jodyelliott

I just read the main page article on your images. Pretty awesome! I really like your last set. But..... what about guy models?

woah, i am going to be jumpy all day after looking at those shots! those are amazing, thanks for sharing. your's is still one of my favorites. just a note on #1, backscatter may be bias but i would call and talk to jim over there and ask about the glass quality differences between the two. i have heard some rumors but am not an expert in that area. that is the same set-up that i really like, instead of the subsee i use a macro mate. on #2 why not use an extension ring with your macro port? is it s diameter thing? I don't have a 65mm or a 24mm for that matter. I have shot with a 180mm on one dive. It was so hard to shoot. But towards the end of over an hour dive I started to get the hang of it. I could see some cool stuff you can get but not worth the weight it is and I like more versatility under water. what housing did you get for your 5d2? i don't know what you mean by reversed with tubes, can you explain? j

okay, makes sense with a smile. I really do like the spider eyes though. I hope Steve slept well last night..... Showed my husband and he coul d see why someone could have nightmares. How do you like your 5d2? What housing did you end up with? Try putting a 2x tele, 100 and macro mate on that set-up? you could have some real fun with that. I have been too chicken to put that together. Well, not chicken as I know what the macro mate does to the 1.4x, it is more, do I really need to do a dive strickly 2:1 instead of a wider range of options to shoot with? I am going to Komodo in Sep. again. I may slap it on to, try the sea fleas/ladybugs with it. The 1.4x with the macro mate really gave me some nice tight shots in the ladybug with some cool backgrounds to play with. I need to find one that is double comma size to see what other details you could see that big. Your def. seems pretty good to me. both for macro/super macro and I like how you buy your lenses. I love the fisheye lens for that very reason. For a parting shot, i am posting this image of a hairy shrimp that was maybe 3mm big. I love seeing the details like the eggs in her as I only saw the fuzzball moving around and through the lens I only saw the whites of her eye and hoped all else of her was in focus..... Jody PS I hope the image shows up, my first time attaching one.... I preview'd but didn't see it.

Hey Steve! Finally I got a debate going. The macro mate. I love it! You can look at my 'favorites' gallery on facebook. On the third page, you can see an image with a couple of sea fleas on a sea squirt. That was shot with my 100mm, 1.4x tele and the macro mate. Those guys are about as big as your comma on your keypad. That would be close to shooting like a DX with a macro mate. When i first got the macro mate, I took it into a dive in Monterey. I remember getting mostly crappy shots but one was really cool to me. I was finally getting images that I had wanted without cropping. I hate any extra work for myself..... enough to have to edit some. I took a crab image with my 100mm then popped on the macro mate and took the same crab. I got mostly eyes which I really likes. I had to get closer once I popped on the macro mate but the crab didn't care. I don't know where those images are but if I find them I will let you know. I am in the process of updating my website and may find it. It was really really hard to shoot the macro mater for what seemed like forever. Then I started to notice when I shot with just my 100mm, that set-up seemed really easy. Now it is still hard but harder with my 1.4x tele + the macro mate. But I can usually get some images I really like when I slow down and take my time. The plane of focus is not very big. Just a sliver, but when you just move your rig towards the critter and then back towards your body, you can see what is in focus and then click. Then hope you didn't move. I shoot this type of set-up a couple of ways. I will pick a scene I like, then I will auto-focus for a starting point, then I manual focus from there until I see what I want to shoot. When I manual focus I am usually moving towards the critter as I want to be closer. But if I go too far, forward then I just back off and continue to manual focus. You aren't moving that far so it is not big deal. But if it is surgy, omigod is it hard! The other set-up is where I want to shoot just 1:1 on my lens and know it is 1:1. So for my Subal housing (I hope I have this right as I just do it automatic now) I turn the focus knob towards the back of the housing 3-4 times. I know then it has 'pegged' to 1:1. Then I just move in and out until I see what I want in focus. No more auto or manual focusing. I know my Aquatica was the opposite direction, so I hope I didn't mix them up. I use my company's product, a focus/zoom knob for good fingertip control. When my husband designed me one fits all gear set to shoot all these set-ups, he moved the focusing off the port up to my zoom knob, so I didn't have to take one hand off my housing to manual focus. Which is a pain in the ass and I rarely did it. When I got my Subal rig it was a bit harder to turn with my fingers. Just mechanically for some reason. So then the focus/zoom knob was born, just to give me better leverage. It is so easy to focus now I don't care if I need to manual focus. It takes awhile to learn to shoot the macro mate but I would not switch for a minute. I just got back from shooting a month in Dumaguete (as you know Steve) and I shot with 1.4x tele and 100mm for the first few weeks. Putting the macro mate on when ever I wanted to get closer to some aspect of the critter. This is one of my favorite set-ups. For some reason, I decided to take off the 1.4x and just shoot the 100mm and macro mate. I shot this set-up mostly the last week. I realized some things about the advantages and disadvantages to shoot the two set-ups. With just the 100mm and the macro mate, I found because I had to move closer once I popped the macro mate on, I tended to scare some of the critters away sooner than I would have liked. I was in their personal space too much. With the 1.4x 100mm, I didn't see as a problem so much. I did see that I had to use less of an f-stop than I had wanted to and sometimes if i wanted more I had to change my iso settings some. on the 1.4x, it was iso 200 or 250 to get my higher f-stops whereas with the 100mm it was iso 100 no problem. The condition of the water varied though out the trip. But mostly the last two week the vis went down and was more murky and less sun, more rain. So that made a difference as well. But it is a thing to be aware of when you pick which to use. Hope that explains something for you, Steve. Long winded again! I am usually not so wordy, guess just being back from vacation I don't really want to work. Jody

It looks like some of you guys have taken my post way too serious. I don't think too much and have lots of fun shooting macro and super macro. But when I first started out with a full frame sensor and not many were shooting full frame, it became a big learning process to get as tight as I had wanted. The DX shooters didn't have that learning curve. Unless you have shot FX you wouldn't know what I mean. As for my post, I thought others just starting out would like to know what I have learned along the way. This is a forum to help others I thought. I like James idea of super macro. Just curious what people think as I have definitely seen things lifesize being call super macro. Like I said before, just my two cents on the subject. Maybe more like 10 cents.... Here's to shooting things you really can't see the details with your naked eye...... Jody

I finally am posting here. This has bugged me for quite some time. It is when figuring out what exactly is super macro. A bit of my history here first. I started diving about 4 1/2 years ago. I used some point and shoots soon after my open water. I shot with those for about 1 1/2 years. I have been shooting a full frame sensor (FX) camera for 2 1/2 years. I had a 5D Mk I and now shoot a 1DS Mk III. The 5D Mk I was the only FX camera on the market at the time. I shoot mostly with a 100mm macro lens. I bought a Macro Mate, I think, about a year after getting the 5D. That was harder than heck to get used to but when I did, it was really fun to shoot with. I kept seeing other shooters images that were not cropped but were closer than what I could get with the 100mm. I was told no diopters were used. This confused me until I finally realized the difference between a full frame and a cropped framed sensor. The images I saw were taken by DX shooters . The Macro Mate helped some on what I was trying to achieve but... not quite what I was trying for. Just get closer, right? At some point I also was told I probably wasn't getting the full range on my lens, 1:1. So I knew I had room there to 'get closer'. I finally figured out how to know when I achieved 1:1. I did see I had not been getting 1:1 in the past. Then popping on the Macro Mate on top of that, was awesome! I could get a lot of the shots I had been trying for. But..... still not exactly what I wanting compared to what I saw other DX shooters were getting. Plus I didn't want to crop. I wanted to compose my image as I shot without thinking that I had to crop later. This still bugged me so I investigated extension tubes and tele-converters. I opted with tele-converters. I bought two, 1.4x and 2x Tameron tele's. I have not used the 2x as of yet as the 1.4x suits me just fine. I will try the 2x this year, I swear..... The macro mate on top of that, omigod! The 1.4x with the Macro Mate is hard enough! But I have mastered that, to some degree, and I like to have that option now and then on a dive. That is what I was looking for! I recently was shooting in Dumaguete and shot about two weeks with my 1.4x and 100mm using the Macro Mate now and then. For some reason I wanted to shoot just my 100mm again and it was refreshing to shoot with that lens again. But I did miss being at the same distance away and getting a more of a full framed image of a critter without scaring them away. As when I popped the Macro Mate on just my 100mm set-up was doing as I had to get closer to get that 1:1 image. So..... macro vs super macro DX sensor vs FX sensor Here is what Super Macro' is to me. It would be an FX camera with a 1.4x tele or a 2x tele + 100mm or 105mm lens PLUS a Macro Mate with the critter being less than an inch big Or it would be a DX camera with a 100mm or 105mm lens PLUS a Macro Mate or a 100mm or 105mm with a 1.4x or 2x tele with the critter being less than an inch big and NOT a DX camera with just the 100mm or 105mm lens. I think shooting Super Macro is very hard, but fun and very rewarding. But when I shoot just with a 100mm lens or the 1.4x + the 100mm lens, those are easy to do with my FX camera. (well... you still have to get stuff composed and in focus... which can be hard in themselves) And the 1.4x is a lot more difficult to use than just the 100mm by itself. That is where I compare a FX to most DX cameras shooting just the 100mm or 105mm. It is when I put the Macro Mate on top of the 1.4x + 100mm when it gets a lot more difficult. That is what I consider Super Macro... hard, fun, and trippy (to use a word my friends tease me about using) So...... what do you think? is this my definition the way super macro really is? I see too many images that say they are super macro but they don't seem close enough to me. I guess you could call a crocodile fish's eye (full framed shot) super macro as it is close and tight. But I would consider a pygmy seahorse's eye or a rhinophore of a nudibranch (fulled framed shots) as the real super macro image. Food for thought.... Jody (Sorry for such a long winded post)

Hi Bruce, I liked your article. It was informative. I looked at some of your images in your gallery and I like quite a few of them. I am a hobbyist shooter as well. I have a Canon 1DS Mk II in a Subal housing. I had a 5D Mk I in an Aquatica housing before that. I loved my Aquatica housing. I switched for a few reasons. I like both housings though. I did want to let you know there is a possible solution to shooting manual focus with your set-up. I had my husband design me a gear set for my 5D to move manual focus off of the port and up to my wide angle focus/zoom knob by my left hand. It works really well. I also had him design it to accommodate a 1.4x tele and a 2x tele using the same gear. It is designed to fit on the 100mm lens. My company, Xit 404, is now selling these gear sets through Backscatter, www.backscatter.com Not trying to promote my company here (I guess I really am) but this is exactly why we started that branch of our company, to solve problems like this. We worked on fitting up our gear set with the 5D Mk II Aquatica housing. It was finished last week. We have also designed the 50mm Sigma lens to fit in the set but is not quite released yet. What I don't know is what happens to the port opening once you attach your Aquatica to Seacam adapter. Our gear set works fine with Aquatica's port's diameter. If your half of the adapter gets too small, it won't fit the gear. If you let us know what is your port diameter is we can tell you if it will work or not. Pictures would be great to see what the set-up looks like. So this may save you in having to buy all the Aquatica ports. Jody Elliott www.xit404.com

Hi Ger, I do have some stuff that I can sell you. I will look this over on the weekend and let you know. I thought I had a buyer for my flat port/body and macro extension rings. I don't have the moisture alarm, spring et or neoprene cover. I do have a fisheye dome shade and will have to decide if i am selling the dome with that shade or the wideangle shade. I recently got back from a trip and am still jet-lagged. I need to slam out some work in the next couple of days but wanted to let you know I got your email and when i could get back to you. Email me if I forget for some reason. Also, if we do make a transaction, I can possibly add what else you need at retail cost from Backscatter. They are a few blocks away. Check out Backscatter.com. I can always get them once you pay them and put them in your box. They may just let me add to your box from them. Anyway, we should be able to work something out. Jody

I finally decided I should sell my old set-up. I have used this set-up (most of the items) for 2 years. The view finder was use for a little over a year. It has been serviced and not used since June. My rig is located in Monterey, California. Here is what I have for sale: $1500.00 for Aquatica Canon 5D Housing Glass Optic Flat Port $2800.00 for the stuff below: Aquatica Magnifying Viewfinder 'Aquaview' 8" Dome Port 8" Dome Shade for Wide Angle 8" Dome Shade for Fisheye Lens Zoom Gear for Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L Type 1 Lens Focus Gear for 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Port Extension Ring for (A) #18700 100mm Lens Port Extension Ring (B) #18456 for 100mm +1.4X Teleconverter Lens Port Extension Ring © 18462 for 180mm Port Extension Ring for (E) # 18463 100mm? Lens Port Extension Ring for (E) # 18463 100mm? Lens Port Extension Ring for 16-35mm Type 1 Lens (Need a 2x Diopter for Lens) Port Extension Ring for 20mm Lens #18457? (15mm Fisheye Lens No Extension Ring Needed) Spare sync port kit O-Ring Kit Ultralight 'T' Groove Plate - Qty: 2 Ultralight 'T' Groove Base Adapter - Qty: 2 Also included are the following: (You can see what they look like here, http://www.xit404.com/under_water_camera_gear.htm) Custom Focus (Zoom Knob) Custom Lens Gear for 100mm focus moved to Zoom Gear spot Custom Body Cover for shipping Custom Port Cover for shipping $1200.00 for my Canon 5D body (If you want a 2nd body we can talk about what I would like for that one) $5500.00 + tax (tax may be negotiable) I hope some one gets the amount of use out of this set-up as I did. I loved shooting with the 5D. It is an awesome underwater camera. I loved the Aquatica as well. Easy to set-up. I had no problems with it. I serviced it whenever Backscatter thought I should. I have used some of the images to print as big as 35"x40" and can not tell the difference from an 8x12. Jody PS Here is what I used with the system which is NOT for sale, but gives you an idea of what else you might want. Prices were guessed at in June, some may have come down in price. Accessories: MacroMate Flip Lens $549.00 ($588.80 w/tax) Hartengerger Nano Light $499.00 Focus Light Ultralight Adapter for Nano $22.95 Lenses: 100mm f/2.8L Macro Lens $599.99 Tameron 1.4X Teleconverter $189.00 Kenko 2X Teleconverter? ~ $250.00 16-35mm Type 2 f/2.8L Lens $1599.00 15mm Fisheye f/2.8L Lens $679.00 16-35mm 2x Diopter $90.00 16-35mm 4x Diopter 77mm $92.00 Sigma 50mm Styx Arm floats and flat port float

I currently use a Canon 1DS Mark 3 in a Subal housing. Before this set-up, for two years, I had the Canon 5d in an Aquatica housing. Note these are both full frame sensors. I shoot 99.9% of the time, the 100mm lens for macro images. I wanted closer cropped looking shots without cropping them topside so I bought the Macro Mate. I have been using it extensively over the last two years. I love it. It was difficult to use at first, but you get used to what you have to do the get the shot you want. It takes practice though, but hey, what doesn't take practice. I also shoot a 1.4x teleconverter with my 100 and love that set-up too. I always have my Macro Mate on, so I can flip it down when I want, with the 1.4x set-up. That is extremely difficult to find your small subjects through the viewfinder but when you find it you can shoot it with out too much difficulty if it is not moving too fast. You can generally get some shots in focus but the 1.4x tele + Macro Mate did take me a lot more practice. I have been trying that set up now for most of this year, over 250 dives and most of those were macro. I have not tried either of the other two diopters mentioned, but I love the Macro Mate and has been worth every penny i spent for it. I also have had my husband's engineering abilities to thank for an easier time of shooting these set-ups. He made me a gear that transfers your manual focusing from down on the port to up on the housing body's zoom gear. I have had this for both my Aquatic and Subal set-ups. The Subal is new to me since June. I have dove over 150 dives on it. When we first got it and put my new gear on it (he just modified the Aquatica design to fit the Subal), Subal's zoom gear was a bit hard for me to turn. So he made me a new knob to put over the top of Subal's and made it great fingertip control. This also made it easier for me to quickly focus on these small subjects. I can also use a 2x tele if I want to. I will be trying that set-up next month. The Macro Mate on that set-up is going to be crazy. I hope I don't feel like tearing my hair out after that first dive. I hate to plug stuff here and am not sure if it is okay in this forum, but we are now selling the gear set-up I mentioned above, as it seems others have had the same problems as myself. I hope I have given you some insight on shooting with the Macro Mate. I would never dive without it. Jody

Thanks for all of the replies. I was looking for which teleconverter brand was better, if that indeed was the case. I received an email from Berkley White explaining the difference between extension tubes and teleconverters. Here is what he wrote "A teleconverter will increase magnification, but not effect minimum focus. Thus, a 1.4x would turn your 100 into a 140mm with the same minimum focus. The disadvantage is it will also multiply minimum f-stop and focus slower. Advantage over an internal diopter is that you can focus on infinity. You can add a diopter or macromate in addition to a teleconverter. Diopters don't multiply, but allow you to focus closer. An extension tube works like a diopter and just allows you to focus closer. I'd stick to the macromate over an extension tube. In summary.... make sure you're using good technique to focus at absolute minimum focus, don't use an extension tube, do use a teleconverter if you want to dedicate the dive to higher power macro." I decided from that email I would research more and see who uses what. I had also heard Eric used a teleconverter and he is a Canon shooter so I asked him what one he used and got the Kenko 2X as his answer. I am also going to try to see if I am actually getting absolute minimum focus. Most likely I am not but will learn what the lens can do without anything added to it. Then throw the macro mate on and compare. I will probably try this in the bathtub soon. Thanks again for the help. Jody

I have a Canon 5D. I have been shooting it underwater for about 1 1/2 years. I have a 100mm lens with a macro mate (from Backscatter). I like to shoot super macro shots. I see what some cropped sensor guys get right off the bat and would love to get as tight as they can (full frame sensor on my 5D). I have searched some options. I do like to shoot with the macro mate but it would be great to not have to be as close to get full frame shots. I emailed Eric and this is what he suggested: ' I recommend a Kenko 2X teleconverter used with a 100mm macro. Optionally, you can use Berk's macro mate as well. I believe the combo gets you 4:1 or so. I use this combination a lot.' I have tried to find a Kenko 2X near me, but can't find a shop nearby that carries one. I could go to B&H but am not sure I want to do that yet. Somewhat local I found a shop that carries a Tamron 2X. They say they are optically close as well as price wise. They carry Tamron brand as they have a 6 yr. warrenty. Does anyone have a preference over one or the other? Eric, why did you pick Kenko? Thanks for any help given, in advance. Jody