Rich W

They're so far behind the competition now time wise this has to work or the company is finished.

Ive work on liveaboards so from that point of view, generic advice, deck space is limited. You might get away with 1 person with a personal tank but if more than that have the same idea there really isnt space. Theres also the issue fresh water is a finite resource so constantly refilling/emptying personal rinse tanks isnt great for that. Depends on the boat of course. Decent boats will have a rinse tank thats clean, fresh and hopefully policed so people arent putting mask soap or god knows what in it (all boats im on camera buckets are separate from the rest of dive gear buckets...and dive gear is only rinsed at the end of the trip). As a photographer, ive had a camera setup destroyed in a rinse tank. Left it there while i legged it to help untie the mooring line. Came back and a "helpful" entitled teenager with parents had put their dslr setup in the tank on top of mine (a Canon 70D in ikeite housing, 8" dome and 2 DS161 strobes in a black bin isnt hard to see), found resistance to their housing so rammed it as hard as they could. This crushed my at the time ikelite, snapped the dome port off and flooded/destroyed the whole setup. Rinse tanks are for rinsing not leaving. Swill it, remove it, take it away. If it needs further washing use the shower (if fresh water) when you wash or whatever. If you bring anything at all, make it a cooler bag type thing and nothing rigid. And be mindful of fresh water usage etc.

Im in Japan and buy a load of stuff there. Just ordered a Nauticam. Websites are indeed awful. Not sure about Retra but Mic21 (big dive shop chain) are the nauticam main dealer and they do answer in English to emails. They have some English speaking staff in shops at certain times too. Fisheye are the distributor/importer and they organised my housing, in English via Mic21. If theres something specific there you want its worth contacting Fisheye https://store.fisheye-jp.com/ (distributor) or Mic21 ( https://www.mic21.com/foreign/english.php ) via the emails. Replies are quick. You'll get 10% tax free. Unsure about Retra though - maybe contact Retra themselves and see if there are dealers? If its general electronics, Bic Camera (10% tax free plus 7% for no clear reason if foreign), Yodobashi (tax free) etc. Websites are woeful but good enough to find stock in which shop. Shops themselves you can get by with English and translation apps. FWIW tax free currently you dont pay it at all. Its deducted at purchase. From October its changing to claim back at airport.

Not sure that will matter as i can just set that after the event in LR as its Raw anyway.

I should have included that really. My display is a correctly calibrated DCI-P3 (95%) on both laptop and when home, the external screen. Output is going to always be sRGB as output is for screen use and rarely if ever printing. Its LR/PS so is using higher than 8 bit colour. I dont see banding or things falling apart, its the default "look" causing me issues. Viewing software is ICC aware as well. Camera matching.... Historically ive never found any of those actually come close to matching the camera (either in camera or applying the same in Canon DPP). Camera landscape comes closest to making the water blue but at the expense of messing up saturation on this or other colours. Ive tried with my own preset but no amount of fiddling with calibration or the HSL gets something really useful, certain now an import preset "starting point" level. The DS161s are basically half stops from max down to i think -6 stop adjustments. Generally if i have diffusers on then anything less than -0.5 stop (ie one click down) is too little. Without diffusers i can get to maybe -1.5, Shooting at 10mm (APS-C Tokina fisheye) and subject distance is typically closer than forearm length ish for turtle/reef shots. In the above examples max distance is about 1m. most are 20-30cms. Macro i can go down to -3 or -5 but for wide angle i just cant throw enough light onto them to get loser than iso400/f8 most of the time. Might be positioning related, no idea. I dont think tubes lose output with age that much (they're about 15 years old). Ive never been able to get satisfying water colour starting point from any of the 4 (i think) Canon DSLRs ive used underwater over the year and not found a useful picture profile (or preset) yet as a starting point. For obvious reasons i dont like/want the one click "adaptive colour" to do "things" on every image as a starting point.

This has been annoying me for the best part of a decade so now im revisiting just thought id ask. Going back to basics after doing very limited UW photo for a few years and awaiting new housing. How are people getting nice blue water column shots? For reference im using Canon (RAW) and DS161 strobes (4800K colour temperature) and processing in Lightroom Classic. Whatever default picture profile i use produces different blues but none "nice" They all tend towards green or on darker/bluer ones the saturation looks hugely excessive and the whole image has a cartoony look (im not adding any extra). Typically shooting 1/160 to 1/250 and ISO 400 ish (any lower i cant seem to get enough strobe output. On 400 theyre 1 stop off full without diffuser. ish. subject dependent).. Well aware of shutter speed controlling the background water brightness but this is specifically the hue and saturation i can never get correct. WB is auto or daylight (but RAW so doesn't matter - i adjust after the event). I can get the foreground colours correct but not the ugly background. A few examples. These are raws just spat out as jpgs with no editing hence messy look, deliberately to show what i mean. First example the odd, saturated, fake look of the water behind. This in about 10m in indonesia. f/8 , 1/160th, iso400. Picture style "Adobe Colour" Here the light/green hue and so on. f/8, 1/160th, iso400 @ 10mm. Nusa Penida...So its blue in reality. Background just looks odd. Again saturation. f/8, 1/200th, iso400. Nusa Penida in about 15m Similans somewhere. Greeny, light blue. Not pleasing. 1/100th, f8 ISO200. Gili Air, Indonesia in 6m Plenty of other examples. Shots deliberately not edited to show the default issues. What are peoples workflows for a starting point "nice" blue? Ive tried standard, faithful, landscape (helps foreground, oversaturates background) with ideally Canon? What can i do to get the images less cartoony? Reduce foreground light too? "Camera Landscape" shifts towards blue but seems to over saturate at the same time. FWIW the new "adaptive profile" run gets the water to a nice blue on most of them but its a black box. I have no idea what or how its doing it so dont like it instinctively. Added bonus tips, less "vivid" or cartoony looking images. Which maybe lighting related.

Would have to bite my tongue over some of those things after quite a few seasons working there. Ive got a "hall of shame" list of divers grabbing/sitting/kicking coral and the like. Certain liveaboards are common offenders, as are certain groups. Rangers, yup park fees and sometimes work permits of the guides along with checking the number match. They also transfer the illicit alcohol bribes from the boat captains/dive centres to the shore that way. The worst offenders i see with cameras (and worse, selfie sticks) are guides. Again certain groups, certain boats. Want to take a group photo sat on a table coral at Tachai? Your guide will help with that. Strong current at Ko Bon? No issue - the guide will line you up nicely on the ridge all holding live coral so you can enjoy the show. You get the idea. Not all guides/boats - there are some very good ones there But certain ones and certain boats you can pretty much guarantee what you'll see underwater. The camera ban thing wont be enforced at all and is generally targeting the wrong group. I did consider putting the hall of shame into an article or photos online but realised i might want to go back there and dive one day so havent done so. The poor quality there starts with the guides and drops downhill from there to the people they supervise.

FWIW Resolve does have an Auto on the primaries (top left). A word of caution though, i generally find it terrible.

My ikelites are electrical fired so not sure if they applies or not. (That said, i do mostly wide angle so seldom above 1/120th anyway even in the tropics).

Last update, thanks for all the help and advice for options i hadnt even considered. R7 housing ordered as well now and should have it in 2 weeks. Very useful advice and completely changed my original line of thought.

Ive tried both. I find Resolve Studios NR, even the new "AI" to be less good and a lot slower to render. Neat Video i find excellent. HOWEVER, i think only Resolve Studio has OFX plugin support so you couldnt install NV inside it to use anyway without buying Studio.

Update to that, ive decided to go R7 option. Ill wander into town later to buy one. Yup im aware the R7v2 has leaked but that will be a good while before theres a housing, if any. Now if only nauticam dealers would answer emails from someone trying to buy a housing. Tried several over the last week and no reply!

Second hand Tokina came today, works perfectly and looks like new. for $100usd. I'll get a second as a spare. Ikelite here is listed but in reality stocks no things it seems. I leave Japan end of April for Malaysia then to Indonesia where my dive kit lives so trying to find a battery either here or Malaysia, or Singapore or Indonesia which complicates things (i spent roughly 50/50 time Asia v UK). The re-pack does look fiddly and id need to find a spot welder. Maybe OK as a last resort. I'll keep hunting. Its irritating Ikelite sell DS165 and 232 strobes with the same battery, new but seemingly not the batteries now. Last time i bought, admittedly 5 years ago, everyone stocked the packs and they were half the price. Switching to Z240s if any come up might be a better idea long term as i hate the things due to the bulk anyway.

Cheers. Thats what my take was and seems my best option. It should allow reuse of what i have within reason and upgrade in pieces. This is looking at my best option for now. Been out of the game too long with my existing setup. Didnt realise everything has changed. Battery repack might work if i can find instructions. The packs maybe sealed though. Ikelite does have the same pack on all strobes so i thought they'd be easily available as they used to be. Seems not though. They did have a LiIon battery upgrade but that also seems to have disappeared. FWIW hate the strobes, too big, too bulky but again they work so cant justify changing those yet.

Looking at the Nauticam charts (a lot has changed since my last shopping...) it looks like the 10-17 will work in the existing 4.33 acrylic dome via a N100 - N120 adaptor. RF > EF adaptors i have. There appear to be 32 second hand 10-17s in Japan now so ive just ordered 2 (which i can use on 70D anyway). I normally carry the 70D inside the housing (in the hold as i havent found an airline for years that allows more than 10kg hand luggage). Typically my dive kit without camera is about 27kg then a further 13kg for housing, dome, camera, lens, strobes etc. At the moment im leaning towards an R7 bought here tax free with a 10-17 (could also use my 60mm macro and flat port) an double up as a spare body or wildlife body for land use. Housing is surprising about $200usd cheaper in Singapore than Japan but thats wiped out by staying 1 night in SG. FWIW most of my stuff is pretty reef shots with the odd pelagic if i get lucky. I do maybe 1-2 day of macro per trip before getting bored - its nice in small doses. I really want to do more video. The old 8 bit, non log on the 70D is the big thing holding me back. R7 looks good for that. Can anyone see any major downsides of the R7 > Adaptor > Tokina idea above? Obviously i can change lens to 8-15 etc at a later date. Next issue are my strobes. Or specifically, where to find an Ikelite battery!