Fisheye FIX for the S90

[girellator]

Thank to show your pictures .
I think also that the combo of S90 and Uwl-04 could work great for over under pics .
I see on your pics that you too have a little vignetting on the right side of your pictures , it's exactly the same for me .
I zoom slightly at 31,5 mm and have no more this problem and keep a very wide angle .:blinking:

 

[Scottyboy86]

In addition to my quest for a camera that could utilize all existing wet lenses and especially those I own my additional requirement was ultra small size and portability with no compromise for performance or capability. I think the S90 with FIX housing achieves those goals as well as anything at the current state of the art.

This complete FIX90 rig plus a few other items as seen here:

Breaks down and COMPLETELY packs into this faux Pelican case:

For easy carry on travel. (Photos taken with cheap 1.2MP Fugi)

N

Do you take it like that on to the boat or do you have another method for doing that?

Thank to show your pictures .
I think also that the combo of S90 and Uwl-04 could work great for over under pics .
I see on your pics that you too have a little vignetting on the right side of your pictures , it's exactly the same for me .
I zoom slightly at 31,5 mm and have no more this problem and keep a very wide angle .:blinking:

I wish I could zoom to whatever level I wanted like my slr but noooo PnS's arent as cool. I have a little vignetting on mine with the 165 and 10bar adapter.

 

[Nemrod]

Do you take it like that on to the boat or do you have another method for doing that?

No, I carry it in my hands and don't put it down until I am off the boat, if there is a place up front or a camera table I may set it on a soft towel. If not I hold it and when I gear up I wait until my wife is geared up and she holds it until I am ready. This is how I have always done with cameras.

On my boat I put it in a old ice chest with the strobes removed while underway until I get on site and then complete the assembly and tie it off on a down line or it may sit in the mate's chair.

As to vignetting with the 10Bar adapter and the UFL165AD, this photo displays typical vignetting I get with my camera and FIX90 housing:

Notice a slight dimming and occlusion in both the right side corners. This cleans up completely with a very small crop, about 98% or so. Printing any 4:3 format digital image to the typical 4X6 paper will result in this image with 10Bar and UFL165AD with small vignetting in both right corners:

Printed to 4X6 will look like this:

Of course with my DIY adapter on the FIX90 with the Inon UFL165AD this is a typical image, no crop required:

N

 

[girellator]

I wish I could zoom to whatever level I wanted like my slr but noooo PnS's arent as cool. I have a little vignetting on mine with the 165 and 10bar adapter.

I use the ring to zoom at 35 mm , and next with a little left push on the zoom" button " of the housing I find a position between 28 and 35 , that I've called 31,5 , I keep it in memory in C mode. Try it it work's fine ....

I hope my english is good enough and that I well understood you and also that you'll well understand me .

 

[95_9C1]

my case just arrived

4th post - no photos

i hope to get this thing wet, sometime this week ...

does anyone want to discuss their S90 camera settings for underwater use ?

 

[Nemrod]

The settings would depend upon what type of use you intend, the strobes you have, the lenses you plan to use, the subjects you are interested in. This thread and several others are full of settings.

Congrats on your new camera and housing.

N

 

[Scottyboy86]

Well got to play with my setup in the pool... however stupid me didn't not check the batteries out for the strobe to see if they worked before hand... sooo I had to ditch my strobe and run internal flash. Well.... that sucked haha. Most picture barely came out. The camera seems to have a little weight to it but not a killer amount at all. But from the ones I did get out They seemed to be pretty crisp if it did focus correctly.

 

[Nemrod]

A few more odds and ends from WPB/Jupiter:

N

 

[browncd81]

I just took my S90 Fisheye housing with UWL-04 and single strobe setup to Hawaii for a few days. Unfortunately for uploading, I'm in China so it would take forever and a day to put pics on here, even in Beijing. I'd say the UWL-04 has pretty bad vignetting on the right side without the zoom in. Like everyone says, one bump zooming in removes the vignetting. I'm worried this might affect the sharpness of the image.. true?

The S90 camera has poor battery life but if you rotate between two different batteries and always keep one on the charger then you'd be diving with fresh batteries and be fine. It seems it shows three bars forever, then only shows two bars for a short time before going to one bar, so even with three bars you may be half charged or even less. I learned from submarining that as battery capacity drops the voltage does not drop off linearly (which is why we measured capacity by specific gravity of the electrolyte but I'm sure the camera uses voltage) so some calculation must be made to account for that... I don't think the S90 is properly accounting for this. My whole point is... don't trust three full bars to mean you have at least a 66% charge.

I like to keep the camera on and set the LCD screen to cut off at the minimal time interval. If I use the power saver feature that shuts off the camera, I found that when I turn it back on sometimes I forget to zoom out again and wind up with vignetted shots because when you turn it back on it starts off zoomed all the way out by default.

I took a few UWL-04 shots on land, although only for limited use, just to try out crazy effects. If you're creative enough, I'd say there's some limited use for this. I notice taking the same shot on land with and without the UWL-04, and then comparing the two, shows a huge reduction in image sharpness with the dome. I heard some people use macro mode to focus, but that didn't seem to help.

Overall, I think the S90 camera is outstanding and the FIX housing is remarkably tight. I went to the top of Mauna Kea in a rental jeep (13,900 ft) and at the top realized my housing was shut.. should have opened it. The next day on the dive boat I had to get a screwdriver to pry the housing open. This shows that some of the air leaked out of the housing at the lower atmospheric pressure to equalize but nothing leaked back into the camera when I returned to ground level. So I'm guessing this is a great sign for the tightness of the camera against a positive outward pressure.

Over/under shots are really nice. I had a better one than this but this one does the effect. Unfortunately, there is a space between the UWL-04 flat lens and the housing lens that fills with water and then drains when dry. This will create artificial water lines in most of your over/under shots. With practice, it got better, but I still had to delete about 90% which means I wound up taking a few hundred just to get a handful. I'm thinking about making the drain holes slightly bigger but kind of nervous to do that. I'm wondering if other adapters are better suited.. I have the $48 one that just came out a month ago.

Finally, the rear control wing housing ring slips. Don't know if that's already been mentioned but I'd like to put out that its happened for me. I might modify the inside part that contacts the rear wheel somehow to allow it to grip the rear wheel with more friction.

Hope this helps. Feel free to point out how many of my techniques are indicative of me falling into beginner traps.

 

[Nemrod]

I just took my S90 Fisheye housing with UWL-04 and single strobe setup to Hawaii for a few days. Unfortunately for uploading, I'm in China so it would take forever and a day to put pics on here, even in Beijing. I'd say the UWL-04 has pretty bad vignetting on the right side without the zoom in. Like everyone says, one bump zooming in removes the vignetting. I'm worried this might affect the sharpness of the image.. true?

Should be OK.

The S90 camera has poor battery life but if you rotate between two different batteries and always keep one on the charger then you'd be diving with fresh batteries and be fine. It seems it shows three bars forever, then only shows two bars for a short time before going to one bar, so even with three bars you may be half charged or even less. I learned from submarining that as battery capacity drops the voltage does not drop off linearly (which is why we measured capacity by specific gravity of the electrolyte but I'm sure the camera uses voltage) so some calculation must be made to account for that... I don't think the S90 is properly accounting for this. My whole point is... don't trust three full bars to mean you have at least a 66% charge.

I have 1.4 ah batteries and they seem to be holding up fine for two long dives, set your camera flash to manual and set to lowest power. Turn off focus assist light, safety functions, set IS to shoot only etc.

I like to keep the camera on and set the LCD screen to cut off at the minimal time interval. If I use the power saver feature that shuts off the camera, I found that when I turn it back on sometimes I forget to zoom out again and wind up with vignetted shots because when you turn it back on it starts off zoomed all the way out by default.

I do the same set up. I also use the display button to power the LCD off if I am between interesting areas and I have turned the screen brightness down a bit because underwater it is almost too bright set at the default setting. Remember however to compensate in your brain for image exposure that the screen is dimmed.

I took a few UWL-04 shots on land, although only for limited use, just to try out crazy effects. If you're creative enough, I'd say there's some limited use for this. I notice taking the same shot on land with and without the UWL-04, and then comparing the two, shows a huge reduction in image sharpness with the dome. I heard some people use macro mode to focus, but that didn't seem to help.

The UWL-04 is a underwater use lens only, like the Inon 165AD as well, it is not sharp on land and the instructions state so.

Overall, I think the S90 camera is outstanding and the FIX housing is remarkably tight. I went to the top of Mauna Kea in a rental jeep (13,900 ft) and at the top realized my housing was shut.. should have opened it. The next day on the dive boat I had to get a screwdriver to pry the housing open. This shows that some of the air leaked out of the housing at the lower atmospheric pressure to equalize but nothing leaked back into the camera when I returned to ground level. So I'm guessing this is a great sign for the tightness of the camera against a positive outward pressure.

I have a plastic spatula to use for this, not, NOT, a screwdriver.

Over/under shots are really nice. I had a better one than this but this one does the effect. Unfortunately, there is a space between the UWL-04 flat lens and the housing lens that fills with water and then drains when dry. This will create artificial water lines in most of your over/under shots. With practice, it got better, but I still had to delete about 90% which means I wound up taking a few hundred just to get a handful. I'm thinking about making the drain holes slightly bigger but kind of nervous to do that. I'm wondering if other adapters are better suited.. I have the $48 one that just came out a month ago.

Wet lenses must flood out to work properly, the water line is a challenge for over under and above water pop ups. This is an example of a pop up I attempted but did not have time to let the lens drain out fully:

Finally, the rear control wing housing ring slips. Don't know if that's already been mentioned but I'd like to put out that its happened for me. I might modify the inside part that contacts the rear wheel somehow to allow it to grip the rear wheel with more friction.

Mine works fine, perfect, guess I am lucky.

Hope this helps. Feel free to point out how many of my techniques are indicative of me falling into beginner traps.

N