Oceanic Shadow frameless mask

I've been keen to find the best mask for looking through the viewfinder and settled on the Oceanic Shadow after asking here.

This comparison shows the problem, you can't see the whole frame when composing the shot. Even without a mask this is about as much as you see. So you need a mask that does not make it worse by placing your eye too far from the eyepiece.

My Mares X Vision is a very comfortable wide view mask but the glass slopes forward at the top (to give better down view when diving) which puts your eye to far away.
My old Oceanic mask was better but has a deepish frame in front of the glass which clashes with the knobs and protrusions on the back of the housing.
The Oceanic frameless has a lower profile silicon rubber lip in front of the glass and one big wide glass lens. This means the you can put the glass right on to the eyepiece and even move around a bit to take in the whole frame. The black silicon blocks out light from the sides also. Mask photos here.

18 to 55mm kit lens

Conditions were good enough to give this lens a decent tryout. Blairgowie marina is a site where you can spend hours underwater being shallow but choc full of macro life.

As this collection shows it is a quite useful closeup and mid wide lens and works well enough with the 6" dome. The aperture sequence shows that at f/5.6 and f/8 the extreme edges are very soft but smaller apertures give acceptable results.

Camera issue of the day: Occasionally the image does not show on the screen immediately after shutter release. The image has been saved but for some reason doesn't appear automatically. I suspect it's actually a second very underexposed frame recorded due to my holding the shutter down for longer than necessary. Maybe I need to set the shutter to single shot.