Adventurer

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.

Hi, I am looking for knowledge exchange and more experimental tipps running an underwater corrector port Ivanoff style that I have been testing & shooting since yesterday on my Marelux MX-R6II. Mine was not made by the famous Carl Zeiss, though. I think it was designed by fathom optics in the USA around the year 2000 for video shooters. I was hoping to shoot a flexible 24-70mm or 28-70mm behind it, but failed. MFD of the lens utilized behind it seems crucial as with dome ports. The Canon RF 28-70 and 24-70 options have really bad MFD, even worse than the RF 24-50. The Canon RF 15-30mm IS STM seems run awesome behind the optic. It is severly larger than the Carl Zeiss underwater corrector port that @Alex_Mustard has used before. The cheap Canon RF24-50mm which is said to run nicely behind a WWL-1C(?) has turned into a complete failure behind that water contact optic. It just cannot focus once you zoom in and it fails to focus on land through the optic. I think it‘s due to the bad MFD of that lens. However I have some flexibility concerning the amount of extension rings I can put in between and I would like to nail the best focal point possible behind the curved inner sphere. If some of you have links to scientific papers or schematic drawings of Ivanoff style optics I would be very thankful if you could share them with me.

Very interesting product. However I wish that Canon will give us a FF 60mm Macro RF lens some day. The space has been unoccupied for too long. So I expect something to happen. Also noteworthy for the Canon RF shooters is the highly overlooked, interesting and underestimated RF 35mm f1.8 Macro which will allow 2:1 and can be utilized behind a curved macro port (small dome).

I would like to point out that this Calculation for a native Canon shooter and MARELUX target user runs much more affordable and lightweight: Canon EF 8-15 FE: 600-750€ (used) / 540g EF-RF Adapter: 89€ / 109g Kenko 2.0x TC: 190€ (used) / 166g Marelux 60229 Zoomgear: 209 € / 48g Marelux 51406 Zoomgear: 209 € / 66g MX 30mm Extension: 319 € / 250g MX 50mm Extension: 339 € / 340g MX 140mm Dome: 1369€ / 754g = 3324 € / 2273g Let‘s you run the system with and without Teleconverter. Note that you cannot buy the 8-15 lens and Kenko Teleconverter new anymore. They can be found in the used item market. I have friends which were able to get their hands on a pristine Canon 8-15 fisheye for 550€. You may even shrink this down by not buying the parts you need for running the lens natively with zoom to make it more comparable vs. the FCP or WCAP road. So for Canon RF Users it’s actually a no-brainer to go and get this setup. And the sentence would go,.. What does 2750 € get you ?

In an inner zoom or inner focus design the entrance pupil will just hop around like crazy without you beeing aware of it. So "Yes", but that view on the optical performance behind a dome is kinda outdated, old-schoolish. It's not a big issue with many of the recent Canon RF lens designs, which have an extending tubus. Actually many of the non-L Canon lenses without a red ring perform much better than their L-Series siblings. Note that surface lens reviews (especially of very expensive lenses) don't tell you much about the optical performance behind an underwater dome. @stillviking pointed out correctly the most important feature: MFD = 20 cm looks promising. I am waiting for that lens to appear on optical bench hub to have a closer look.

Well yes that's what I did, but of course with shutter closed, which might explain the 1 mm offset. Good to reflect a little bit on that. Also the IBIS can make the sensor wobble a lot which might be interesting. Having said that, the Nikonos bayonet is also kind-off weird and allows you to shift the lense a little back and forth when properly mounted. I guess the water pressure will always push that lens towards sensor direction. But overall there might be some tolerante for the focus plane.

Great Info Chris, where did you look that up? What is the source? Official from Nikon / Canon? I did my own measurement and got 19mm on my Canon RF. Indeed the extruding knobs are going to be an issue. I am thinking about cutting or replacing them to be able to move the port adapter more inside. Thanks @Alex_Mustard for sharing your wonderful images. They are indeed dent sharp and extra-immersive. I also find it very interesting that it seems flexible enough to shoot medium sized fish portraits. Obviously due to the small min. focussing distance. Just to make sure: the parrotfish shot are also the the 15mm Nikonos and not a Nikonos Macro? May I ask what aperture you mainly shoot it ? There is an old rumor that @ F8 everything usually is sharp with that lens.

Hi Friends, for some reason I happen to own an old Nikonos III + 15mm underwater lens which I got more than 10 years ago on ebay. It's been a beloved pet project for me to dive this lens again on a full frame DSLM camera such as my R6 Mark II. Mainly because of IQ and the very compact size. I am aware that it's not a fisheye and equivalent to a 20mm lens, my favourite wide angle range underwater. There are two versions. The earlier one only fits on Nikonos I, ii and iii since it blocks the TTL-sensor of the Nikonos IV and V. The earlier lens is told to be the better performer due to its retro focusing design. This makes it even more mouthwatering after reading this optical benchmark done by Pawel Achtel from 2014 : https://wetpixel.com/articles/test-optical-performance-of-nikonos-15mm-flat-and-dome-ports It resulted in some cinema products: https://achtel.com/3deep/ I am also aware of this tinkering thread by @ianmarsh ( thank you Ian ! ) https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/418-nikonos-15mm-service-manuals-and-schematics-was-do-15s-need-servicing/ I have some questions though, matching with my previous experience. In the Nauticam Sony NEX-5 days and Nikonos NEX Adapter, the Version III would not mount on the crop camera as it's derriere would have hit the image sensor. You needed to get a Nikonos 15mm in the V (five not three) version to make it work. I never did 🙃 If I remember correctly this was the reason why the III Version of the Nikon Nikonos UW-Nikkor 15mm f/2.8 would not mount on APS-C type. Now will full frame and mirrorless I see that Nauticam has a Nikonos-Full-Frame Adapter in their portfolio, but it's just for the A7 Sony camera series, not for Canon. https://www.nauticam.com/products/nikonos-adaptor-for-na-a7 In another thread together with @Phil Rudin and @Isaac Szabo that I recall but did not find we learned that Nauticam has different bayonet to camera flange distances between their brand housings. Some SONY models seem to sit closer to the Nauticam Bayonet, especially closer than the Canon DSLMs. Nauticams Nikonos Adapter for full frame just seems to work for A7/A7R/A7S System - anybody around using it with a 15mm lens and can report about the experience? In my MARELUX the Canon R6 II sits even deeper inside the housing, which may provoke a collision with the two knobs for focus and aperture control. I have exactly this set including the viewfinder: https://www.pacificrimcamera.com/rl/01394/01394.pdf Seeking your advice and comment in hope to make my pet project come alive.

I use the Marelux single dome 140mm for a versatile one fits all solution / backup. Go for the 8-15mm fisheye and do not invest in the 14-35mm zoom. The results of the 8-15mm TC 1.4x and 2.0x will be more pleasing than trying to rape the 14-35mm behind a small dome. Instead think about getting the RF 35mm 1.8 macro, which also can be utilized behind the small 140mm dome with a +4 diopter and which give you a flexible very sharp distant shark plus semi macro lens, without having to buy a flat port. I also own a 230mm dome. About your questions: 1.) not an issue to worry about with major brands, it’s awesome on Marelux but also fully functional on an INON housing, a friend owns. 2.) skip the 180 idea. The 140mm is full sphere with marelux and nauticam, the 180 is not. Unless you are heavily targeting for over-under split shots the 140mm dome is the way to go for many lenses, especially the 8-15mm FE. 3.) looking into this as I own the 1.4x RF TC and the two Kenko TCs seem to drive down IQ a little bit. There is zoom gear for all three scenarios by Marelux for the 8-15mm. I would need to test if one of the gears also would fit the much thicker bit. There is zoom gear for all three scenarios by Marelux for the 8-15mm. I would need to test if one of the gears also would fit the much thicker Canon RF TC 4.) good approach, however I would see that complementary to the 8-15 FE with TCs not redundant.

I own and shoot the R6mark II in a Marelux housing and Canon 8-15mm Fisheye plus some other lenses. I can highly recommend this setup. The housing has made some minor improvements even over Nauticam housings, which was actually hard to think about; but the reason why I decided on MARELUX.

Thank you so much for this feedback. I truly appreciate it. It is especially rewarding after having had quite a few exhausting discussions in an online forum, without anybody saying „thank you“. I am very glad I could help.

Hi guys, the RETRA test mentioned is land based, correct? Same as the private beam shots by Dreifish in this forum. I would like to point out that any strobe that utilizes a dome (such as Seacam, Z330, Marelux) will give you a highly distorted impression of the real beam pattern that will be produced underwater. Once the dome glas is submerged in water it acts like a lens increasing the beam angle and evenly softens the output. -> The quality of light will improve underwater. Just keep that in mind when comparing land based shots.

That non-HD version has a horrible reputation of crushing your IQ to pieces. I would try to replace that with the new version or the Sony.

I think so too.

The likelihood is very high that my cameras and housings frequently see much more wet salt than yours. 😉 You are dead wrong about the mm thing. Prioritize correct NPP positioning and be amazed. You can lab / pool test this, which is the way to go, before you spend multiple thousand dollars with a dismal travel camera setup in your bag.

This is very nicely put 😁☝️ Cudos Klaus!