Udo van Dongen

If it's only salt residue you want to remove i'd first use a wet microfiberclothso salts dissolve. And afterwards i'd clean it with a microfiber cloth.

Udo

I did something really bad to my Ikelite 8” dome port this weekend. After not shooting UW for about a year I have been putting all the pieces together. We’re going to Little Cayman in a few weeks. I was testing the strobes and needed to put a lens on the camera. I had the super wide port body on the big dome but instead of mounting the shorter 8 mm f/3.5 fish eye lens I put on the larger 11-22 mm f/2.8-3.5 WA zoom lens. If you shoot with Olympus you know these lenses and how different they are in size. Both lenses are great underwater but they require different port bodies. I had my DIY neoprene port cover on and couldn’t see why the port body wasn’t engaging with the port locks. I kept rocking and rotating the dome trying to get it to seat.

 

To make a long violin solo short, I ground up the inside of the dome port on the knurled lens filter, making an ugly round mark. Ouch! I felt awful and awful dumb at the same time. Please don’t try to cheer me up by saying, “Duh, you should ‘a known better”, ‘cause that won’t make me feel any better. L LOL, I know I deserve it anyway. J

 

So Ikelite is being very helpful, as always. The acrylic dome can be replaced in my existing dome body and shade without having to buy the whole Dome Assembly new. It’ll cost me about $150 instead of $400. Gee, I feel a little better already.

 

I thought about this polishing method but it would be really hard for me to do this evenly on the inside of the dome. My hands are too big to fit inside and if I didn't polish the whole surface evenly the dome would have anomalies in the surface that would show up as distortion.

 

 

 

 I was stupid once too, and did the same mistake. However, i managed to polish out the scratches on the inside of the dome, so i'd recommend you to give it a try before spending another $150.

good luck! Udo

Also could you cope if a photo comp allowed to pre set your setting , which you gave the organisors pre dive, then restricted you to shutter speed, aperture, strobe adjustment and preview.

Hmm lets see where this goes...

to make the analogy to car racing: to my opinion it would be something like an old-timer race with crippled modern cars, not something i'd be interested in. 

I use regularly:

 

Aperture, shutter speed, on/off, flash up and down, focus modes, AF-ON, shutter release, playback, rear dial, OK button, +/-, ISO, LV, Video Start/Stop, shooting modes (single shot/multi shot/ 2 second delay), mode dial WB, info, erase, lock photo, zoom in/zoom out, menu button

 

lens release when back on the boat.

 

So, all of them pretty much. 

Same for me except that i don't need 'shooting modes' (Single, multi/2 s delay), 'mode dial WB' (i'm shooting RAW, but for video necessary), Flash up/down (electrically wired strobes) and AF-ON (via the shutter release), but i do use AE-/AF lock occasionally, the AF-/M focus selector and the P/A/S/M button

But the need for full accessibility is with me also very depending on the type of diving. During wreckdiving at the Northsea with a visibility sometimes of less then 2m at average depth of 30 m with a lot of current, some buttons become more relevant then others. Absolute necessity to me: ON/OFF, aperture, shuttertime, ISO, focus modes, rear dial and auto- or manual Focus and shutter release.

I think that's about it.

udi62 I thought the Nikon 60mm AFS wont auto focus with the 1.4x Kenko TC?