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Grace and Nico, thank you both so much for your reply!
This is 6 weeks into my frustration with the EMWL and a lot of trial and error has happened since.
Shortly after posting my initial question, I got a replacement monitor to use while mine is getting fixed, (thanks to Matt, the local Kraken Tech) and that really helps with the framing. So for most of the time, I did have the monitor.
I tried:
-Shutter Speeds between 1/40th to 1/200th to try to get enough ambient light at the slow end and minimize the motion blur at the fast end.
-Aperture between F12 to F22, to try to find the balance between enough depth of field versus getting refraction.
Mostly I was shooting at F16 or F18.
-ISO between 500 to 2000, but mostly in the realm of ISO 800 to 1200.
-The recommended single shot was my “go to”, but with that not producing sharp images, I also tried servo with no luck
-Several different Auto focus settings, including the smallest square, expanded square and eye auto detect
-camera factory reset, to prevent any funky customization to cause issues
-firmware update
-focusing unit #2 underwater compared to my unit #3, without success
My Takeaway:
The camera and lens find focus quick and accurately with just the 100mm lens and even thru a wet diopter (SMC1) perfectly with exceptional sharpness, no issues ever.
With the EMWL it focuses on the area where I want the focus, but then the eye or whatever is in focus, is not sharp.
The sharpest area is clearly behind the subject without failure.
This is reproduceable and looks the same for the 1000 images created with this lens, with slight variations depending on the size of the subject of course.
The only exception were 3 fast action images where the subject moved out of the focal plane, images that should not have been in focus.
Next Step, Adaptation Attempts:
-Use the focus peaking on the monitor, focusing on the eye, slowly and carefully pulling the camera away from the subject.
Interestingly focus peaking works great on all my other lenses, but for some reason with the EMWL it doesn’t show me, or I can’t see the area of critical focus.
Adjusting the sensitivity to the focus peaking also doesn’t make a difference in showing the relevant area.
-Focusing on something in front of the actual subject to bring the area of sharpest focus closer to where it should be.
This is a total crapshoot, because I have to guess the distance more than anything else.
It’s super unreliable, but so far has been by far my most successfull technique with the EMWL and an approximate 20% percent success rate of images that were in 5% in sharp focus or 15% at least close.
So the underwater photography store really couldn’t help me much either, and sample images I sent to them where the focus was clearly off, where seen as not bad.
But soft images are not useful to me.
In the end, I dropped of the focusing unit #3, the 160 degree lens and my 100mm RF Macro lens off at the Store a week ago.
They will test the gear sometime when they have time. since I called today, I know that it will be at least a week before the pro who is going to test my gear returns from a trip.
But the 6 weeks that I took the set up into the field and had hoped to get some images, were ultimately a lost opportunity. due to the backfocusing issues.
I’ll never get that time back.
Very dissapointing for such an expensive pieces of equipment.
Nico, I have to look at the link to another threat you posted in your reply, since I haven’t had the chance to do that yet.
But I’m assuming it’s going to be talking about the tweak to fix the issues with the Nikon 105mm lens, which one I know of to had some trouble until there was a fix.
I guess it’s good to be a Sony shooter, since the the owner of Nauticam also uses a Sony setup.
.