abowie

I use a Vytec which I believe has a similar, if not the same, transmitter as the D9. I must have done 150 dives with it and a camera with strobes. Never a problem.

Does anyone know if this port is actually designed to work with the 16mm? I saw the port a couple of months ago at Sea Optics, who, if memory serves, said it was for the 10.5mm. My impression was that if something as cute and compact as this actually worked someone would have made one in the past, I would have bought it and saved myself the trouble of lugging huge fisheye ports around the world. I can't actually find the port on either the Nexus or SeaOptics site. Edit: I FINALLY found this on the port page for the N90 (seems an odd place to list the 10.5 port but anyway...) ( Here) FP-120-7 Fisheye Port 120 for 10.5 Fisheye lens $955.00 I'd assume from that that the port is for the 10.5 lens only. I very much doubt that adding any sort of extension ring will 8improve things; it will most likely make things worse.. If you really want to use the 16mm get yourself one of the FP 230-3 ports. Personally I'd just get rid of the 16mm fisheye .

If you have some Subal arm pieces gathering dust I'd like to provide them with a new home. I am particualrly after clamps but arm sections would interest me too. Email me abowieAT(NOSPAM)vigtech.org

I'm still using a D100/Subal D10 combination. After a recent trip to Bikini I was reminded (and disappointed) that the D100 simply can't cope with wide ranges in brightness across an image. Are the newer cameras any better? I'm particularly interested to hear what the D2X owners think as I'm looking at that as my upgrade path (Ron Boyes, I know you're out there). If they're no better then I'll wait.

My take on this. Fast lenses are useful for wide angle particularly for natural light shots. See http://www.users.on.net/~abowie/VW2004h/VWindex.html for some recent wreck shots. Most of the natural light shots were at f2.8 and around 1/15th. Much less important for macro as you'll always be using strobe lighting and usually using smaller apertures for improving DOF. Mind you the good macro lenses will in general come in at f2.8 anyway. My 60mm is an excellent land portrait lens at this aperture. Zoom lenses are always an optical compromise that will work best at one focal length and not as well at others. How this ties in with the optics of your port and housing plus any dioptres required to get the virtual image right is a lottery. Some will say that they give you a lot more creative leeway underwater but I find that composing is as easy as moving closer (or much less fequently further away). I don't use them.

These are very cool pictures Sami! I do a bit of cave photography too and the idea of giving strobes to your buddy is an excellent one that I shall have to try.

Interesting link but I'm not too worried about the housing imploding :-) What I'm trying to do is get as much information as possible to increase the likeleyhood of successful photography on this dive. If anything I expect that failure would amount to controls stopping functioning. Ike in another link suggests that his polycarbonate housings fail between 300 and 500 feet and then it's usually the port. I would hope that cast aluminum ought to be at least as tough. What I'm after is any practical advice forum members can offer. There must be people on this list that have done this.

Ladies and gentlemen I need some advice.. There is a requirement to take some photos at about 100m. The only camera that I have that I could bear to risk is my old F801 in a Subal Miniflex N8 housing. I also have a Subal FE2 fisheye port with a small surface blemish on the glass that I'm prepared to risk. My plan is to send the port and housing to Sea Optics for a service and get them to pressure test them to 110m. I expect that they will cope OK with a static test like this. The N8 housing controls are all lever arms; there are no "push in "buttons so hopefully controls sticking won't be a problem. Any other suggestions? I have calculated that there will be about 3 metric tons of pressure exerted over the port area although I figure the dome design will cope with this a lot better than a flat port.

Hey Ike have you got any pics of imploded housings :-) ?

That's not too bad Jean; at least your fins and camera lanyard haven't made an appearance.

I bought a Monitor Spyder about a month ago and was very disapointed in the results. Despite repeated attempts at calibration I always ended up with a very noticable and unpleasant red cast after calibration. After a fair bit of reading on the 'net i was no closer to solving the problem I opted to use Quick Gamma http://www.quickgamma.de/indexen.html with much better results.

Sorry if the answer is obvious, but how on earth do you change the colour mode (colour space) on the D70. It's a menu item on my D100 but I can't work it out on the D70 and the manual doesn't seem to tell me either.

Surely if they're designing a housing from scratch they could make sure that it's pretty much neutral U/W. Mind you I remember the Aquatica A80 F801 housing I used to own. It came with a huge lump of aluminium bolted to it to offset the buoyancy of the 8"fisheye port. Yuk.

As a film SLR photographer in a previous incarnation, I used to use Velvia (remember that guys?). Forgetting about colour reproduction, dynamic range and other issues for a moment, I would be interested to know what people think is the number of megapixels that would/will match Velvia for resolution. I'd also be interested to know what evidence led you to arrive at that number. I have my own opinion about this, but I'd love to hear what you think.

I have both lenses. Personally I see this the other way around. By preference I would almost always use the 10.5, saving the 12 to 24 for specific tasks only. My 12 to 24 spends most of its time gathering dust in my camera bag. The results I have seen with the 16mm fisheye have left me a bit cold. You get all of the barrel distortion that lens provides but only about 110 degrees of coverage. I haven't used the Sigma 15mm but i suspect it's much the same. I guess to a degree my opinion is coloured by the fact that I dislike using zoom lenses underwater. I prefer to frame by moving myself relative to the subject rather than zooming. I find this usually serves to get less water between me and the subject.