bvanant

Chris: Can you compare the Panasonic 30 macro to the Olympus? Bill

I have all three lenses (the 45 mm Zuiko 1.8 is not a macro lens, max magnification is only 0.11) and I think the IQ of the leica is the best but lately have been putting a lot of mileage on the 30 macro. Fast focus and nice Bokeh. I use the 60 if I am shooting small stuff where the diopter is most useful. Bill

If you really are 50% macro then I think the RX is not the optimal choice. For you, I think the GH-5 option is more useful if you really are doing 30% video. The lens choices are better for the u4/3 than for the Sony. BUT I would avoid the all in one solutions. For macro nothing is as good as a dedicated macro lens and for WA you might use the WWL but it is large, heavy and expensive compared to a tiny dome port and an 8mm Fisheye. I don't think you could tell the EM-1 from the GH-5 in terms of stills but for video the GH-5 is more optimized. Cheers Bill

Interestingly both S&S and Inon both claim their strobes to have GN of 20, the backscatter results show a smaller number. The Inon has GN 17 with the diffuser, the S&S with diffuser is about the same. Bill

The difference while it looks like a lot is less than a stop (a stop is 1.4, square root of 2) relative difference the YS01 is 1.16 GN brighter. nothing to worry about especially for macro. When I shoot mine in macro I am mostly using them at like 1/2 power Bill

Do you mean light i.e. video light or strobe. If you look at Richard Salas's stuff, much of it is shot with a single strobe. If for video, then buy another light seems like good advice. Bill

Dry suit seal should work as well Bill

Nothing like that yet (about 500 dives on mine) Bill

Terrible news. Photos from the Ventura fire suggest that this was not a simple Li Battery fire, the boat burned down to the waterline. We have been on this boat numerous times and safety was always stressed during briefings. Only the people awake at the time (crew) got off. Our prayers go out to the families Bill

Do it yourself. Single fiber cable is really cheap, the 617 core multi-fiber is like $7/meter and a 2 meter cable with two end plugs from Inon will have about $20 in parts. Coiling is easy, Bill

A seamstress is exactly what you want. Or more appropriately perhaps a tailor. Quality Tailoring in Long Beach is quite good Bill

Larry's will be a whole bunch cheaper than the Saga. Bill

Yes, in the water is fine for up to 3 folks, any more and it would be a nightmare. Fortunately for me we were only shooting macro things (head on portraits) with no wide angle. Me trying to teach wide angle? I would pay money to see that. Glad I could supply giggles. BVA

Aditech says that Saga makes a flip diopter for Nexus. Their reference number is 117 https://sagadive.com/producto/soporte-abatible-para-otras-marcas-simple/ bill

I now have a much better feeling for the difficulties of running workshops. Last week I was cajoled into leading a photo workshop for Blue Water Photo on a Rocio Del Mar trip to the Northern Sea of Cortez. On the trip there were only 4 photographers (2 novices, two relatively accomplished ) and teaching this group was quite challenging. After every dive I would go over the photos with each person and try to get them to change their approaches appropriately. The only thing that really worked was to leave my camera on the boat; give the group a set of extremely explicit instructions (shoot each of the 4 common bennies/gobies head on) and then set up the shot for each of them to get what I was saying. That worked but nothing in the class lectures seemed to have a very big effect. Running such workshops is hard and in spite of the large amount of 1on1 instruction at the end of the week there was a lot less improvement than I would liked to have seen. Of course it was probably my teaching style that was at fault but I have a lot more respect for the folks that run big workshops. Bill