Philippines, Southern Visayas route with the Philippine Siren

daveco2 wrote:

I too have the Seafrogs case, but with an a6500, in addition to the a7RII setup. I found that with the 90 mm macro on either, the in-focus rate was much higher if I just trusted the autofocus and released the shutter in one motion. The success rate with the alternative approach of checking focus before shutter release was far lower, I think because my drifting caused so much uncertainty that I lost track of peak focus.

I use AF-C with 10-18mm and 16-50mm, but with 90mm macro, I find DMF + peaking to be more reliable. The supermacro shots with diopter requred steadying myself on something; floating freely introduced too much movement. Next trip, I'm bringing a pointer stick and hanging it off the camera tray so that I can stick it into sand and use it as a monopod.

Was battery life ok for a day of diving, or did you make a change at each dive?

On the liveaboard, I downloaded photos off the camera and swapped batteries after each dive.

You don't do video, correct?

Correct, I have no idea how to edit it, so I stick to stills.

Do you pack all your dive gear?

Yes.

Looks like you have exposure dialed in. Your shots are studio quality. TTL?

SeaFrogs ST-100 Pro strobes over fiber optics, so TTL is my only option. Camera was set to manual mode with f/8 and 1/160 (most of the time; I played with aperture and shutter speed some), auto ISO 100-800, and rear curtain flash. Most of the shots were actually slightly overexposed, but adjusting exposure by -0.5-1 stops in Capture One Express took care of that.