Chris Ross

I recall discussions about the M1 processors, they're supposed to be very good with RAM and need a lot less. A quick google reveals lots of reports of 100% CPU usage with varying causes unfortunately most of them don't conclude. Might be an idea to post an issue on Adobe support?

Well for safety - Nauticam lists how to do it in the port charts and Isotta has provided the method to use an 8-15 in their system that works, it was posted on here. Using the Tokina is simply a matter of using less extension. Isotta is really quite helpful by all accounts and will respond to requests like this. Here is a link to the parts list for the 8-15 with Isotta. From the port charts you need 20mm less extension with the Tokina compared to the Canon lens, but check with Isotta - you would also need to sort out a zoom gear. :

I can understand the frustration - so it never worked 100% then? Did you change out the hotshoe cable connector - that is the piece that is a known trouble maker. See this post by Pavel: If you move away from Sony you at least escape this connector. I really quite like my OM-1 using the mini flash as a trigger.

I really think you are missing the point of what people are trying to say to you. They have provided you with examples taken with lower MP cameras that look a lot crisper than your sample shot that is plagued by colour noise. The point they are making is they can produce an arguably crisper shot than your example using a lower MP camera, even the 1"sensor from 20MP RX-100 looks sharper and crisper throughout the frame. Therefore there is room for improvement in what you are doing with your current equipment. Higher MP cameras are not a magic solution to producing a crisper image. Like it of not proper exposure and processing of your UW images is needed to convey an impression of sharpness and crispness. The point of stopping down behind a dome is not to get more depth of field it is to compensate for the dome optics. Your image edges will improve with stopping down some more. With full frame you need to stop down even more if you are using a rectilinear lens. Fisheye lenses are more forgiving, they are popular UW for a good reason. They are less sensitive to being used in a dome generally have much better corners and are sharper than a rectilinear in a dome. They allow you to get much closer to the subject with less water between you and your subject. You are wondering about depth of field behind a dome - it is significantly greater than what you get on land due to the compression of the virtual image to between 1 and 3 dome radii from the dome. Strobes UW are used for a reason also, to bring in colour and to fill in shadows created by overhead lighting from the surface. Unless you are in very clear tropical water and quite shallow, water when exposed as metered will often look muddy and often quite greenish - quite un-attractive IMO. To deal with this white balance is set for the subject with strobe light which pushes the water bluer and the shutter speed is increased to darken it. You can fine tune this to taste if you don't want very dark water. All of these items need to come together to make an image that is sharp and also pleasing to the eye. With the colour noise in your image you can't add much sharpening as it will sharpen that noise and quickly make the image look garish. I'll say it again it is not just the MP of the image!

I believe people are answering your questions on the premise you want better quality prints, they are raising issues other than just resolution because they believe for want of a better expression you are barking up the wrong tree. This forum is free to join and works because people are prepared to share their experience to help fellow photographers out. If they share something outside what you ask there is generally a reason for that. BTW I was suggesting comparing land photos with your A7RV and whatever lens you use with it to images from the a6300 and the zeiss, you mentioned in your reply that the a6300 land images are a lot better than UW - so there is Room for improvement UW! You ask about better detail. I critiqued your old image which you posted as an example as I believe you are not getting the anywhere near the full potential of the camera. I don't shoot Sony, but it seems to me you should be able to get a lot more out of that camera. Like it or not proper post processing, settings and workflow is a part of getting the best out of your images. It seems sensible to me to explore getting the most out of what you have now and spend $zero doing so before exploring spending a lot of money to take a different camera UW. You could upgrade to the A7RV and still be disappointed if you don't change what you are doing with the images. Regarding the image you posted there are significant issues with it, mostly around the colour noise I mentioned, in the 100% crop I posted the BG fish are very poorly defined, but with the noise it's hard to tell if it's the noise or maybe falling out of depth of field that is the issue. The downloaded image was 8874 x 6033 so it's been up sized. You mention f8 - I would think many people shoot at f11 on wide angle with APS-C. If you want to take this further I would suggest you provide an unprocessed image preferably the Raw file with EXIF intact to review. Also what equipment was used - you said it was the Zeiss lens, what dome are you using? did you use strobes? Until you solve the issues here I think you'll continue to be disappointed. By way of comparison here is one of my images taken with the EM-1 MkII - a 20MP micro43 camera using an 8mm fisheye lens at f8 (this a 180° diagonal fisheye) It is uncropped. 1/100 @ f8 ISO200. Sea fans at mermaid reef

If it fits the housing it will work, turned down to minimum power is fine. Sony may be an exception ? this flash only uses the center contact and ground to trigger and is fully manual. I expect it has significantly more light output than an LED trigger and should have no problem triggering any strobes assuming it points at the fibre optic ports.

If you really need faster shutter speeds than 1/250 a trigger like the Nauticam manual trigger is a workaround option. This is a fully manual trigger and will allow you to set any shutter speed you like and it will work up to something like the 1/400 - 1/500 range and sync with the shutter with no black band showing. This is arguably fast enough to deal with sunballs which is a major reason for wanting a faster shutter speed. It also works with any flash not just HSS capable flashes. HSS becomes increasing impractical as the shutter speed gets faster as the available power drops and even with this option the available power drops as the shutter duration starts to be shorter than the length of the full power strobe pulse.

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.