EMWL100

Got my EMWL late yesterday!! (I am pronouncing it em-will, FYI). I bought it a la carte, just four items (totaling 3 grand), for now. These items are focusing unit #1 to use with the Nikon 105VR, the 100 degree objective, the lens shade for the objective, and a 67mm mounting ring (to replace the Nauticam bayonet mount on the focusing unit). I have a Saga port for the 105VR similar to what Adam has (Alex may be using the Saga port for the 60mm Nikkor). Nauticam cautions to not tighten the six screws holding the ring in place too tightly. In less than 24 hours three fell out onto my carpet that I was able to locate so a word of caution here - I went back and tightened them well using a long 2.5mm sized Allen wrench (my Swiss Army Knife style hex wrench kit (I have two, one for metric and once for inch that are light enough for travel but not up to this task) does not have long enough wrenches!).

I took some shots in the tub since the weather today prohibits going outside. I shot at f/16 then pulled the housing out of the tub to shoot at f/4 but I inadvertently moved the aperture setting to f/3.8 during the shoot. Large aperture clearly not as good as stopping down. I started at about 12"/30cm working distance but did not quite put the housing in the same spot after changing the aperture. I then went closer still at f/3.8 then went back to f/16 still closer. The closer shots were about and inch (3cm) from the lens give or take. Full frame shots all have my logo in the corner.

It took a while to figure out a target - I found an empty isopropanol bottle in my darkroom supplies and put in several 3/8" ss bolts to make it negative. Now to get them back out!!! I was kneeling on the floor next to the tub on the left so you see a slight bias due to the awkwardness. I was shooting using AF with one hand while the other was holding a Seacam monitor that gave me a view through the viewfinder (and observing the AF points doing their thing).

Next is a jpeg converted from a screenshot of the last pic while working in LR zoomed into 100%. I had to compress the jpeg quite a bit to make it fit. Looks like the number of pixels is quite a bit less as well. So much for 100%! I may be wrong here as my monitor is 6K so hard to tell but the window in LR was quite a bit larger.

PS The contrast was a bit low and I only guessed at the exposure. I used 1/4 power on one Retra Pro for the distance shot then went to the lowest setting for the f/4 shots and forgot to reset it back for the last shot (f/16) so I equalized the exposures in LR by centering the histograms. The contrast was low evidenced by the histograms all fitting in the middle block in the LR display when centered so I set contrast to 100%. LR imported with camera neutral profile was left unchanged - which is also a bit flat. Camera used was a Nikon D800 (rez in corner of screen grab).

The clouds parted yesterday so I finally got to shoot my EMWL in the nearby lake. I used a somewhat hybrid approach - remote polecam - bonfire backwater - muck - freshwater UWP! Water was maybe a foot deep. I used a single Retra pro at 1/4 power. Because of the 100 degrees of the lens I used just the protection ring as a light modifier. I may try something narrower the next time, maybe this evening but rain is predicted to re-start at 2200 which is when I was shooting last night. As well gale force winds are forecast...

I did not want to deal with mounting the lens shade in the twilight (I set up during civil twilight (ended about 20:45) but was wearing a headlamp). There is a lens flare in all the shots - slightly off-center likely due to my strobe placement which was not perfectly centered but pointing more or less straight down (modeling light used for the "bonfire" technique). The pic shows a Threespine Stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), which is a widely distributed species. I tried a different approach at showing a 100% crop. I made a virtual duplicate in LR that I cropped to ~800 pixels on the long dimension. The white things look to me like leeches - an African Queen moment!

Cool shot Tom! I'm looking forward to seeing what else you get from this setup.