Adventurer

Hey you two. If you are looking into the optics made by SGC then I would not recommend the heavy weighted WFL01. Two friends of mine sold it again and went for the WFL-09s instead. It‘s less heavy underwater and delivers better optical quality then the WFL/KRL1.

Here is an update,… I ruled out the Canon RF16 Samyang RF 14mm and organized myself an Canon RF 24-50mm STM Canon RF 28mm STM Canon RF 24-105mm STM The 24-105 is the hot item here. Mainly due to it‘s minimum focusing distance on the 24mm end. Depending on the extension rings used, I can decide if I want to use it in a range of 32-85mm zoom range 24-72mm zoom range I have to take it out to the water and give it a walk in the field for real live shooting. Furthermore the 28MM prime ditches flexibility but seems to be dent sharp at F4 mixed with the water contact optic.

Is anybody out there using the Canon RF 28 MM F2.8 STM ? Especially with water contact optics it‘s supposed to give decent results. It‘s an ultra lightweight, affordable lens with superior sharpness. However it‘s not found in various manufacturer‘s port charts. I suppose it could be well-paired with WWL-1 or WWL-1B on full frame mirrorless similar to some sony FF prime combinations.

As far as I know, Marelux has Subal type4 adapters in their standard part lineup. I know, as I considered getting an old Subal dome at a very good price for my MX housing.

I'd like to counter the "we're only gonna die" trend-chart that that @shokwaav posted above with recent CIPA trends. Make sure not to confuse DSLM (which is state of the art) with DSLR (which is just a 2nd hand market today) sales numbers. The chart shows Interchangeable Lens DSC. So the influencing factor is more likely to be inflation, tariffs and increased labour + parts costs. Which basically accounts to all products sold and build.

Nice writeup Wolfgang, thanks for the report.

There is actually great opportunity for macro with the RX100 VII and it's massive zoom range. However I think you will need to pick the right housing for it, one that allows you to use a flat port with the whole zoom range. The fantasea housing never offered the whole zoom range. Both Isotta and Nauticam opted for a wide squared port, which is less ideal to get close and compact for macro. I think Marelux engineered something in that direction. So I'd be looking into that housing more closely. If you need wide angle you can use one of the conversion lenses that will require the 60mm focal length position, such as the MWL or WFL09s.

Dear Alex, thank you very much for this intensive and extensive insight in your strobe history and choices. My simple and short question however aimed at: Backscatter HF-1 being the strongest strobe you have shot so far (you have repeatedly claimed that). I would like to know, if in your perception, it's also stronger than the old subtronic alpha pro ? Of course this would be something very subjective, but also something we both could very well relate to. I especially recall that the subtronics produced decent quality of light without diffusers and were very strong. PS: I 100% agree with you about the lumilink. PPS: We also have to keep in mind that cooler color temp strobes always have a strength advantage over warm/high CRI designs, as the energy will be transformed more efficiently into lumen (from xenon) paired with the better penetration power cooler light will have in water. This also explains the strong power of the YS250s back in the old days. Today the HF-1 and Apollo III 2.0 leverage additional subjectively perceived strobe power from it, I guess.

Dear Alex, when flipping through the pages of your Underwater Photography Masterclass book and the image index at the end, I was reminded that you have shot the Subtronic Alpha Pro strobes for a very long period of your career and also collected some of your award winning shots with them. We have in common being a previous owner of that strobe. I recall that it was giving very good quality of light and also being very powerful. With all the strobes that have recently been connected to your camera, how would you compare them? .. to the ones I happen to also own, e. g.: Backscatter HF-1 Marelux Apollo III 2.0 ( ? ) feel free to expand the list. Would be curious to learn your subjetive impression, as you emphasized multiple times, that the HF-1 is the strongest you have shot so far, if I recall that correctly.

Tales from the YAFS* corner… (YAFS = Yet Another Fu…. erhm Fabulous Strobe) Sea&Sea announced working on the the YS-D130R: https://www.seaandsea.jp/product/strobe/ys-d130r.html The picture says HSS on it even though the text just heavily markets RC mode. And if uwtechnics Pavel is unlucky it‘s also going to air in October 😅😂 It’s unbelievable how the shrinking market of underwater photographers get‘s offered more choices on an almost quarterly level.

Yes exactly! And I really wish more cameras would move into that direction. It saves you up to 800 bucks on HSS converters. So that can be deducted from the very high cam price. By the way, the leaf shutter is a cool Hasselblad feature, which also does not suffer from x-sync speed limits. Also it‘s noteworthy that the no longer offered Canon G7X Mark III had one.

Let me guess, it's repeated winners who mounted EMWLs on a Sony RX100 series camera. 😅 @Davide DB there is also a tradition for expensive compact cameras by Leica https://leica-camera.com/en-GB/photography/cameras/compact-cameras But I guess this new Sony beast is much more performant. The 35mm fixed focal length is actually not that bad, I can imagine that some uw optics will work fine with it. 24cm MFD is not that bad. In Macro-Mode it will focus between 14 and 29 cm.

A small full frame 61MP travel dream with leaf shutter: https://youtu.be/8-wwnIp7tLs

Well I seem to be lucky as the Ivanoff style lens on my desk is humongous. It was given a lot of great glas, partially due to the fact that the cam it was designed for played in the broadcast league 20 years ago ( 2005 ). I have added more extension rings and moved the optics much more forward with promising results. I might be really lucky as the camera had a 3 CCD design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-CCD_camera If you look at the construction each sensor was very small but the prism (equivalent to what you would call sensor plane today or the film slide in Nikonos days) is much larger, as it was a physical construct splitting the light up into the 3 tiny CCDs. I think therefore the optical engineers had to give the optics more space. Even though the camera was recording in 16:9 format I do not seem to suffer from that. The IQ seems to scale-up nicely in the whole 3:2 field. The only constraint seems to be the very long sunshade (which cannot be removed) at the top and bottom. However I was able to use this as a reference point for the focal length it was rendered for. Just zoom in underwater until you cannot see the sunshade anymore ;-) With the Canon RF 15-30 IS STM: It seems to run fine, starting at 25mm focal length. However I suppose it was designed for 28mm or even 32mm. The broadcast HD camera it was designed for had a large filter thread of 72mm which might allow me to tweak it with lenses that have physically small front element, such as Canon's RF 16mm (31mm front glas). I might also give my Samyang RF AF 14mm f2.8 a try with it, which has a physically large front glas element of 72mm. I'll keep you posted on my progress and findings and would love to see more images taken with the Zeiss, Alex. By the way, this is the old initial patent file of A. Ivanoff Patent No 2730014 dated 1956: https://www.freepatentsonline.net/2730014.html (the direct download to the PDF goes via this link) An a very interesting old (1967) paper about designing uw lenses, citing Ivanoff: https://www.asprs.org/wp-content/uploads/pers/1967journal/aug/PERS(33)8-925.pdf

Mhhh,... the new RF 16-28 is not on Optical Bench Hub yet. But I can tell you from testing and owning it, that the RF 15-30 IS STM is still the queen. It moves it's entrance pupil by just 5,67mm while retracting backwards by 8,68mm when zooming from 15 to 30mm focal length. The physical retraction on any lens is usually just a minor issue, as long as it will not hit your front dome. It rarely does with wide angle zoom lenses. The inner zooms also move their entrance pupil, they are just hiding the obvious from you.