Tiwali. Some Flights to Kaviang stop in Hoskins (airport for Walindi) (or is it some flights from Kavieng stop in Hoskins??) so you don't have a connection to make to get to your next spot. DO your research to minimise connecting flights each one carries the risk of losing an additional days diving.

The EP-14 as I recall is set up to use Olympus mini flash which used to come with their cameras as is the Nauticam housing so if it fits in the Nauticam housing likely it fits in the PT-EP 14. The only thing that might be an issue is overhanging the camera at the back. You would still need to trail fit it though to be certain in case there is anything protruding inside.

You need to read the fine print of your insurance - a lot of them state items are not covered if checked, unless the airline forces you to check the items. I'm not sure where you are flying to but in the US, domestically while there may be limits they seem to be ignored and it's a race to get on first and get locker space. Seems the same for a great many airlines flying out of the US though budget airlines will enforce it so they can charge you check things. I would think it's toss up which to check - I would base it on weight and value and what I could get away with packing in the carry on. Ultimately the solution I think is to base your ticket purchase on carry on policy and book far enough ahead to get a good fare.

The issue you will find with Fujifilm camera is limited UW housing support. The only housings are an Ikelite housing or perhaps a seafrogs housing. If you look at the ikelite housing, it's $USD2195 at Backscatter and you need to add a port and other components to that. They only support the Fuji 80mm macro lens in the port charts. You are limited to wired flash - no fibre optics. Seafrogs are a lot cheaper but you get what you pay for, for example it notes the following controls can't be used in the housing: Front command dial Rear command dial Aperture control of the lens Focus stick (Focus lever) It only supports the 60mm Fuji macro lens. Don't buy the Sea Frogs vacuum system, it can only be used to test on land, can't dive with a vacuum pulled which defeats the purpose. But you definitely want a vacuum system! To this you would need to add clamps and arms for a strobe plus a strobe trigger, I would suggest the INON S220, a compact reliable little strobe at a good price point. quite OK for macro. I would also seriously suggest considering other camera system options. Fuji is not well supported underwater and housing availability is limited. All you have now that you can use UW is the camera body. Nauticam used to support them, but the XT-5 housing is discontinued. It seems to me that it is a bit of a dead end for UW photography. Sea Frogs while they will work are a bit kludgy and the wide angle ports are universal and not necessarily provided with the correct extensions for best performance. There's only a handful of (admittedly very keen) users of Fulji on this site. See is you can find a second hand micro43 system, maybe an EM-1 MkII? the 60mm macro lens for this system is very compact. The Nauticam housings for them are great as are the Isotta. People are very happy with the AOI housings for the OM-5 and OM-1. Growing a system like this is a lot simpler as a great many lenses are supported with the proper extension provided. If you are learning a TG-7 with a strobe is a great option for macro, very compact. It of course has limitations withe small sensor and lack of full manual controls but a great many people are happy with them.

Yes, the lens only gives a relatively small increase in field and you don't to be using some of that increase up. 16mm becomes something like 21mm in a flat port, so if you have to zoom into 23mm you are worse off. Let's see what the vendor says.

Just to clarify did you try it in air and you haven't gotten it wet yet? Can't say for certain but this may change when UW. But before you get it wet try talking to your vendor to see what they say, there isn't much out there about this lens. The purpose you state is what the lens is intended for and it should work on your lens as designed I would think.

Welcome aboard Cameron

Exactly. You might get a slight variation in light output with each pulse but effectively it stays on, just the pulsing reduces and spreads out the capacitor so it can stay on longer. I would guess that HSS sync capable flashes mostly work by pulsing the capacitor for as long as they receive light from the trigger (rather than trying to exactly match the master flash out put exactly.

I've not been but know a guy who has been multiple times on MV Oceania/ mV Febrina operating out of Kimbe Bay PNG , It's on the outer edge of Polynesia I guess. here's some info about it: https://indopacificimages.com/papua-new-guinea/guide-to-diving-papua-new-guinea/guide-to-diving-new-britain/new-britain-diving-an-overview/