dave@immersed

Screw head is painted matt black, although it needs a repaint after being taken off the dome and rolling around in my luggage after the last trip... Haven't noticed any reflection. I do remove the weight regularly as it traps salt water and is a hotspot for corrosion. I used an enamel spray paint on the screw, but I use this artists acrylic "carbon black" paint on the white writing on the lens itself to prevent reflections inside the dome, works well:

Yes the dome is a bit vulnerable and I've had to use my micro mesh kit during surface intervals... Here's my weight system. My usual WA setup is pretty much neutral with this weight attached and although slightly "dome-up" is easy to hold horizontal with little effort.

Me too, very happy with it, nice for portraits, sharks, and when you wish you had your macro lens on... How do you find the buoyancy of the dome? More of an issue with video. I've drilled a bolt hole in the "petal" and securely fix a small lead weight, which helps the tendency to lift at the front in landscape mode. Lead weight is approx 250g, slightly more would be better.

Nice work, great exposures on those shots.

Thanks! In the mangroves, Raja Ampat. (and coming from saltwater crocodile inhabited northern Australia as I do, hanging around under the shady mangroves is not something that I enjoy or did much of!) Here's another one, same fish, sub-adult longfin batfish. https://immersed.net.au/ON-LOCATION/Raja-Ampat/4/caption

Yes I'm really happy with the lens, also topside. It can be a bit soft in the corners inside the dome, at 8mm, but I can work with it and it is much better than when I was using a 7-14 Panasonic lens inside a 6" dome.

OK, I've uploaded a few high-res photos to this web page. Tried to pick a few varied scenes to show how the camera deals with it. https://immersed.pixieset.com/wetpixelsamples/ These are jpg files straight out of the camera, GH5, 7" dome with 8-18mm lens, no cropping, no adjustments, all shot at ISO200, other camera settings are shown on the image. Only thing I've done is "export from Lightroom as jpg" so I could add a watermark and annotation. You should be able to download the individual images at original resolution and have a look at them more closely in your photo editor. No large animals really, I've got plenty of manta shots but only as frame grabs from video. For sharks I use the 12-60. Happy to help. Let me know how you go.

Thanks Chris. I was on-board the Nai'a. Excellent boat, fantastic crew, very comfortable, amazing food (free drinks with dinner!). Decent camera facilities and careful handling by the crew, they are used to photographers. We had great conditions, not much sunshine and generally windy, but great viz and suitable currents (but at 26C it was a bit chilly for a mostly tropical diver ;-) We didn't see another dive boat, I wish the same could be said for Raja Ampat these days... I will definitely go again. Trip report here: https://www.naia.com.fj/blog/sonias-superstars-sequel/

You're not missing anything, no captions to tell which lens was used, but most of the wide angle are 7" with 8-18 Leica. OK will organise high res examples somehow; is it the 8-18 Leica lens that you are interested in? So I can pick some useful images, is there any particular kind of image quality aspect that are you most interested in? eg dome vs lens, overall sharpness, corner sharpness, flaring, low light etc?

There are plenty on my website shot with the 7" dome. I reduce them to 1860x1140pixels and 550kb for the website but you get the idea. I can pick one or two and upload a higher res version if you like? Just back from a fabulous trip to Fiji. Most of these were taken with the 7" dome, with 8-18 lens, or sometimes 12-60 (ie sharks), with a few macro and fisheye photos in the mix. https://immersed.net.au/ON-LOCATION/Fiji/thumbs Yes it really was that colourful, in fact Lightroom "auto" settings significantly reduced the saturation 'cos it didn't believe it! I find that in processing I often do a small crop to help with the soft corners if shooting at 8mm, say a 5% crop. The 12-60 works really well in the dome. The wide-angle photos in the Raja Ampat, Egypt and Maldives albums were mostly with the 7" dome too.

No, and the gears all packed up and ready for a trip next weekend. Will take a picture next time

Thanks Matt. The dive sites, boat, captain, spotters, "buddies", conditions allowed me to spend quality time to get the macro shots, not something thats easy or suitable on many dive trips and locations (eg in Raja Ampat recently I didn't even try to get macro video) Macro was GH5 with Olympus 60mm, no wet lens. One or two clips may have been with a Panasonic 45mm (since sold as I found the 60mm better stabilised with the GH5, which surprised me, considering the 45mm has OIS and the 60mm relies only on the GH5 IBIS). Although I generally used a tripod, sometimes it was just a monopod and hand held, so the stabilisation helped. Wide was with Panasonic 8-18 and some portraits with 12-35. Lighting with 2 x Weefine 5000 Solar Flares.

The Sony is a great little camera. I spent a few years with a first generation RX100 in Nauticam, with S2000 strobes and it was a great system (still have it actually, sometimes carry it as a backup ;-) In fact if you don't need 4k video then maybe a second hand older camera/housing would be fine and allow you to spend the change on accessories. You will find any of the RX100 series much better than the Sealife... The RX100 needs an adaptor to do any macro, eg a macro adaptor like the Nauticam CMC. Good idea to get a flip mount for it. The WWL-1, although said to be fantastic with the RX100, will turn a small light travel system into a heavy bulky one, so be careful. Be aware that the battery life of the Sony is short. One dive only, so spare batteries are essential (a standalone charger is useful), and good battery conservation practice is helpful during a dive to make sure it lasts until the end. I'd recommend a vacuum valve, it gives great peace of mind. Nauticam's system is excellent and has saved my camera a couple of times... The Sea Dragon light - might be better to get something new and try to sell that with the Sealife camera as a package? You'd have to rig up a mount for it as it uses the Sealife mounting system I think.

Thanks for taking the time and providing feedback. No filter. Lights used on most shots but a few were ambient (eg manta). I spent lots of time practicing my manual white balance... It was often quite dark with little ambient light anyway. My first version was longer, with cuts generally double the length, but I received feedback that it was too long and a bit slow! I agree that this one is more like a showreel so maybe I'm trying to squeeze too much content in to one movie and should go for fewer but longer clips... thanks again

Video from a trip I did to Papua New Guinea - Milne Bay last year aboard the MV Chertan. Weather was pretty dreadful, we really only had one sunny day in 2 weeks, and the unseasonal wind kept us away from diving the reef pinnacles, but we thoroughly enjoyed long, relaxing and interesting dives on the coastal slopes and shallow hard coral reefs, a great place for a still photographer to practice video ;-) This was my first time for macro video; I felt comfortable using a diy tripod as many of the sites we dived had sandy/silty bottoms. Not a particularly fishy or colourful place at the time, but good hard coral and fabulous critters https://youtu.be/fEff0y7xPvw PS how do I "embed" a youtube video instead of just providing a link?