Bluefin w 90 Fathom Macro

Hi Guys,

I am the lucky owner of a Bluefin OLED with Fathom 90 Zoom through and Canon XA10. My question is why would I ever use the standard flat port? Zoom through gets about 1.5" square macro field at about 7" from the lens. This means the lens isn't going to create shadows from the lights which is key. Any thoughts?

Second, for macro (night diving) I would always use the lights and so not need the red filter. The filter is held magnetically and so I could replace it for night with +4 diopter lens in a second magnetic holder. I bet I can make it fit. Anybody see problem with doing this?

Thanks,

Craig Andreiko

Congratulations! We have a Bluefin with G10 (almost the same), what we don't have is the fathom 90, we have the wetmate 65. For us, we found the flat port works well in very silty water during some of our work dives we do and also for macro as the wet mate is "zoom through" but has its limitations(the 90 degree would fix this though as i understand it). As for the filter, I have tried to use it twice and it has fallen off and got wedged between the camera lens and the housing port effectively ruining the dive, the problem appears to be a lack of space. L&M says a diopter won't work because it is slightly thicker and there is not enough room. Based on what I have seen with the filter I imagine you might run into the same problem with a diopter.

One of my dive buddies has an external diopter that flips down, but he never uses it, because the camera can focus and zoom through the standard point to almost anything he would care to shoot macro wise. So he uses the standard port so he can attached his external diopter.

Either way, just check and make sure you can actuate the filter/diopter prior to diving it, obviously. I had done this but it still failed underwater. Let us know if it works, maybe i'll get one!

www.vimeo.com/partialpressure

L&M says a diopter won't work because it is slightly thicker and there is not enough room. Based on what I have seen with the filter I imagine you might run into the same problem with a diopter.

I have a Canon HF-S30 and a Bluefin Pro. L&M also told me that the flip up diopter would not work, but I was stubborn and got one anyway. It is, in fact, too thick to work as is. I ended up filing the unnecessary plastic away from the diopter frame, but it was still too thick. As this is a dedicated camcorder that will never use a screw-on front filter, I then ground away the lower part of the filter thread on the front of the camcorder, being careful to keep the filings out of the lens. After this sort of modification, it does work, although depending on the zoom setting, there can be some vignetting with the flip diopter in place. Its not a great solution, but it can be made to work, and it does produce fairly reasonable images as long as you are aware of the vignetting issue.

Hope that helps.

When I was shooting with a L & M housing, for macro work I removed the Fathoms port and put on the standard port with the Wet lens attached to that. While I had to zoom in a bit to avoid the vignetting that would occur if the cam was fully zoomed out, I found that using the wet lens did a fine job of getting a tight shot.

Steve

I have a sony sr12/bluefin housing. I have the 110 degree lens that i use for most of my dives but if i am shooting macro specifically then i will use the standard port plus i have some screw on diopters that fit onto the front of the camera & depending on what size diopter i am using, i can still use the flip down filter.

To be honest though, i really only shoot macro with my sola 1200s anyway so no real use for the flip filter. I do however mostly dive in sydney so if i was in tropical water then i may need to use the filter for certain subjects.

I am also considering adding an OLED rear screen to my housing.

Cheers Pete.