Tom_Kline

One has to define "catch" - I assumed, maybe incorrectly, the literal meaning. One could catch the virus (have it enter ones body) but not get sick but be able to transmit it and possibly test positive per Bill. One has to have a contingency plan for testing positive on arrival (negative on departure). One of the first positive cases where I live in bush Alaska was for a fish processing plant employee who tested negative in Seattle then positive here.

Being an aging boomer I received my first shot and am expecting the second in a fortnight. I suspect I will do my first post covid trip to HI which can be done on a much shorter lead time compared to overseas. There already is some travel to HI but with a lot of hoops to jump through. Will be more challenging coming from the bush which is my case. If one has immunity from the vaccine and catches the virus will that show up as a positive (from testing) and if so for how long and is the lag time (post infection) before positivity different? May take a while before these questions can be answered. If the body's immune system is attacking the virus is there enough to be detectable by a test? Other potential issues relate to the recently reported mutant forms (UK, S. Africa, and US) of the covid virus...

Very happy to see the return of this topic! My fave reflects my long-term salmon project that was influenced more by the weather that was excessively wet in 2020 and poor salmon runs than by covid. I took this shot during one of the few and short sunny spells in early July before any salmon had returned to this stream. I used a lens that I had used for this same purpose (juvenile salmon) but with film back in the 90s, the Nikonos RS 28mm. This was one of the lenses that Harald H brought with him to DEMA in '19 following the SEACAM mdification. I have used several other lenses for a similar purpose but was challenged by the nature of underwater optics. This lens has a much flatter field as well as being a sharper water-contact lens. Its small size also helped as the lens was not completely submerged due to the shallow water depth. Rocks on the bottom (get in the way) did not help either.

Alex, it would be interesting to see a similar analysis and graph done for a fisheye lens.

A 50-120mm full-frame macro zoom might compel me to house the camera to go with it even if it meant changing brands! As for high ISO I use it quite a bit. I did a Lightroom search for Canon 1DX underwater images and reproduce a segment (to keep the pixel count down) of the screen here. 12800 is ISO #1 and 6400 is ISO #2 followed by ISO 6400, 3200, and 5000. I wonder how much of the EVF contrast issue is due to using 8-bit jpegs for the image. Low bit count is needed for a fast refresh rate - I have seen the stroboscopic effect one gets from this from screen refreshings in two situations (Nikon Z6): 1. a fast pan such as moving the camera rather fast L-R, and 2. shooting a propeller aircraft (seen it both with fixed wing and helicopters as there is a gravel runway airport between one of my salmon streams and home used by both types).

I have shot the 10.5 mm Nikkor fisheye lens "properly" mounted behind the hemispherical Seacam Fisheye Macro Port and Seacam Fisheye Port as well as "improperly" mounted segment-dome Seacam Superdome SD. The SD is far better even with just 12 megapixels (D2X).

Does Retra make the adapter for the Hasselblad bulkhead? If so it is news to me. I presently have two copies of the adapter for S6 bulkheads. I have found them to be rather unreliable due to the design of the connection between the adapter and the fiber optic cable (discussed in another thread). I have had to carry an allen wrench with me to my shoots and have had to re-terminate the connection several times using the wrench to loosen and then tighten the repaired FO. Not practical IMHO for scuba diving.

One of the main reasons for me to use small dome ports is because the water is too shallow to use a large one. I have used the Seacam fisheye macro port FMP and wide port WP for this with the Nikkor 10.5, 16, and 8-15mm and Canon 8-15mm fisheye lenses. The WP is not made for fisheyes but when the fisheye lens used with it is focused very close, it will not vignette. The WP is also the least expensive Seacam dome and given that the ports are often scratched by rocks being tossed at them by my photo subjects need to be considered expendable. First attached shot shows a Sockeye Salmon pair preparing to spawn. The other pix show Sockeye Salmon gathered at the mouth of a creek located about 2 km away from where I am sitting. They are gathering here prior to final maturation to beach spawn in the lake around the mouth of the creek. I planned on staying here several hours to do the shoot..... The creek as you can see is very shallow - Pink Salmon spawn here. Even the FMP is too big to fully submerge at some some spawning locations in the creek. I have used this creek to do a number of tests over the years (because it is so close and fairly clear). Another type of small dome port about the same diameter as the port mount so looks like cylinder with a dome on the end made by Seacam was simply called dome port DP. They came in various lengths for different lenses. Alex Mustard mentioned a similar Subal port here a number of years ago. I have used my DP with macro focusing wide angles (the now long-discontinued 20-28mm f/1.8 Sigmas and the more recent Tamron 28/1.8 lens) and the Nikkor 60mm macro lens. The 20 in Nikon mount was used quite a bit with the D2X (i.e. APS-C or DX). I also have this in Canon mount but have only used it with the superdome (and 1D series full frame cameras). There is a curved field so smaller apertures should be used. In my experience the 60 macro with a DP is much better than using a flat port other than for night photography. I shot quite a few pix with this dome and the 60 near Kauai in 2019.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to the Wetpixel community. Let us hope for a quick recovery from the pandemic!!!

You can determine the guide number empirically if you want to go that way. Probably easier to have standard settings - best not "overthink" the issue. I used 150 w-s strobes back in the day and recall using f/11 with Ektachrome 200 (which was available in 70mm) at the half to one meter range. The bigger issue will be synchronizing the Retra Pro as the strobe needs fiber optics.

I have a small gallery of Snell's window pix on my website: https://www.salmonography.com/Phenomena/Snells-window/ The two at the bottom were shot with a DX Nikon (APS-C) with the Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye lens. These two shots depict what Ross mentions about seeing reflections around the window. I used a flash which probably helped with the reflection. One needs a shorter focal length lens to get a crop sensor circular fisheye shot to fit the entire Snell's window. These are made by third party companies, e.g. Sigma 4.5mm. As for the depth question... I looked through my UW images from Niihau last year for upward views. One can see the edge of the Snell's window at the top of each frame in these two. One (shark) has an overexposed sunball in the center of of the window. Surface waves and general scattering of light makes the window edge less distinctive compared with the shallow freshwater pix in my gallery. I was around 20m down. Vis there is quite good, 30m plus. Both shots were taken with a Nikonos RS 20-35mm adapted by Seacam so only moderate wide angle

I got some satisfactory shots with it. Keep in mind I was using film so no pixel peeping like with digital today. It did not get used as much as I would have liked due its large size - I recall doing just one plane trip with it. You might get lucky and find one for not much money but keep in mind that only few were made. A really good price would be a rare find. I do recall that it took a while to offload mine so they may not sell all that well. For the money the Nauticam EMWL is a better idea and there is a 100 degree objective for it so you have the same angle of view as the 18. At this time the amount of distortion is unknown...

I concur with Alex's statement. I bought the RS18 when it came out as a pre-order (only option as only a few were going to get made) and was disappointed when it arrived as it was much larger than the prototype picture that was sent to me. The front element looked like a simple 8" (20cm) dome port. As this was the only way to get a 100 degree non-fisheye image on an RS it made sense to keep. I recall the cost as being over 3 grand in 1990s money so figuring inflation was about the same cost as the WACP-2 is today. After moving to digital I bought the Nikkor 18mm AF-D lens and made careful eyeball comparisons of the two lenses then sold the RS18 (as part of a gear dump along with two RS bodies, the 20-35 and 13). To me the front and back of the RS18 lens (ignoring the dome) looked identical to that of the 18 AF-D. IMHO it only makes sense to own the RS18 for shooting on an RS camera. There are better and less expensive solutions for other applications.

Other than the new E lenses (only a few lenses and that includes the 8-15mm) and lenses with manual and pre-set apertures, all Nikkors have a spring loaded lever aperture control in the lense - the lens is stopped down with no pressure on the lever. I believe (have not seen them all!!) all Nikon SLR cameras (D and film) have an actuation lever inside the body that mates with this to stop down the lens. The "auto" that is part of the lens description (in the text on the lenses) of older lenses refers to this as the automatic diaphragm was a 1950s innovation that helped propel SLRs to their dominance. Similarly they marked lenses with early coating and multi-coating with a C (when these techs were still new). The newer coating tech has new labels such as N for nano-coating. Nikon has had good support for legacy products until now. This has meant they have had to support the earlier AF in newer bodies. To cut costs the bottom end of the camera line omits legacy AF support as do the new Zs thus far. If you really, really want manual focus as well as aperture control, the older manual lenses with helical focusing rings and aperture rings are probably your best bet. You will need a gear for each and a housing and/or lens port to mate with these gears. This may require some customization.

Short answer to your first and second question is no. The third question: possibly. Firstly the RS lenses have a double mount. The inner mount is almost the same as the F mount (hence the no). The outer mount is the waterproof part. The lenses came out in the 1990s so have the Nikon tech of that era which means screw-drive AF. The lenses do not have an aperture ring so are somewhat like the more recent lenses. The 10.5mm DX fisheye lense is somewhat similar as it has screw AF and no aperture ring. From what I have gathered (far from the center of things) there are at least three types of "conversions": Type 1. The change is made to the inside the lens (electronics) so that it can communicate with a DSLR and thus function. The outer mount is adapted to specific housings with an adapter ring. This is how the Nju folks do it: http://njusystem.com/category/blog/products/ Type 2. The inner lens components are removed from the RS lens leaving a lens unit without its front element that is fitted into a new shell so the lens resembles an ordinary camera lens. As well the electronics are modified. The front RS lens element is installed into a dedicated lens port. This is how Seacam does it. https://wetpixel.com/articles/seacam-reinvents-the-nikonos-rs-13mm Type 1 and 2 conversions require using a camera that supports screw-drive AF. Not all Nikon cameras do. A third type is possible... Type 3. Leave the RS lenses as is and instead build a surrogate of the RS camera body that would control both the focus and aperture. The RS camera body has a complex switch that allows manual focusing via the focusing motor (in the body as all screw-drive AF bodies) so there is no absolute need to interface Nikon AF with that of another company. A hypothetical surrogate could have a switch (and motor) that functions similarly -- push left or right to focus in one direction or the other. The more the switch is pushed in either direction the faster the focus. Aperture control is a simple knob with reciprocal aperture values on it like a shutter speed knob on cameras. There are RS lens adapters for motion picture camera housings that may function like part or all of type 3 but as I have not seen one in person I do not know for sure how they work. They are not cheap. But they suggest this is feasible.

The i button does not appear to be doing anything - I was looking for more info on individual pix like a caption. The site appears to display file names. I am re-doing my site as well. Reorganized the section that has scuba diving pix (as opposed to non diving underwater and topside salmon shots) to something more biological so the galleries depicting other things got booted into a travel section. However I was able to merge similar warm and cold water subjects like jellies into one gallery. How to organize ones website is not without its challenges!

Where did you get the shirt?

A book has been published that should be on the bookshelves of all those interested in blackwater photography. It is just out and available at a discount here: https://mutualpublishing.com/product/blackwater-diving/ I got my copy yesterday and am quite impressed with it thus far. It is mostly an identification book - the background material ends on p. 13. Here are a couple of example pages. Many of the organisms illustrated are widely distributed so will be of interest to more than just those doing blackwater dives in Hawaii. Yes that is snow in the background.

There is a remote control made by Nikon with a switch in it for long exposures. One option would be to make a housing for this remote that you would connect via a bulkhead to the cameras. Alternatively you could build a remote control that does the same thing using the type of switch used for lamps (the things you have at home such as table lamps). This type of switch is pushed once to close the circuit and a second time to open the circuit. It could go on the end of a cable that is cabled to a bulkhead or possibly built into the housing by repurpusing an existing but unused lead-in in your housing - you need to have the space inside the housing to fit the switch without impacting camera functions. You would need a remote cord plugged into the camera inside the housing that would connect to the bulkhead (or the switch) on the inside. Nikon (as well as Canon) remote cords have three wires - one is a common (#1). One of the others, call it #2, is for waking up the camera and starting the autofocus. The third is for triggering the shot. It is possible to close both at the same time either mechanically with the switch (the switch needs to have connections to do this) or by connecting wire 2 and 3 together (inside the housing) so that closing the circuit with the switch connects wire 1 with 2 and 3 simultaneously. I did this with my D1X when using the Aquatica remote and set the camera to focus priority when using AF. It also works for MF.

I have this housing and used it mainly during the late 80's and early 90's. It works with 80, 60 and 50mm lenses only. The domes are 8" in diameter. One could stand it up on the roll bars so it resembled R2D2 and is what my housing was nicknamed. There was a more recent housing for the later SWC models (SWC/M and later) made by Gates called the H38 that used an 8" dome. I bought one from Hasselblad USA shortly before going digital but sold it as it got little use once I went digital. There are some postings on Wetpixel showing this housing. Darkness's housing is NOT this model but the earlier blue housing.

Good catch! Forgot about flashbulbs! The 38mm lens is only f/4.5 so you do not have to stop down much from maximum aperture to reach f/5.6 or f/8! You will have to do some trial and error. The bigger deal is having to estimate the focus distance so it will be a bit like shooting an old Nikonos. The H38 housing had a focusing scale on the focus knob.

With the prism removed it is possible that you will be able to chimp through the viewing port.

Like Adam entropy tends to take over. I have two sets of industrial shelves with plastic bins. I bought them at Sam's Club in Anchorage on a ferry trip there a few years back - store is now gone and the ferry system here has been mostly offline. If there is a Sam's in your area they are wort looking at. I have some stuff stored in Think Tank rollers (one domestic and one international) that only leave on dive travel so they still have use at home plus some spares are stored there ready to go.....

Since the strobes are Seacam's they can communicate with each other with the extra wire but the camera itself has just 5 contacts. I have the C version of the 250D, nice but very heavy.

The Seacam 160D can synch at 1/8000 (p.7 of the manual). This is enabled by the shutter becoming a narrow slit. I am skeptical that 3-4 flashes will do it.