My first liveaboard dive expedition with the Sony FX3 in Nauticam underwater housing
It all began the tragic loss of my beloved SWP44C – the beautiful and no longer available Fathoms lens on my Gates Z100 rig. Thanks to the feckless DHL muppets that decided to unpack and poorly repack my housing before shipping it home to me after an ill-fated Far North GBR trip. This was the rig I had been using since 2014 when we invested $30K to enter the world of 4K Ultra High Definition. It served me well and will be missed.
RIP Z100 in Gates by the numbers
- used 2014-2023
- 222 locations in 7 countries (USA, Australia, Palau, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Indonesia, Socorro)
- 489 dives
- 2041 species filmed
- 12752 clips cataloged

Z100 in Socorro, Raja Ampat, and Triton Bay
Watch Z100 videos :
Here’re 6 highlight reels from expeditions and biodiversity assessments with the Z100.
Why the Sony FX3 and which housing?

Well there were a few things going against it to start with.
- Cons
- Gates doesn’t make a housing for it
- no fixed lens means you need to choose between macro and wide angle
- poor ergonomics (compared to Gates)
- top-heavy and cumbersome with monitor attached (compared to Gates)
- Pros
- Nauticam also make very nice housings
- Netflix approved & popular with production companies due to compatibility with Sony FX6 and FX9
- Excellent dynamic range (bright to dark range)
- Amazing low light performance (clean at base ISO 12800)
- Rediculously good auto-focus
- Small and lightweight for travel 16kg down from 26kg
- Full frame 4K sensor
- 2x160GB cards = more than an hour recording time
- external recording using Atomos Ninja (another 1TB)
- s-log, cinetone and RAW shooting
- up to 120fps in 4K
- I like/trust Sony cameras
- I had used this rig on two shoots for Nat Geo and Discovery
What’s in the rig?
Housing |
I chose Nauticam over the cheaper options. Having used this system on a few shoots, I knew the build quality and access to pretty much all camera controls was excellent. |
Lenses | I chose the 28-60mm f/4-5.6 with the wet mounted wide angle lens |
Monitor | Atomos Ninja in Nauticam – also acts as extra recording space with the Angelbird AtomX 1TB SSD |
Lights | reused from my old rig, 2x Gates GT14s with float arms |
So how does it go?
My first reaction is that it is sooo much lighter and smaller than my Gates setups. In the water, it has about the same buoyancy and drag as my older larger systems though. It’s smaller size makes it feel less stable but the internal stabilization compensates nicely and on balance it is easy to get stable shots. I love the manual vacuum pump and lights indicating vacuum status and that I can quickly dump the vacuum if needs be to open the housing to tweak something last minute.
As always, I started with building a custom tripod – or more acurately, destroying a cheap tripod and building a frame to suit the new housing/monitor and lights. This is my 4th camera to get the tripod treatment and this is probably my best effort yet. Light yet sturdy, lots of cable ties, a few screws and some rope, it is extremely versitile and easy to adjust underwater in a hurry as well as keeping the whole system tight and tidy for getting around the boat and in/out of the water. I added an extra float on movable ultralight arms which trims the whole system to whatever angle I want to shoot at.
The lens options are far from ideal. I chose the 28-60mm f/4-5.6 with the wet mounted wide angle lens for maximum versatility. I’ve been using Gates with Fathoms SWP44 lenses since 2006. I have taken for granted the zoom through capabilities of these rigs which in practice allows you to zoom in to a goby or nudibranch and out to catch a passing whale without needing to change lenses. Oh how I miss that. All that casual gloating directed at all the still shooters in my circles. Those poor folks that had to choose every dive whether they were shooting macro, or wide angle. Pleading with the cruise directors for the right choice of lens, and inevitably seeing whale sharks when the macro lens was on, and pygmy sea horses while rigged for the walls of fans they are hiding on. Oh how clever I felt always being rigged for everything. But no more.
My versitility now is restricted. I tried on this trip to test the limits of my macro shooting with the wet-mounted wide angle lens and without it. While wet mounted macro lenses are available, the tiny depth of field and working distances I am already battling will be even worse with one of those attached. For now I am looking for subjects that are a little bigger than my favourites – the gobies and blennies didn’t get much of a look on this trip. Here’s how my rigs’ zoom abilities have steadily declined over the years:
HVX200 in Gates
Z100 in Gates
FX3 in Nauticam

How’s the footage look?
The image quality is not surprisingly beautiful. Right out of the camera, the footage is flat and dull using s-log, but drop a LUT on there and the footage is immediately nice. For quick and dirty editing of the trip video, I used “Festival-LUT_11.107_1158” from Alister-Chapman-LUTs-Collection-V2 which looks great for underwater footage. The excellent dynamic range means nothing is clipped and there is plenty of detail in the shadows.
Underwing without LUT vs with Festival LUT
Diver & sunball waveform with and without LUT
Leru Cut from camera and with LUT
Autofocus
The autofocus is in a league all of its own – I use the animal setting and the camera does an unbeleivable job of identifying and locking onto the subject. Underwater focus hunting (where the camera pulls/pushes focus locking onto particles and looking for sharp lines to focus on) is a major problem and why I have been using manual focus for the past 20yrs. I have found this particularly true in 4K where floating particles are sharp enough to catch the focus — not so with this bad boy. Stationary camouflaged critters still need the manual treatment, likewise critters swimming through whips or corals, but anything moving out in the open or moving in front of a stationary background — the auto focus does an amazing job.
What about the Solomons and the 100 Reasons to visit?
Well I am thrilled to report that the reefs of the Solomon Islands we visited were in fantastic condition. On this expedition, we dived 29 different sites of which 8 were totally new to me. All the new sites featured amazing coral health and diversity – some sites around Karumulun approached 100% coral cover and aside from a few sites showing Crown-of-thorns and Drupella predation, the corals were in perfect condition. This was especially remarkable given that the water temperature was over 30degreesC(86F) on every dive.
Some of my favourite sites were skipped due to local politics and in some cases poor reef health, but we were treated to the best visibility I have ever seen at all of the WW2 and other wreck and wreckage sites we did – White Beach Dump, Wreck of the Ann, Maru 2 and Mavis Seaplane were all clearer than I have seen in dozens of previous dives on them.
From my 100 reasons series, here are the updated results :
Top 10 Fish – I didn’t see any Barramundi cod or dragonets, but everyone else was accounted for.
Top 10 Anemonefish – all present and accounted for
Top 10 Strange critters – all present and accounted for
Top 10 Crustaceans – all present and accounted for although I didn’t personally see any orangutan crabs
Top 10 Cryptic critters – no frogfish or ghost pipefish – probably a seasonal thing
Top 10 Small stuff – as mentioned, my macro abilities were significantly reduced so I didn’t spend a lot of time looking for small stuff but they were all there
Top 10 Seascapes – Mary Island had the worst visibility I have ever seen there. The hot water and glassy seas put a cloud of phytoplankton and algae over the site. We didn’t get to Penguin Reef, but all the others were in tip top condition
Top 10 Bigger critters – all present and accounted for with the exception of mantas. Locals report of an Orca or orcas in the manta area and no mantas seen since.
Top 10 wrecks – we only did Mavis sea plane, the Ann and Maru 2 all of which were great. The others were either out of range of this trip or blown out with weather.
Top 10 Uniquely Solomon experiences – I didn’t see any local spearfishermen, the surf was not up, we never made it to Rapichana and the Devil’s Highway has lost its mantas. Sadly, Wilson is no longer cooking onboard but the rest of the crew made up for his absence. The dugout canoes are common, and the floating makets as bustling as ever. The fresh fruit and veggies they delivered were as good fresh food gets.
Overall, the trip was as expectedly marvellous, a big thanks to Pato, Fernando the Bilikiki crew and my beloved guests that make these trips possible, easy to manage and fun.
Looking forward to the next one!
Josh