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He has shared his setup on page 5
Thanks for the reminder, that was 6 days ago and I had forgotten the picture of the rig. I did look at the critter photos after it though.He has shared his setup on page 5
Let's chat about DSLR vs Point and Shoot - looking for some wisdom / experience
I have a feeling that a DSLRs are being replaced by mirrorless cameras. If I was in the market to get an (new) underwater housing I would shop for one accommodating a mirrorless camera. Recently Nikon D/C the Nikon D6 and D500. That sent a chilling message to many of us. I think you are 100%...scubaboard.com
I had forgotten that you had posted a picture of it. It's good to know the cold-shoe shouldn't be trusted. You didn't mention that previously so I'm glad I asked.
That's a clever bit of work. Not sure how much cheaper it is, but you get exactly what you want and there is much to be said for that. I'd be worried about the acrylic base cracking. I'm guessing it's cast acrylic and 4 to 5mm? Anything lighter and it would probably be pretty flimsy.
That makes alot of sense. The GoPro trays I've seen on the market are not that sophisticated looking.
Why would you need two wide lenses? The 81 degree lens is actually not a lens at all, it's just a wet dome which restores the in-air field of view of your camera - its chief virtue is that it's cheap. The 120 degree lens is a real wet lens, and it's zoom-through, so if you want a tighter shot, you don't change lenses - you just zoom in. Its drawbacks are that it costs more and weighs more.
M52 lenses typically target small sensor compacts and phones; using one with a micro four thirds sensor is liable to introduce vignetting. They're cheap because they're small. For an M43 or larger camera, you need to use a larger lens - Kraken KRL-01/Weefine WFL-01 (same product, different markets), AOI UWL-09/UWL-09Pro (the latter has a glass front dome), Nauticam WWL-C/WWL-1.
It requires both the camera and the subject to be completely stationary and thus is completely useless underwater; that's why the review omits it. This feature is what you'd use to take a photo of a painting in a museum, with the camera mounted on a tripod. Underwater, even if you use a tripod, everything living moves - even the slowest critters move enough to ruin this type of shot.
In any DSLR option, factor in a magnifying viewfinder. Unlike compact/mirrorless, you have to shoot these cameras through the OVF, and using one without an add-on viewfinder is very frustrating. Your eyebox is very small, so you have to position your face just so, and then you're looking at a very small picture down a very narrow tunnel.
Backscatter didn't explain that. Thanks for the additional insight. It was one of my questions. That reduces the TG-6 by $180 ... still by far the least expensive option of the list.
That confirms what I suspected. I mentioned the M52, but was somewhat suspicious of it. That AOI glass lens is quite a jump up in cost. Backscatter has nothing on their pages that I saw about the difference between the two lenses.
I'll look for that later. Do you happen to have a link to his review or was it a WetPixel or SB post? It may benefit anyone who has slogged through this whole thread.
Is a flip-style diopter better than the 60mm lens with the flat port? It's really odd that they wouldn't recommend something with a lower power. What you are suggesting makes total sense.
Good point. They do have a hand-held option and I'm skeptical that anyone can hold a camera completely still over the course of 16 frames. I don't know enough about their sensor based image stabilization to have an opinion on how feasible it is. I wouldn't expect it to be moving much if they are using pixel interpolation to create higher res images. I still thought it was a neat trick. Kudos to the engineers who realized they could do it and got it to work right.
That sounds like a really un-fun way to do photography. I regularly do boroscope inspections and the field side of it really doesn't show much. I wind up reviewing the images and video on a large monitor at my desk to identify any issues. Same thing for drone images. Can't really see enough on an 11" iPad Pro, and surely can't see enough on a iPhone. iPad has a gorgeous screen, but you just can't zoom in or see enough detail while maintaining situational awareness with the drone. Sometimes you can see there is an issue, but most of the time you are reviewing footage after flight.
UwPMag issue #114, page 25
Going by Nauticam port chart, a CMC-1 (about +15) with 14-42mm will give you a maximum 0.8x magnification, with a working range of 41-76mm. I would guessimate that at 76mm, magnification will be about 0.5x. Your sensor is 18mm wide, so you'd be able to frame subjects between 22mm and 35mm. On bare lens, your maximum magnification is 0.19x, so your smallest subject is about 90mm wide - 94mm if you go to absolute edges of the frame. This leaves you with a 'donut hole' between 35mm and 90mm.
Indeed, hence the proliferation of magnifying viewfinders. They come in straight (also called 180-degree) and 45-degree flavors. The former are easier to use for wide-angle but not so much for macro. 45-degree viewfinders are excellent for macro, as they allow you to get the camera right down to the bottom and still have an unobstructed view through the lens, the way you cannot do with a straight viewfinder or the LCD screen, but they have a significant learning curve, especially when you use them for wide-angle - all your muscle memory gets thrown off by the bent viewpoint. Still, just about every serious UW photographer that I've met had a 45-degree viewfinder on their DSLR/mirrorless housing.
