Category Archives: macro

autofocus, Canon EF lens, Equipment, Fisheye lens, Flat Port, macro, Panasonic GH7, Underwater Photography, wide angle

Panasonic GH7 Review for Underwater Photography – Autofocus

August 16, 2024 interceptor121 3 Comments

The GH7 is the first model of the GH line to feature Phase Detection Autofocus. This is probably the single most important feature for the underwater shooter and therefore I have thought of putting together this post to give my impression from shooting the camera both at wide angle and macro.

There will be a separate post on image quality to see how the camera performs and how far the files can be strecthed.

Please note that the camera focuses differently in video than it does for photos and therefore you should not draw any conclusion for video autofocus from this post except that due to phase detection the infamous DFD pulsing no longer occurs.

The GH7 is physically identical to its now phased out predecessor GH6 therefore the housing fits both the GH6 and GH7. I sourced a second hand Nauticam GH6 housing from my friend Pietro Cremone of Fotosub Italia. The GH7 uses the same Nauticam trigger as the GH5/6 series.

General Autofocus Settings for the GH7

If you look in the menu nothing has changed from the previous Panasonic cameras.

[SELECTING AF MODE ]

You have a choice of focus areas as follows:

Tracking
Full sensor
Vertical
Zone
Single Area + (includes anything touching the focus area)
Single Area (limited to subjects fully inside the focus area)
Pinpoint

Pinpoint is only available for single autofocus and subject detection can be enabled for any zone. The camera can recognise humans, animals, motorcycles, cars, trains and aeroplanes. The Animal setting has a body only mode in which case it will detect multiple animals and eye and body in which case it will detect one animal. This detection method works with fish and if you want to use it I recommend animal body only for wide angle and eye body for fish portraits. What has changed inside is that now for continuous autofocus the camera uses phase detection while single autofocus still relies on Panasonic DFD which is a sophisticated contrast detection method. The camera defaults to single autofocus in low light and clearly indicates this in the display so that if you need continuous you know it is time to turn on your focus light. I did not get this indicator in open water once.

One issue I have is that the joystick is not available through the housing so I needed to set a button to highlight the focus area and press the arrows to move it when I needed it. This is a considerable handicap compared to the A1 which topside does not exist as the camera has a joystick that unfortunately the Nauticam housing cannot control.Not many Nauicam housing have a joystick but Sony full size bodies, Canon and Nikon top of the range do.

To resolve this and make operations quicker you need to customise your camera for underwater use. Change the joystick to Fn and assign focus area to the joystick. This will allow you to skip one step compared to focus area select where you need to navigate to access focus area.

[Joystick Setting]

You then go to the Function Button set up and set Fn9 to Focus Area Set.

Macro lenses tend to focus hunt and take a long time to move from infinity to your focus point, this is a problem in any format unless you use a focus limiter. The challenge when using a limiter on the lens is that in most cases once the camera is inside the housing and you have made a choice you cannot change it during the dive and therefore miss photo opportunities when the subject is outside your range.

The GH7 however has a software focus limiter feature that is extremely useful. You can set the focus between a near and far point and the camera will increase the focus speed significantly afterwards. This is also very useful to make sure that you do get close to fish.

[FOCUS LIMITER]

You can assign this feature to a function button to quickly turn it on and off.

For the purpose of my tests I did not use this feature as I wanted to stress the setup and thought of using it only if I had problems but I did not. I find this feature invaluable to ensure you get really close. I have discovered when using wet diopters that all the wet lens was doing was forcing me to get closer but indeed I could have used the naked lens to get the same shot. In consideration of the limited depth of field I rarely use wet diopters with dedicated macro lenses on micro four thirds as the imaging frame is as small at 17.3×13 mm in size.

One thing that may be worth for close up is to customise the AF settings, there are 4 different sets of parameters you can use and you can also customise the AF to be near or far in addition to recalling the focus limiter with a button.

[AF SETS]

In the future I will need to check more the tracking without subject detection that can be useful in some cases where the camera does not find a subject, however using a large single area and the cursor I could cover all shooting situations with no issues.

Wide Angle with the Canon fisheye 8-15mm

Let me start by saying that I am not a fan of shooting fisheye lenses with Continuous Autofocus as the depth of field is high and the focus range is so limited that rarely it matters.

With the GH7 I use the Canon fisheye 8-15mm using a metabones adapter and this in the past only supported single autofocus. I noticed some vignetting on the bottom side of the frame that I did not experience with the GH5 series and I need to double check but otherwise the setup is identical to what you see here on this website.

Metabones released firmware V4.10 on 12 July 2024 declaring continuous autofocus compatibility with the Panasonic G9M2 which has indeed the same AF system of the GH7.

The update also improves general performance. The link in case you do not have it is here.

I updated my adapter and I can confirm continuous autofocus works correctly with the Canon 8-15mm. Like it does with the Sony camera the focus is a bit wobbly however it works fine. Yet my preference unless you shoot a fish portrait with the fisheye is to use single AF.

I used zone focus with subject detection, the GH7 does recognise fish and fish eyes so it did not have problem locking onto this grouper.

Fish was not always recognised, especially in those cases where only one eye was visible and the fish was on busy background, however the MFT camera combined with the 8-15 means there is always depth of field to fix any issues of focus at wide angle. A better option is to use animal detection without eye focus especially for schooling fish.

As I said before this was more academic so in the following dives I switched to single autofocus for wide angle because it is faster on the metabones, I do the same on the A1. The GH7 focussed very well. Few shots for illustration of the already known superb image quality of the Canon 8-15mm combined with the GH7.

Close up work with the Panasonic 45mm Macro

For close up work I use the PL 45mm because it has the best rendering on the MFT landscape. Here I used continuous autofocus by norm using a single area or zone.

I have been advised by Panasonic not to use tracking functionality however topside tests indicate it may work ok underwater. Many people get confused between tracking and subject detection so it may be worth some explanation. Tracking works with or without subject detection and allows you to choose an area on the frame that may or not correspond to a detected subject and then the focus points follow this area. It is especially useful when the camera does NOT detect a subject. Subject detection works differently: it uses the camera live feed to scan for shapes using a deep learning algorithm when a shape is identified the location of the focus points is passed to the autofocus engine to take the shot. Strictly speaking the camera is not tracking an area of choice but detecting one or multiple targets across the frame. This has a risk when there are multiple targets as the camera may jump from one to another however in close up work this is not generally an issue. If the camera detection works there is no need to use tracking as the subject detection mechanism is quicker and more effective.

I activated subject detection with Single Area + and the camera identified all fish with eyes, in my case groupers, gobies and blennies. For nudibranchs I got a shape around the body most times. The subject detection for fish is way more successful than my A1 but I do not know how it compares with the latest implementation of the A7R V that has more detection modes like insect that may be relevant.

I took 255 shots in a dive with the 45mm of which 5 did not have a subject in focus and of those 2 had no subject as the fish had run off the frame.

For Macro you may want to activate auto review for 0.5 seconds, now this allows you to see where exactly the camera focused.

The Panasonic PDAF system focuses like a DSLR with the lens wide open. This is different from other mirrorless systems like Sony or Nikon and it means that when you stop down the lens the camera takes longer to take the shot and can potentially have focus shift, this is mitigated by the significant depth of field of the cropped format.

The GH7 focus right on the eye of this large grouper

I had a very high success rate as mentioned and only in a few circumstances the focus was off the eye but more because the fish had moved too quickly and I was at close range.

This focus system is excellent for shots wide open and you can easily obtain nice bokeh with eyes in sharp focus.

Subjects like nudibranchs can move fast or be on little algae that is swaying in the current, the MFT system with the huge depth of field available means you can achieve the effect you want easily. Different shots at various f stop

The GH7 like the GH5 and GH6 can sync with the strobes at 1/400 using the Nauticam trigger which also supports rear sync. This is a value only the A1 can match and is very useful for close up work as it easily gives you dark backgrounds in the right conditions.

Take into account that the depth of field even at f/11 on MFT equivalent to f/22 on full frame is 1 cm at close range therefore some really small critters may even need f/16 or more.

I did not have a single shot with focus on the background which for me is quite impressive.

The 45mm maintains good sharpness even at f/10 and further but I did not stress the set up in my tests.

I had a focus light but I never had to turn it on because the GH7 focuses wide open, my strobes have a pilot light but this is only useful if you aim at the subject which in most cases I actually do, again there was no need to use it.

Conclusion

The Panasonic GH7 performs very well both at wide angle with a dome port and at close range with a macro lens. Continuous autofocus is reliable and appears to work fine without a focus light even when the shooting conditions are not easy. Subject detection recognises fish and fish eyes and makes shooting easy. The only remark is the lack of joystick control on the Nauticam housing that would make it even easier to work with single area focus, the operation is still possible but requires two button presses. I would trust the GH7 as much as I trust my A1 with the reservation of very dark environments that I did not have time to test.

macro, Panasonic GH7, Underwater Photography

In support of Depth of Field

August 11, 2024 interceptor121 1 Comment

The debate between resolution and depth of field is even more relevant today with the discontinuation of DSLR and the rapid growth of Mirrorless cameras.

I have been a mirrorless user since 10 years now and I am pretty familiar with the benefits and disbenefits of the system.

One of the main disbenefits I have found especially when moving up to the Sony E-Mount full frame system has been lack of depth of field in close up shots.

While the Canon RF and Nikon Z mount still allow apertures of f/32 on their macro lenses, the Sony 90mm Macro only goes up to f/22. This is indeed a serious limitation for macro shooting. The reason is unknown but all Sony E-mount lenses stop at f/22.

It may be that this is related to the loss of resolution due to diffraction.

On full frame sensor the diffraction limit is reached around f/20 however resolution starts to drop much sooner. Also consider that effective aperture of macro lenses is much smaller due to changes of the effective focal lenght, angle of view but this applies across the board and I do not want to make this post more complicated.

This is a resolution chart produced by lenstip for the Sigma FE 105 Macro. You can see that the resolution drops from a stellar value of 80 lp/mm at around 28 lp/mm at f/22, the lens has lost 65% of the peak resolution that was reached at f/4.

Depth of field however does matter in close up photography and has been one of the reason why I have recently invested in a Panasonic Lumix GH7.

Panasonic GH7 with 45mm macro in Nauticam NA GH6 housing

In the title image you see an example of shallow depth of field on a blenny. That image is shot at f/2.8 on the GH7 which is f/5.6 on the sony FE system and the depth of field is extremely thin.

I have taken some test shots using a ruler here the entire series on the GH7 from f/2.8 to f/22.

The fly is 4 cm long starting from f/2.8 and focusing between the eye you can see looking at the ruler that only few mm are in focus despite the frame is around 9cm so no even macro.

At f/4 the lens reaches peak resolution however the depth of field is still very small we can barely read the numbers on the ruler behind the fly.

By f/5.6 we have more depth of field but not enough to focus on the front antennas.

At f/8 we start seeing the back of the fly but it is not all in focus.

By f/11 the whole head antenna included is in focus but not the whole bug. And here if we were on the Emount full frame the story stops.

We continue to f/16 which sees the focus arriving to the wings. This is as far as you could get with the Nikon and Canon mirrorless.

Finally we hit f/22 equivalent to f/44 on full frame and not available on mirrorless the fly is in focus front to back.

What is not apparent in this set of images is how much resolution has been lost stopping down the lens.

To give more precise indication I shot a 10 cents euro coin of the diameter of 1cm.

This image has got more magnification and is almost 1:1 on micro four thirds. At f/2.8 we have practically a bit more than 1mm depth of field.

At f/4 peak sharpness of the lens the detail is great but the depth of field is still very limited perhaps 2.5 mm.

We keep going until we hit f/8 and later f/11

Not even at f/11 we have the whole coin in focus and we start loosing xy resolution due to diffraction.

f/16 is probably the best compromise for such high magnification image.

f/22 has the whole coin in focus however the resolution has dropped.

Yet if we need it we have our high depth of field scenario.

A few other examples at full frame 1:1 with frame width around 36mm.

The f/11 scenario equivalent to Sony 90mm f/22 has depth of field of around 1cm or less

By f/16 we are hitting around 2 cm.

Finally at f/22 we have 3cm depth of field more or less.

I was recently diving in Italy let me show a few examples of what this means.

This flabellina is focussed on the head however as it is turning slightly away from me part of the body is soft. You would argue the head is what matters but lets’ continue.

At f/5.6 the nudibranch is more horizontal the shot is well in focus however you can only see part of the head.

By f/8 we have it sorted consider that this is a small nudibranch not very deep laying almost on the focal plane.

This is instead paradoxically more difficult the nudi is flat on the sea bed however the body parts come into the camera so there is a risk of running out of depth of field here I stop down to f/10.

With the focus point on the back the bottom right under is not sharp!

Here other examples at f/10 where you can see the depth of field is not sufficient to cover the fish.

larger fish do not make necessarily things easy as in the example of this grouper.

At f/5.6 the fins are soft similar shot at f/10 improves the fins but does not cover the body.

Now you would ask why did I not go all the way to f/16 or f/22 simply because I wanted to simulate the limit of the Sony FE camera I have.

The other interesting fact is that if we look at this very old resolution chart for the Panasonic 45mm taken with a 12 megapixels Olympus E-PL1 we see that at f/11 equivalent to the f/22 of the sigma the lens hits 55 lp/mm.

This value is likely to be higher wit the GH7 that has double the pixel count indeed exceeding 60 lp/mm.

Comparing the Sigma 28 lp/mm * 24 mm frame height gives 1344 LP/PH while the Panasonic is giving 1560 LP/PH. Which means the smaller sensor seems to resist better to stopping down making it more suitable to high depth of field photography and one of the reasons why I acquired a GH7.

The problem historically with Micro Four Thirds was that autofocus even in the Olympus implementation was far behind and the camera could not track subjects. This is to an extent still true however the GH7 and OM-1 have powerful subject detection. The GH7 in particular can detect fish bodies and eyes.

In my last shots the camera would focus right on the eye on slow moving subjects. Fast moving subjects at high magnification were a few mm off but overall easy to compensate with the extra depth of field.

Conclusion

We are a times, me included, obsessed by resolution charts and pixel count and forget that images have depth. A good image needs to be tridimensional and depth of field is essential to achieve it in some cases even more important than absolute spatial resolution on the focal plane.

Micro Four Thirds cameras were historically lagging on autofocus due to weak tracking and this is to an extent still true, although the camera tracked fine my swaying in the water, however subject detection able to recognise fish means that the gap is essentially closed and overall you can produce a significant amount of good images without risk of blurred shots.

For information the GH7 like the GH5 syncs at 1/400 with the nauticam trigger and for wide angle rear sync is supported which gives another advantage to this micro four thirds camera over other formats, only the Sony A1 syncs that fast

autofocus, Full Frame, macro, Sony A1, Underwater Photography

Going Macro with Sony A1 and 90mm Macro Lens

March 27, 2023 interceptor121 1 Comment

I must admit Macro photography is not exactly my favourite genre both underwater and topside however I do enjoy a bit of critter hunting.

I was sure that the A1 would be an absolute beast for topside wildlife and underwater wide angle, however I did not feel comfortable at all with the performance of the Sony 90mm Macro lens.

It has a reputation for hunting and a lot of focus breathing that make it hard to use for topside focus stacking.

I have been playing with the lens topside and I did see examples of both so I was somewhat skeptical taking it underwater.

Camera Settings

I was perhaps over worried so I set up the camera for the worst case scenarios:

Focus limiter set to 0.3 – 0.5 meter
CAF priority set to Focus
Aperture drive – Focus priority

I went in with autofocus set to tracking flexible spot.

Port and Focus Gear

I have always mixed feelings for focus gears and mostly I use it to make sure I am hitting the minimum working distance and therefore maximu magnification.

Nauticam 37147 SE90-F focus gear for Sony 90m f/2.8

The focus gear for this lens is a large item and does not allow to operate the focus clutch. The operation is quite easy as the focus ring does not have an excessive long run.

I already own the 45 Flat Port that I use for the Sony 28-60mm and also have the 35.5 N120 to N120 port adapter so I thought how do I make this 105mm long?

Nauticam 21325 N120 to N100 25mm port adaptor

Nauticam makes convenient adaptor rings of various length to go from N120 to N100 port size. I got the 25mm that resulted in a saving of £441-260=£181 which I used to buy another part.

The rig as assembled looks like this. In effect even the 110 port starts wider and gets narrower.

Before going to the pool I realised the housing does not have an M10 mounting point but you can adapt one of the points that go to the bars connecting the angle. Will be done at some point. So I went in without focus light in a very very very dark pool.

Pool Session

As I packed my props I realised I did not really have any good macro target however a friend came to the rescue. An instructor of a diving center that uses the same pool brought a small leopard and octopus that sank and were perfect targets.

As you probably know I am obsessed by obtaining the absolute maximum performance from each lens. And this for a macro lens means shooting at the best aperture, for this lens f/4-5.6 and stacking. However this is not available underwater. You need to pull your shot from a single image and this means the lens won’t be at the best performance.

I started at f/11 which gives a respectable MTF50 and to be honest I am impressed!

I then pushed the lens to f/16 I could see resolution dropping as depth of field was going up.

In order to get depth of field of an overall scene with the octopus I had to go all the way to f/22 diffraction zone.

Yes with the high resolution of the sensor those images are still ok or at least so they seem to me.

I think this lens wide open makes an amazing bokeh that will probably be still there at f/4 so something to check.

Field Impression and Ergonomics

First of all I did not regret setting the lens to close range using the focus limiter. This will give you a frame 19 cm wide if you feel that is too small and you are just trying to get some fish portraits perhaps leaving this to full is a better idea. Likewise if your targets are bigger.

I did not get any hunting despite the dark conditions and I am not sure if this was due to this setting or if this helped.

CAF worked in all situations the A1 can practically see in the dark however in order to get focs tracking and eye detection working (it detected the eye of the leopard) I needed to switch on the focus light of the strobes.

I believe tracking and detection requires a level of scene brightness higher as the camera is effectively in video mode. When you half press the aperture drive meant it would focus thought it had not tracked anything. I got 2 shots not focussed on the subject because I moved.

The focus gear I believe is not required unless you want to do super macro or to make sure you are as close as you can get but I do not regret having it as the run is pretty short with the focus limiter is on.

Conclusion

Alex Mustard tried the 90mm with the A1 for blackwater and said it was better than the Nikon D850 with the 60mm which is a well known blackwater combination. My tests confirm this combination is very very powerful even in the dark and with a little bit of light it will focus on anything. If the lens goes back and forth is because you are close or over 1:1 reproduction ratio.

Overall my concerns apperad not justified and this combination is a solid performer. Probably next steps are getting an SMC magnifier to push this even further.

Equipment, macro, Underwater Photography

Choosing a Camera Format for Macro Underwater Photography

March 10, 2020 interceptor121 Leave a comment

Following from my previous post I wanted to further investigate the implications of formats and megapixels on Macro Underwater Photography.

I also want to stress that my posts are not guides on which camera to choose. For Macro for example some people rely on autofocus so there is no point talking about sensors if your camera does not focus on the shot!

Macro underwater photography and fish portraits in general is easier than wide angle because is totally managed with artificial illumination, although some real masterpieces take advantage also of ambient light.

There are a number of misconceptions also here but probably on the opposite side of wide angle there is a school of thinking that smaller cameras are better for macro but is that really the case?

Myth 1: Wide angle lens -> More Depth of field than Macro

Depth of field depends on a number of factors you can find the full description on sites like Cambridge in Colour a good read is here.

A common misconception without even starting with sensor size is that depth of field is related to focal length and therefore a macro lens that is long has less depth of field than a wide angle lens.

If we look at a DOF formula we can see that the effect of focal length and aperture cancel themselvers

A long lens will have a smaller field of view of a wide lens so the distance u will increase and cancel the effect of the focal length f.

The other variables in this formula are the circle of confusion c and the F-number N. As we are looking at the same sensor the c number is invariant and therefore at equal magnification the depth of field depends only on F number.

Example: we have a macro lens 60mm and a wide angle lens 12mm, and a subject at 1 meter with the 60mm lens. In order to have the same size subject (magnification) we need to shoot at 20cm with the 12mm lens at that point the depth of field will be the same at the same f-number.

So a wide angle lens does not give more depth of field but it gets you closer to a subject. At some point this gets too close and that is why macro lenses are long focal so you can have good magnification and decent working distance.

Myth 2: Smaller Sensor has more depth of field

We have already seen that sensor size is not in the depth of field formula so clearly sensor size is not related to depth of field so why is there such misconception?

Primarily because people do not understand depth of field equivalence and they compare the same f-number on two different formats.

Due to crop factor f/8 on a 2x crop sensor is equivalent to f/16 on a full frame and therefore as long as the larger sensor camera has smaller possible aperture there is no benefit on a smaller sensor for macro until there are available apertures.

So typically the smaller sensor is an advantage only at f/22 on a 2x MFT body or f/32 on a APSC compared to a DSLR. At this small aperture diffraction becomes significant so in real life even in the extreme cases there is no benefit.

Myth 3: Larger Sensor Means I can crop more

The high level of magnification of macro photography create a strain on resolution due to the effects of diffraction this has a real impact on macro photography.

We have two cases first case is camera with same megapixel count and different pixel size.

In our example we can compare a 20.3 MFT 2x crop camera with a 20.8 APSC 1.5x crop and a 20.8 full frame Nikon D5.

Those cameras will have different diffraction limits as they have pixels of 3.33, 4.2 and 6.4 microns respectively those sensor will reach diffraction at f/6.3, f/7.1 and f/11 respectively so in practical terms the smaller camera format have no benefit on larger sensor as even if there is higher depth of field at same f-number the equivalent depth of field and diffraction soon destroy the resolution cancelling the apparent benefit and confirming that sensor size does not matter.

Finally we examine the case of same pixel size and different sensor size.

This is the case for example of Nikon D500 vs D850 the two cameras have the same pixel size and therefore similar circle of confusion. This means that they will be diffraction limited at the same f-number despite the larger sensor. So the 45.7 megapixels of the D850 will not look any different from the 20.7 megapixels of the D500 and none will actually resolve 20.8 megapixels.

So what is the actual real resolution we can resolve?

Using this calculator you can enter parameters in megapixels for the various sensor size.

In macro photography depth of field is essential otherwise the shot is not in focus, for this exercise I have assumed comparable aperture and calculated the number of megapixels until diffraction destroys resolution

Format	f-Number	MP
MFT 2x	f/11	7.1*
APSC 1.5x	f/14	5.6
Full Frame	f/22	6.3

Resolution in Megapixels at constrained DOF

Note that the apparent benefit of MFT does not actually exist as the aspect ratio is 4:3 so once this is normalised to 3:2 we are back to the same 6.3 megapixels of full frame. APSC that has the strong reputation for macro comes last in this comparison.

So although you can crop more with more megapixels the resolution that you can achieve is dropping because of diffraction and therefore your macro image will always look worse when you crop even on screen as now most screens are 4K or 8 megapixels.

Other Considerations

For a macro image depth of field is of course essential to have a sharp shot however we have seen that sensor size is not actually a consideration and therefore everything is level.

Color depth is important in portrait work and provided we have the correct illumination full frame cameras are able to resolve more colours. We are probably not likely to see them anyway if we are diffraction limited but for mid size portraits there will be a difference between a full frame and any cropped format. In this graph you can see that there is nothing in between APSC and MFT but full frame has a benefit of 2.5 Ev and this will show.

The D850 has a clear benefit in color resolution compared to top range APSC and MFT

Conclusion

Surprisingly for most the format that has an edge for macro is actually full frame because it can resolve more colours. The common belief that smaller formats are better is not actually true however some of those rigs will definitely be more portable and able to access awkward and narrow spaces to what extent this is an advantage we will have to wait and see. It may be worth noting that macro competitions are typically dominated by APSC shooters whose crop factor is actually the worst looking at diffraction figures.

close up lens, diopters, Fish Portraits, Flat Port, macro, MFT Lenses, Micro 4:3, Panasonic GH5, Underwater Photography, UNDERWATER VIDEO, Wet lenses

which macro lens to pick for your gh5 or micro four third

September 14, 2019 interceptor121 1 Comment

I see many posts on line debating which macro lens is best for your micro four third system.

If I refer to the Nauticam system we have 4 macro lenses:

Olympus 30mm
Panasonic 30mm
Panasonic 45mm
Olympus 60mm

For the purpose of this article I will skip the Olympus 30mm as the Panasonic lens is known to be sharper and will focus on the other 3 lenses.

DxOMark is a popular tool for comparison as it gives you the results on one page. I have run it for the Oly 60 and the Pana 30 and 45 on the 20 Mpix OMD E-M1 MKII

DxOMark Comparison on Olympus OMD E-M1 MKII

Surprisingly the much more expensive Leica performs worse than the other cheaper models, this is confirmed on all internet sites running other type of tests.

What we can see is that there is little difference between the Panasonic 30mm and Olympus 60mm when it comes to image quality so whichever lens you choose your subject at the same level of magnification and aperture will have more or less the same detail.

Common Misconception: Shorter focal length give more depth of field

Many people think that using a longer lens is harder because there is less depth of field this is actually incorrect conceptually.

Let see why

Using an online calculatore like Dofmaster https://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Enter for the Panasonic GH5 the following parameters

Circle of confusion: 0.015 mm

Focal length 30mm

Distance 10.5 cm (minimum distance of the 30mm Macro)

Aperture f/11

Result Total depth of field 0.3cm

Now enter

Focal Length 60mm

Distance 21 cm (as it achieves the same magnification)

Aperture f/11

Result Total depth of field 0.3cm

So depth of field is not a consideration when choosing a macro lens…

Shooting a subject close to the background

In the following 3 shots am taking an image of a widget at f/11 at 29-44-60 mm on a Leica 12-60 (it is just easier it makes no difference to the outcomes)

At the same aperture you can clearly see that there are no difference whatsoever in the detail and actually overall in the picture you don’t notice anything.

Shooting a subject far from the background

For the second shot I have moved the widget away from the wall.

Again there is no difference in the level of detail of the widget however looking at the background we can see that

The 60mm shot reveals one brick and less than one quarter
The 44mm shot reveals one brick and a half
The 29mm shot reveals two bricks

So while the subject is exactly the same as the 60mm lens has a narrower field of view we see much less of the background.

This means that if you are shooting a nudibranch on the sand or something flat on a rock you won’t notice anything however if there is space behind the subject you will capture much more of that resulting in less subject isolation.

Underwater Comparison 30 vs 60 mm

In the first shot the Rhinopia is taken with a 60mm lens

In the second shot the same Rhinopia with the 30mm (in a different place to be fair)

I have marked up with red the areas that with a longer focal length would have been minimised.

Which Lens to choose?

Now that we have clarified that depth of field is not a consideration and as each macro lens will have the same magnification there are only two factors that matter:

Working distance
Isolation from background

The 60 mm will have a longer working distance and at the same magnification will isolate the subject better from busy backgrounds, the 60 mm is also better for skittish subject because of the longer working distance. I have this lens and I have borrowed the 30mm in couple of occasions but do not have the 30mm yet.

There are however situations where longer working distance is not a benefit, specifically when the visibility is poor and there are suspended particles or the subject is really large.

In the example below I was at one meter from the two frogfish, a 30mm would have been better however the shot came OK.

Conclusion

I believe the Olympus 60mm is a must lens to have. To date I have not felt the need for the Panasonic 30mm that is indeed a very sharp lens because I have always managed to pull out the shots. However for someone diving in murky water and focussing on nudibranches or subject laying flat on the seabed the Panasonic 30mm could be a better choice. I also want to say that using the 14-42mm at 42mm for me is actually a better choice for portraits and with a close up lens works very well with small subject not super macro and therefore as I already own the 14-42mm and various diopter for me the 30mm is not on the shopping list.

close up lens, diopters, macro, Panasonic GH5, UNDERWATER VIDEO

Macro video with the Panasonic gh5

March 29, 2019 interceptor121 3 Comments

Broadly speaking with the GH5 as well as with any other camera you have four categories of close up work:

Close-up – frame size 10 cm or 4″ and wider typically hand held
Super close-up – frame size 5cm or 2″ preferably on tripod
Macro – frame size below 2″ only on tripod
Super macro – frame size below 1″

For still images a typical choice is the Olympus 60mm, this lens however is very narrow so for any subject that is not too small and for the first category of close up you end up having working distances well above one foot. This in turns means more water to go through and makes it virtually impossible to cover larger subjects.

If you make that choice is because you have skittish subjects that do not like proximity and are very small. Furthermore the Olympus 60mm has not stabilisation and therefore with our GH5 will only use in-body stabilisation. Another side effect of using this lens is that it is impossible to take shots of divers or anything else at medium range so the videos end up being a collection of very close shots that may please someone but result fairly boring.

Of course you can make this kind of video exciting to an extent like here

But at the end for me something like this is more fun although of course the quality is very different (I shot this years ago with a Panasonic LX7 and edited in iMovie)

The difference between the stunning video of Dustin and the basic video of mine is that you only have very close shots in the first one and frankly a slideshow of still images would be equally nice. There is no description of any sort of where is the fish what are the conditions or anything at all. You may argue that the stuff to see is not that nice but at the end this gives you a real idea of the diving where you go which is the purpose of my videos and majority of non Pro people. Furthermore medium size subjects that move like octopus, squids, crabs will almost always exhibit some kind of behaviour.

My macro video rig is built around the Panasonic 14-42 MKII which is the same lens I use for wide angle video with the Nauticam WWL-1. In effect am running video like a compact set up.

Ergonomics and lens

The field of view with at 42mm is only 23 degrees horizontal and 13 degrees height this is ideal for portrait type of work
I still use my old Sola 1200 video lights that can be used with a 20 degree beam creating a snoot like effect to better isolate your subject. It can be argued that color rendering index of newer lights is better but I think the narrow coverage of the lights is more important. Consider that at wide end the field of view is less than 60 degrees anyway with the flat port at 18mm
I use two close-up lenses with a Saga dual flip diopter
The rig as described is heavy in water more than 700 grams negative to ensure the required stability
The tripod base has 2x 3″ segments and 1x 5″ segment to be as close as possible to the bottom this creates issue if you do not have a monitor as you need to have your face in the sand however once the shot is framed all is good

Close-up lenses

I use two close up lenses with this rig as the 14-42mm as a working distance in water around 26cm and a minimum frame size around 9cm that is pretty wide.

The SubSee 5 is in the sweet spot for the 14-42mm lens because it starts working pretty much when the 14-42mm can-t focus anymore and down to around 10-12 cm working distance. Minimum frame size is 46 mm

Using the Ex-Tele feature in video means we can get to 33mm which is below the 36mm classic DSLR 1:1

When this is insufficient and the subjects are really tiny the next lens is the Nauticam CMC-2

The CMC-2 gives a frame size of 32mm as in this image

Using Ex-tele this becomes 23mm which is the same you get with the CMC-1 without ex-tele and is plenty for any purpose. It is theoretically possible to stack the two close up lenses but is not really necessary and the working distance too small. The CMC-2 works around 6-7 cm so you have still space for lights etc.

Olympus 60mm

Is there any use for this lens? Of course there is in case you want to capture a frame smaller than 23mm with the 60mm you can get down to 17mm with the bare lens to 12mm with the Ex tele, 9 mm with the CMC-1 and 6 mm with CMC-1 and ex tele. Will you be able to focus and work with the CMC-2 at 22mm from the subject is another discussion however for skittish subjects it gives you more working distance and this may be needed. I would recommend taking this lens with you for those cases but for video I do not see how you can really use the CMC-1. Please note the CMC-2 is useless with the 60mm as the working distance improvement is minimal to none.

close up lens, diopters, macro, MFT Lenses, Micro 4:3

How to choose the best close-up lens for your underwater MFT rig

February 1, 2019 interceptor121 14 Comments

How many times you see practically new close up lenses being sold on eBay after sitting for years in a cupboard? Have you ever experienced the frustration of buying a close-up lens to find out it did not add anything to your set up?

There is a lot of confusion in terms of what is that you are really getting when you buy an underwater close-up lens. In most cases lenses are specified in diopters, in some other cases with a magnification factor, in few cases with the focal length.

The focal length is probably the most useful of those specification because in a traditional diopter the following formula is valid if you approximate the lens to converge in the rear element:

Working distance ≤ Focal length – physical length of the close-up lens

For example for a Subsee +5 diopter the focal length is 1000/5=200mm the lens is 32mm therefore the working distance is less than 168mm.

Now on its own this means very little. Depending on the camera we use a distance of 168mm may be a great improvement or no improvement at all.

To understand why we need to look on our camera and find the little symbol that indicates the focus distance reference mark.

While for DSLR the shooting distance is typically calculated from the front on the lens for micro four third you need to use this obscure symbol.

Once we locate the reference mark we need to identify the corresponding reference on the housing we can use the other dials as starting point. In this case the mark is approximately in the middle of the cold shoe.

When we put the camera in the housing we can then look up the specifications of the lens and calculate the minimum shooting distance. For example for an Olympus 60mm this value is 19cm.

We take note of this point and then measure the distance between the glass and the minimum working distance on land.

This works out to be around 9cm. We now need to consider that once immersed in water this distance will be multiplied by 1.33 to become 12cm.

It follows that any diopter with a focal length close to 12cm or longer is not going to be effective for our camera and lens combination. More likely we need something that can focus substantially closer or the benefit will be minimal. Assuming we half the physical working distance between the port and the subject we need something around 60-80mm focal length which considering the length of the lens itself could mean getting 2cm away from the subject.

Continue reading →

AVCHD, close up lens, diopters, filter, Flat Port, housing, Ikelite, macro, Micro 4:3, Panasonic GX7, UNDERWATER VIDEO, White Balance, wide angle

Panasonic GX7 First Test

April 26, 2015 interceptor121 4 Comments

So time has come for my first video with a micro four third camera the Panasonic GX7. I had only 3 dives in Sharm and conditions on Naama Bay beach were not the best but still good enough to give the set up a good try, this is the resulting video.

I used the Nauticam housing with the Macro 35 port and the M67-LD adapter so that I could use the Inon UWL-H100 wet lens.

As it is not possible to fix the position of the lens I had to take the hood off and therefore I used an Ikelite UR/PRO filter for the 100mm lens. I had to use gaffer tape on the lens and inside the filter or it would be loose but it worked.

The first dive was with the URPRO filter in auto white balance, I was hoping this would give me good results but instead everything came with a strong yellow cast.

From the second dive I used custom white balance and the results were much much better.

To give an idea of the issue this is a shot of a grey card with the UR/PRO filter on land with white balance fixed.

You can see what kind of effect the filter bear it is orange in colour.

Other than this I was pretty happy with the GX7 especially because I could use the full zoom with the wide angle lens this is the first time I see it working. The moray eel shot towards the end of the video is an example.

Back home I was not happy at all about the UR/PRO and the inability to work with auto white balance. Probably I could have played with the tint but it did not come to mind. So I got in touch with Peter Rowlands of Magic Filters to see if they had an option that would fit on the Ikelite mount. Peter sent me two sample and they fit perfectly in the ikelite frame, though this is not commercially available I guess you can request those if you are not happy with the ikelite UR/PRO.

This is the same test card with the magic auto filter.

You can see that it looks less orange and also slightly colder.

I did some tests and the UR/PRO is a warmer filter with 2700K temperature whilst the magic auto is 3200K. The magic is however more red and has more magenta tint than the UR/PRO.

For me this means that the magic will work better in auto and will require less custom white balance. However those 500K difference mean you will eventually need to custom white balance once you go below 18-21 meters. I know people say filter work until 21 meters anyway but I have tried with deeproof down to 30 and on a bright day it was still good.

So if you are not happy with the yellow cast of your UR/PRO in auto white balance is definitely worth giving magic filters a go.

The GX7 confirmed all the good features including the ex tele mode

Here the shrimps are shot with a single Inon UCL-165 and then the close up of the head uses ex tele that pushes well over super macro.

Look at the incredible ability to refocus in video mode. See how focus locks on the shrimps when I press the button.

Overall the GX7 can do pretty much everything on a single dive with a wet wide angle lens and a close up lens. You can cover from 100 degrees wide to super macro. The fact you can zoom with the wide angle removes the need to take the lens off at every occasion and in fact in the red sea you barely need to have any other lens.

I was not particularly happy with the lack of hood that the ikelite filter wants removed so I experienced the occasional flare. Still pretty good result.

The clip looks much better at home than it does on youtube where the gap with the RX100 seems much smaller.

So as far as video is concerned if you don’t need 4K the GX7 gives you extremely high quality footage and reasonable cost.

A final note I shot this video in 24p at home I can’t tell the difference with 25p see if you can see it!

ambient light, filter, Fisheye lens, macro, Sony RX100M3, Stabilization, Underwater Photography, UNDERWATER VIDEO, White Balance, wide angle

Sony RX100 Mark III – Is it worth upgrading?

July 11, 2014 interceptor121 17 Comments

UPDATED 23 July 2014

Once again Sony has updated their RX100 camera with a ~~stunning~~ new release that will surely be a market leader at least until the release of the new promised Panasonic large compact sensor with 4K video recording.

So the question is again is it worth throwing our hard-earned money to this new model and housing or should we stay with what we have got? The Mark I and II are still available at reduced price though it is becoming harder to find Mark I housing as new.

The answer to the question is: ~~it depends on what you are planning to do with your RX100, for some users an upgrade may not be required or even not advised let’s see why.~~ no don’t waste any time with the Mark III.

Every time a new camera is released and reviewed I get a bunch of emails with subject: New Camera XYZ what do you think?

The best reviews you find online are made by sites that specialize in land photography and no consideration is given to underwater use. So not necessarily a camera that is a top performer on land will remain such underwater as this depends on specific characteristics that may be different or even opposite to land requirements.

So those reviews cannot be taken as they are they need interpretation. Personally I use two sites for camera reviews imaging resource and dxo mark I use the first to understand ergonomics, performance and to compare images with other cameras side to side, and the second to check sensor quality and lenses. Imaging resource has made a good article to compare the various RX100 on land read it here

http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2014/06/16/battle-of-the-rx100s-sonys-rx100-vs-rx100-ii-vs-rx100-iii

If you look at a sensor comparison on DXOMark you would conclude that there is no need to upgrade at all if you use your camera primarily for still pictures as the sensor are practically identical in performance as this table demonstrates:

As you can see the differences in dynamic range, color depth or ISO are pretty much intangible.

However there are other metrics that are also important let’s see which ones and why.

Flash Recycling

We want our camera on board flash to recycle quickly after a full dump as the RX100 has only TTL flash and the flash can’t set to a minimum manual setting without consequences. Those are the flash recycling times at full output (a full dump will always occur when you don’t aim strobes directly at the subject for example wide angle)

Mark I: 7.2 seconds

Mark II” 4.4 seconds

Mark III: 3.3 seconds

The Mark III is pretty quick and the Mark II is acceptable the first release is definitely too slow.

Minimum Capture Area & Zoom

What is the smallest area that can be captured at wide end at the closest focus distance? This gives you an idea of out of the box close up performance

I do not have precise metrics yet but looking at comparable images on imaging-resource seems like the Mark III is worse than the Mark I and II of at least 20% with a capture width around 90mm versus the already not very good 76mm of the Mark I and II.

To fix this issue we use close up lenses in water that fix to a great extent the focal length and then zoom in to achieve magnification which means longer camera lens more magnification I roughly estimate that the Mark III will be worse of a factor of 0.7x so things will look 1.4x bigger with the Mark III this is terrible news for macro shooters as it means you need to be on top of the subject to fill the frame, this is in some cases not possible.

I have estimated that you need 11 diopters to achieve 1:1 macro so the Subsee 10 and Inon UCL100 that gave real macro on the Mark I and II won’t be sufficient. With two UCL-165 or Dyron 7 you are looking at 2.58″ or 6.5 cm from the back of the first close up lens that means you will be right on top of the subject which is not really an option.

Update July 18th: Nauticam has confirmed that even with their SMC lens the most powerful diopter on the market the capture area is 38mm wide so does NOT achieve 1:1 macro as I suggested…

Lens Focal Range

The new mark III has a 24-70mm lens compared to the 28-100mm of the Mark I and II what does this mean?

Less magnification with close up lenses and no real 1:1 macro
Vignetting or even not possible to use fisheye lenses designed for 28mm lenses

This means that with the Mark III your scene selection will be restricted compared to the 150 to 24 of the mark I and II.

Update 23 July I have done some tests that confirm my suspicions please look at the following frames. The Mark III once zoom to 28mm actually works fine with the Mark II housing except the power button.

RX100 Mark III with Inon UCL-165 Close up lens

With a single Inon UCL-165 (+6.06 in water) the minimum capture area width is 5.4 cm which is bigger than the Mark II 4.8 cm. Not only that the distance from the top of the lens is only 9cm.

With stacked UCL-165+UCL330 total power 9.09 diopter we get this

4.4 cm width however we start running into problems as the minimum distance from the lens is only 4cm.

We finally achieve 1:1 with two stacked UCL-165 however the distance from the top of the lens is 3cm definitely too little

I have also tried the Mark III at 28mm and it still vignettes with the Inon UWL-H100 in air until around 30mm. Instead the old UWL-100 28AD is fine at 28mm either way image looks narrower than with the Mark II but this may be an issue with the old housing.

So basically no macro with the Mark III and no decent fisheye as expected.

Underwater Photography Conclusion

Due to the reasons above the best camera for the job is the RX100 Mark II, with the Mark I coming close but being penalized by the strobe recycle time, the Mark III really is not an option for the serious shooter due to limitations of the lens.

Let’s have a look at some other features of the Mark III that are not relevant for stills as much as they are for video.

ND filter

Shooting at the surface with plenty of ambient light or on land can create problems if you want to follow the 180 shutter rule, the ND filter of the Mark III ensures your footage will be smooth on land and in water. Take into account that on land you can apply optical ND filters (I have it for the Mark II) so this is really for underwater use when you are shooting at 1/50 or 1/60 shutter speed and the scene is too bright when you hit f/11 and the lowest possible ISO. Having now tested this feature I confirm it is really valid on land on a bright day to keep the aperture wide.

Clear Image Zoom

This is a special digital zoom with edge enhancement that only worked on JPEG stills on Mark I and II but is now available on video on the mark III. This means an additional 2x zoom is available bringing the focal length to 140mm that is more than adequate for macro. This is not an option on RAW images so irrelevant for still users.

23 July update Having done some tests for macro video (as stacking two diopters is not an option) the image quality suffers but anyway this is all you are left with lacking any other options.

Image stabilizer

The Mark III adds a further stabilizer mode with additional crop that takes the lens to 96mm equivalent in video mode. This is well worth for super macro hand-held footage and effectively provides an option where you can either use the super steady shot and no clear image zoom when hand-held or leave on only the optical stabilizer and use clear image zoom. If you shoot macro on walls and not on flat sand this is a well worth feature.

Update 23 July 2014

Following a side by side comparison you can find on this link

It follows that there is really no 5 axis stabilisation and only an additional mode with more crop with correction for rolling shutter that anyway does not really work!

Full Sensor Readout Video

The mark III reads the whole sensor not just alternate lines when capturing video this ~~increases~~ should increase the resolution ~~to a great degree and increases the perceived resolution~~ and clarity of your videos. However this does not seem to correspond to real life tests. See this sample with a side by side comparison the Mark III looks visibly worse than its predecessor even on the higher bitrate XAVC!!!

Video Formats

The Mark II introduced a well welcomes 24 Mbps 24/25 fps mode now the Mark III introduces a 50 Mbps mode in XAVC (that can be rewrapped into normal MP4) that produces even better footage although it will be quite demanding on your workstation and most likely some of your home devices will struggle playing the files (my Apple Tv 3rd generation only plays up to 25 Mbps) when uploading files online this will downgrade to 8 Mbps so won’t matter unless you have a good player at home. improves nothing and requires manipulation as the files are actually not MP4 compliant as they have WAV audio (!) they are also inside the AVCHD folder which is painful. As seen above seems like the encoding has got worse on the AVCHD files and only the higher bitrate compares but still does not match the mark II at the lower 24 Mbps!!!

HDMI connection

You can now connect the Mark III to an external HDMI recorder if you are into that kind of semi pro usage. For the normal user this is not relevant: if you are into spending that money probably you have already a DSLR or a Panasonic GH4.

Video Auto Focus

The auto focus in video has got worse you can see an example in the stabiliser test, and actually plenty of frames are blurred on the mark III. Awful!

Underwater Video Conclusion

The Mark I with only a 28 Mbps 50/60p mode is definitely a poor choice, the Mark II is acceptable to most users. ~~and the mark III promises even better performance if you are a serious video user and have another camera to take pictures the Mark III may be well worth it.~~

The Mark III despite some useful feature is actually a let down and perform worse in practical terms than the mark II that remains my camera of choice.

Summary

If you have a Mark I camera and are frustrated with flash recycling you should be looking at a cheaper upgrade to the Mark II.

If you have a Mark II ~~and your priority is photography~~ upgrading is NOT recommended.

If you don’t have any RX100 get yourself a Mark II or wait for the new Panasonic as the Mark III is pretty much a pile of crap.

Is it the first time I am actually sending back a camera and invoking consumer rights but when I spoke to the camera shop they told me they had other returns and this is not really an upgrade!!!

The above image was shot at 100mm equivalent with one diopter with the RX100 Mark II. You won’t be able to fill the frame with the same close up lens and the Mark III camera

close up lens, diopters, Fisheye lens, Floats arms, macro, SONY RX100, SONY RX100M2, Strobe, Underwater Photography, wide angle

Tuition Day with Martin Edge

April 12, 2014 interceptor121 8 Comments

During the London Dive Show I attended a talk from Martin where he covered a number of shooting situations and how to deal with them in terms of composition and settings.

There was a promotion for a two for one tuition day with him that my buddy was keen to take so few months later we made our way to Dorset for a day of underwater photography with Martin.

This will be my first day of shooting with the RX100 Mark II albeit in a pool with my new arms and lenses so I was looking forward to it.

We arrived in Poole the night before and got ready for an 8.30 start with Martin.

We started off with a review of some basic exposure concepts and then looked at competition winning pictures and trying to identify what makes a wow picture. It was extremely useful!

Afterwards we went through our trips pictures so he could see what needed improving. Then look at what was needed for the next trip.

With that in mind we set up to jump in the pool to take some pictures the objective was to improve my buddy close ups and portraits as apparently her wide angle is as good as it gets with the Canon S95 used see featured image on this post.

Pool conditions were low visibility and plenty of suspended particles as the pool is used for kids swimming lessons let me give you an idea!

The first task was to shoot a frog with a view of eliminating shadows in its mouth. Start with one strobe and finish off with two.

The frog with the bare port gives you an idea of the size and the complexity of the task with one strobe. There are shadows in his mouth.

I then shot a portrait at 50mm, the reason why you see shadows more on the left is because I set the strobe at different powers.

The magnification of the RX100 is little so I went on with a first Inon UCL-165 and full zoom at 100mm equivalent. Note that everything is pretty much sharp at f/11.

With two Inon UCL-165 focusing on the mouth will result in this and the eyes being in focus and the rest blurred because of lack of depth of field.

I then moved to an Octopus rich of textures. I took the first shot with my Inon UWL-100 28AD with dome.

The same octo at 28mm fills the frame much more of course.

The Octopus at 50mm looks even better. I have topped up the lighting on this one.

I then took this guy with a single UCL-165 note the depth of field insufficient to keep the back of the head in focus, results though are exceptional.

With two close up lenses we go back to the depth of field problem even at f/11.

I thought I had at that point nailed all focus and strobe issues, especially considering I shot with single auto focus, I did not bother using manual focus at all with exception of some double diopter shots.

I then tried a few surface reflections with the fisheye this being the best.

You can see the outside of the pool and the windows on the top.

Afterwards made my own composition of statues for a fisheye shot that I think came out very well. The Z240 performed extremely well in both TTL and external auto as well as manual.

Martin asked me to have a go at the child with the dog as it is extremely difficult to lit up properly.

I went for an alternative strobe placement with light from the bottom as if it was in a gallery. He was impressed with the results.

To finish off my last task was the tongue and eyes of a lion that I shot with a single UCL-165.

Overall a great day and I definitely recommend you the tuition day with Martin. He is a great person and extremely good at teaching I can see the benefits my buddy had right away.

Lessons learned on the RX100

There were a few things that I learned about my RX100 still rig mode that I want to share with you.

The autofocus is incredible. I even used this for macro. If the camera does not focus is because you don’t have enough depth of field and that is it.
Best macro performance is with a single diopter and also had a benefit of an increased working distance, this means the shots will need cropping for extremely small critters
Two diopters resulted in near bokeh with less than 1mm in focus and difficult to autofocus (though the LCD is great and I could see if things were in focus or not I think this is personal and I would recommend DMF to others)
Performance at wide angle with the UWL-100 28AD with dome is stellar
Inon float arms (I used two 6″ segments) were perfect with lens holders on it.
Inon Z240 twin set with one in TTL and the second in external auto delivered creative lighting without headaches, remember to buy the AUTO diffuser that does not come with the strobe
Strobes in manual allowed for even more creativity and the level of precision compared to sea and sea was staggering
Despite pool conditions the RX100 focused well in low light and much better than the Canon S95 that was returning focus error on the same exposures. I will not bother having a focus light with this camera and only have a single sola on night dives

That’s all for now any question just drop a comment

Interceptor121 Photography & Video Workshops

Category Archives: macro

Panasonic GH7 Review for Underwater Photography – Autofocus

General Autofocus Settings for the GH7

Wide Angle with the Canon fisheye 8-15mm

Close up work with the Panasonic 45mm Macro

Conclusion

In support of Depth of Field

Going Macro with Sony A1 and 90mm Macro Lens

Camera Settings

Port and Focus Gear

Pool Session

Field Impression and Ergonomics

Conclusion

Choosing a Camera Format for Macro Underwater Photography

Myth 1: Wide angle lens -> More Depth of field than Macro

Myth 2: Smaller Sensor has more depth of field

Myth 3: Larger Sensor Means I can crop more

Other Considerations

Conclusion

which macro lens to pick for your gh5 or micro four third

Macro video with the Panasonic gh5

How to choose the best close-up lens for your underwater MFT rig

Panasonic GX7 First Test

Sony RX100 Mark III – Is it worth upgrading?

Video Auto Focus

Tuition Day with Martin Edge

Lessons learned on the RX100

Wildlife photography made easy