jlaity

I’ve seen this error around 20% of the time I try to visit the site over the past month. Usually from iOS mobile Safari or Brave/Chrome. I know Brave is weird so I’ve tried Safari and seen the same error. I just downloaded the App so I’ll try that for a while to see if it’s better.

Oh, excellent. I need the preflash mod too. I just did a few days of a trip with the strobes in preflash.

Does anyone know how to remove/swap a knob on the Z-330? It looks like there’s a set screw, but the hole goes all the way through. I’d like to change the power knob to anything else (hopefully swap with my Z-240 knob) so it’s a different shape. I’ve been backlighting macro subjects lately, and it’s impossible to keep track of which knob is which when the strobe is upside-down and backwards. I noticed the Backscatter strobes had a feature “the power and mode switches are different shapes!” and hoped I might be able to do that myself.

Could you post a video? I’m a bit worried about letting beta software start writing to my catalog, there is years of work there. Yes it’s backed up, but I still don’t want to test it. Do you select an image in the grid, click search, it fills to the metadata fields, then I can save that or discard it? Does it add to the keywords or replace them?

Here are a few shots with the MFO-3. The black water Crab zoea "stickhead" crab is uncropped. The Lionfish larvae is barely cropped for composition, and the larval Flounder is cropped to maybe 88% of the frame. I've only ever shot 100mm underwater, but I don't notice any image quality difference between the RF 100mm/L with or without the MFO-3. In theory it should be a bit sharper with since it does corner correction. Using it with a teleconverter seems like cross purposes, like walking the wrong way on an escalator and ending up where you started.

“Please call the Bluewater Photo team with any questions, or email us at” Or maybe they scraped the description off Bluewater before trying to scam you? I’d ask Scott if he knows about this site before considering giving them a credit card number.

This is a used Nauticam N120 sized macro port 87. The glass is unscratched. There’s a cold shoe mount on top for a snoot or focus light. The filter rings are in good condition for attaching a flip adapter or water-contact optics like the SMC. The optical quality is great. I’m just using a different-sized macro lens now so it needs a new home. $445 including shipping in the USA only. Reach out with any questions. Thank you.

I think you need to judge the results of the system, not just the lens alone with pincushion charts. The sharpest underwater photos I've seen are WACP-1 with Canon EF 28-70 f/3.5-4.5 or the Nikon equivalent, a modest kit lens.

I borrowed Mike’s “MFO-2” prototype from the first post this week in Anilao, and took it for ~5 day and 3 black water dives. I really liked the flexibility for day/reef dives of switching from the 100 to 60 with the flip adapter. Although I couldn’t open the flip without unscrewing it a bit, maybe something has changed since that prototype. It’s been a long time since I’ve shot with anything besides 100mm and fisheye so that was really nice. The first two BW dives, I wasn’t sure if I liked it. First, it’s very long so I had to move my focus light to the port ball mount where my snoot usually goes. (Over a black water abyss but luckily I didn’t drop anything.) The first night my strobes were pointed straight out like I normally do, but this left a dark area right in front of the lens. I also saw more backscatter than I normally do, maybe because the lens is simply seeing more? Second night, I had the strobes on either side of the port pointed in. I didn’t like the look of those photos, and I also saw some lens flare. On night three I kept the inward lighting but spaced them out further and angled them slightly forward. This had the best results. I was able to get a larval lionfish full frame almost touching the glass and it was still well-lit. I’ll post some examples later if folks are interested. I’m definitely picking one up before our next trip. And I might need that 3D-printed hood as well.

Dry the port and water-contact optics after rinsing to avoid this, using a lint-free cloth. I try but it's not always top of mind after a dive. Can we really see water spots on a lens when shooting underwater?

Here is an example of what a bad color profile does to water color. I posted this asking "What is happening to my color? Why is it auto-converting to ugly green?" It was the Lightroom color profile updating to Adobe Color. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/g96hoada5z7mgcl46uwak/IMG_1527.MOV?rlkey=375fktrxcr5o3rfzfqf1rq8rp&st=msefl7f1&dl=0

I like a camera-mounted light with a variable power setting. If I'm in the tropics with a lot of krill in the water, I'll often cover the light, switch to red, or turn it off and let my eyes adjust to everyone else's lights. I like an additional spotter light in addition to the camera's focus light. For California day diving, I often use my focus light on 7% brightness just to see colors and spot things more easily. I like my Fix 2000DX because it has such a big range from candlelight to LUMENS! so of course they don't make it anymore. (Maybe L&M has something to replace it?) For black water I have the same arrangement but the focus light is usually much brighter to assist focusing, also because krill is not as common away from the reef. But still with the spotter light looking for critters in the distance.

Adobe's color profiles look awful for Canon, IMO. Canon used to make their own nice profiles for the 5D4, but the ones for the R5 aren't great. But these are: https://www.colorfidelity.com/ Here's a review video that shows the difference. $25 well spent IMO. Also check out this video on adjusting color balance using the color range tools. He has several videos about color and other photo editing that are applicable for underwater: The Match CMYK game he built for this video is fun and good practice.

I'm sure it's coming, I think these are custom-printed. Reach out on his contact form, he wrote back to me in an hour.

I watched the UW Photography Show video an hour after it was posted, and it was in my cart before the video ended. Rechargeable manual flash trigger that uses lasers to fire the strobes. 200k flashes per battery charge over USB-C and it costs 120 UKP. He also makes beam restrictors and a bunch of other toys. I think Alex said something about gel fiber optic cables? The only downside is I only saw this a week before leaving for Anilao so it will have to wait for the next trip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLDO6saYuXU https://underwaterlightandmagic.co.uk/

SOLD

Threaded underwater close-up lens for threading onto a macro port. Billed as “your lens, only better.” Magnification is slight, it mainly corrects for water-contact physics by sharpening details, especially in corners. Includes a spacer for threading directly onto your macro port, or you can connect to a flip-adapter. Rubber protective covers and neoprene bag also included. Like new, in box. This lens was taken diving only twice and is in near-mint condition. Reach out with any questions. $425 including shipping in USA only

I have a Western Digital GRAID 2 Thunderbolt with a Synology RAID and Backblaze for backup. It works fine for me, although friends have had problems with WD drives.

Well then you have a 50% chance of correct information in my experience. :P

Bill has a Powerpoint slide on this. Despite the higher power, Eneloop 2000 lasts longer in a flash than Eneloop Pro because of the way the power tapers off. I'll leave to him to explain why, I'm a musician. ;)

Eneloops are best for strobes, better than Pro. I believe Pro is designed for digital equipment, so it stays above 5V longer then falls off more quickly. Eneloop has a more linear (but longer) taper better suited for strobes. @bvanant can explain the chemistry, I just buy what he tells me. :)

I load everything from a dive into Lightroom, hit P for Pick the best ones, then cull from there. Out of the 6 photos of the subject I pick the best one, maybe two if it's a different angle or something. Then I cull from there, either unflagging the worst or rating the best. Finally I select unrated photos only, hit X to reject, then Delete Rejected Photos > Delete From Disk. I know others who are more ruthless, "how many photos of a Garabaldi do I need? I keep the 5 best ones." I do a local dive day ~once a month and 1-2 week-long trips a year, and I tend to have ~500 photos a year that I keep. I have tons of storage and backup so I don't sweat the size, and sometimes it's nice to look back at previous years to see how I've improved. Every year I make a calendar for family, so I can look at my 13 best photos of the year going back around 20 years. And I save all the RAW files so that I can go back to old photos with Lightroom 2035 and get the great white shark in focus :)

To me, 24 (the MFO-1 shot) has a small amount of increased sharpness on the left side, compared to the other two without. But it’s so so slight, it isn’t worth the cost or weight IMO. I plan to go back to my SMC-1 on a flip adapter and possibly sell the MFO-1, if I can. I’m disappointed with this purchase.

Scaled to 1600 px wide

A few more MFO-1 A/B tests. Nothing special, just tried to find a subject where you can see center to corner sharpness. 24, 26, and 28.jpg in full resolution from a Canon R5 mk1, Canon RF 100mm macro, Nauticam housing/port. Let me know if you can tell which have the filter on or off. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ttmq2ki1uv07p6lttdgz0/20250628_pv_0024.jpg?rlkey=wqk2ndpe901w2r1pzvynztbvy&st=o6ih8ko0&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7jug2ftd2hp8oukirgj1s/20250628_pv_0026.jpg?rlkey=xwaywsaboern5h48gneq85u4z&st=o55cybn6&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/holfbdj9jej0raifpfgho/20250628_pv_0028.jpg?rlkey=hzhg54nq8j7nikff7j8egwhv1&st=ndk47qwz&dl=0