shelbyrose

A belated thanks for the response on this @bghazzal--I was looking at your messages on the way to the dive boat this morning! Super helpful, as always. The video was quite helpful and your exchange with @Davide DB actually also helped clarify where I was getting tripped up I think. I've gotten to do a couple of dives with each set-up and I'm still finding my way around the rig and figuring out the best settings, but it's been fun so far, particularly the macro work. Hopefully won't need to continue to bug you all with further questions, but really really appreciate having this resource and being able to get your advice!

I’m confusing myself again, so do you mind if I clarify the steps here? Do I set ‘focus mode’ to MF when taking this approach? So MF but then activate AF with back button? And when you say you turn the knob for peaking while focusing, do you mean you’re holding down the F1 back button? Then release it when you’re done focusing and press F2 to lock focus? How does this work when not using a tripod and you’re still moving relative to the subject? I’ve been scouring YouTube to understand how backbutton works relative to video specifically but can’t find anything that’s not geared toward photo, ugh… Thanks again!

Ahhh thanks @ChrisRossand @bghazzal, that all makes a lot of sense. I didn’t realize you keep holding the back button for autofocus! Makes sense I was having such poor results… Will play with that more tomorrow.

Many thanks for all of the advice on buoyancy for my rig, all! Got the chance to take it out in the ocean today for the first time and tested out both my wide angle and macro set-ups. Have some fine tuning to do, but was a good start! I’d love to get your suggestions for focusing, particularly with macro. I typically like shooting with manual focus but found it to be a bit challenging to dial in the focus. Is back button focus as I saw @bghazzalmentioned in a prior post the best way to go? Can you have the camera in manual focus and still do back button focus? (Sorry if silly questions! I’ve always just used manual focus on other cameras so learning about auto focus alternatives for the first time!) Any other tips very welcome. Many thanks, as always!!

Hi all! Hoping I can tap into your expertise yet again… I have now gotten my buoyancy dialed in for the wide angle set up and am working on my macro set up now. I weighed it today in water and it’s quite heavy between the macro lens, video lights, quadripod (thanks to @bghazzal’s guidance!), etc—a massive 1.9kg. @bghazzal I know you’ve mentioned you don’t use much if any floats for your macro set-up—how have you found that? And @Davide DB I remember you said you carry extra weight with you to add to the macro rig if needed—do you start with it neutrally buoyant and then add the weight? Really appreciate any suggestions you or anyone else might have! many thanks, yet again…

Drew the vacuum and left it for over 12 hours and the leak detection light is still green, so think I'm good to go. Whew. Thanks, all!

Okay great, thanks, Chris. I’m currently testing it and 7 hours in the leak detection is still green so hopefully that’s a good sign.

Okay I'll try this today -- thanks for the suggestion!

I recently bought a secondhand Nauticam LX10 housing. It appears in really good shape and the person I bought it from only used it for three liveaboards. I submerged it for the first time a couple of days ago in a local river (only about a meter deep max) and I noticed a bubble forming at the top of the 'flash off' lever at the back of the housing. It was a single bubble, not a stream, and it never released until I brought up the housing. I had used the vacuum kit and the leak detection system consistently stayed green (I left it this way for an hour). I am guessing (hoping??) it is just air trapped on the outside, but not sure whether it is something I should be concerned about? I am going on a dive trip next week so wouldn't have time to send it off to be serviced unfortunately. Does anyone know how reliable the leak detection is and if there are any further tests I can subject the housing to to make sure there's no leak? Thanks for the advice!

Alright, one more Q! Does anyone use a white or gray card for manual white balance? If so any suggestions? Thanks!!

Sent you a PM. Thanks!

Thanks for this! I played around with it more and think the issue was I was moving to C mode before deploying (following one of the youtube tutorials), but for some reason that was re-setting it to standard. If I stayed in movie mode for deploy, it worked, and I have verified as you suggested. Super helpful, thank you so much!

Ah missed that re: the lights. I'm just using ambient light for wide angle right now.

Gotcha, that’s really helpful. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Chris! Ah yeah I weighed the rig with the UWL 09, so total weight for my wide angle set up is 1.15 kg. Is there a way to figure out how much additional lift I need without re-weighing the rig without the UWL 09?