On Friday, February 5, 2021 at 3:40:03 AM UTC-5, David Taylor wrote:
On 04/02/2021 18:38, Alfred Molon wrote:
If you look he
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFFNZYNYxFQ

these lenses have absurd sizes. It's not something you would
carry around for hours/the full day while walking in a tropical
rainforest.

The Assistant carries the kit!

LOL, true that.

Many moons ago, I was on a scuba dive on Little Cayman while Howard Hall
was also diving there at the same time...saw him swim past with his dive buddy
/photo assistant going the other way.

His project was for National Geographic; the filming of "Jewels of the Caribbean Sea",
released in 1994.

My brief impression was that they seemed equipped a bit oddly.

The first was that they were both decked out in thick wetsuits & hoods, despite the
water being ~80F. This makes perfect sense when one considers that they were
spending hours & hours daily underwater, as there's body core heat loss even in
tropical waters (its called "warmwater hypothermia").

Likewise, the assistant was struggling to keep up with Howard ... which was apparently
due to all that they were carrying. I'd never seen anyone carry a tripod underwater before.
Plus they were carrying multiple UW cameras: after the dive, I found out that in addition
to those that Howard was carrying, the assistant was carrying ... FIVE ... more Nikonos V
camera systems, each of which included its strobe(s).

This was in the film era, so max 36 shots per camera, plus since zoom lenses were never
invented for the Nikonos V, to change focal lengths during a dive meant reaching for
another camera (or two, or three...) that was already set up with the prime you wanted.

For OEM Nikkor lenses only, my recollection is that there were 13 permutations possible:

15mm,
20mm,
28mm,
28 w/Closeup Kit,*
28 w/Extension Tube A, *
28 w/Extension Tube B, *
28 w/Extension Tubes A+B stacked, *
35mm,
35 w/Closeup Kit,**
35 w/Extension Tube A, **
35 w/Extension Tube B, **
35 w/Extension Tubes A+B stacked, **
80mm,
80 w/Closeup Kit.


* - varying degrees of 'macro', sequenced from lowest to highest magnification;
** - as above, but for just the 35mm (I didn't try to cross-compare 28 vs 35).

-hh