Based on the work I did with photographing wildlife during my employment with the National Park, Velvia 100 gave excellent results and I've just stuck with it. We did use Velvia 50 when it came out and liked it too. I use a lab in San Clemente, CA, for processing. Turn around time is about a week. I usually have them do a HR scan of my slides and send me a dvd.
I happened on the housing for the Nikon N8008s housing at a garage sale. It didn't cost me much and I wasn't sure it would keep my old 8008s dry. (It even came with a working N8008 camera body and dome port) Ikelite stopped servicing this particular housing years ago because they had no way to repair or replace any they inadvertently damaged during servicing. The o-ring for the backplate needed to be replaced and I had a tough time finding a replacement. Ikelite initially told me they had none. While searching for someone who had a replacement, I did find a reference for an Ikelite part number that was called an o-ring kit. I called Ikelite again and gave them the part number. They looked and found eight of these kits in their parts warehouse. I now have eight o-ring kits for the housing. When the housing stops working, I'll just use it as a display item.
The replacement o-ring issue is worth mentioning because it can be a problem with housing older cameras. I've run across old housings for Nikon F2 and F3 cameras, but I suspect getting replacement o-rings would be a problem.
Bob at Southern Nikonos has a huge amount of knowledge about Nikonos equipment. He once told me how many spare parts he has in his inventory and it was unbelievable. I sent him one of my Nikonos II bodies for servicing a while back and he had a record of servicing the camera for a previous owner in New Jersey years ago. He did a strobe sync conversion on that Nikonos II for me to make it work better when I get around to getting some strobes for it. I did quite a little correspondence with Bob when I was assembling a collection of serviceable Nikonos lenses. It's nice to have someone who's a knowledgable resource and willing to share what they know.
The following are white shark images done with Velvia 100 (pushed to 400) and a Nikonos II w. 28mm Nikonos lens. No strobes were used and the images are too blue. Image 1 does show the iris of the shark's eye (contrary to popular belief, white sharks have blue eyes). Strobe use would've given more accurate color rendition (the shark's back would be more gray; the belly would be white).
-AZTinman
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