How powerful strobes do you really need for wide angle? Weight and size considerations (or my GAS journey)

[Adventurer]

I‘d like to report positive experience with SEA&SEA YS-D2 and various INON Strobes, such as Z240 and Z330 and D200. A lot of people were praising Z330 in their underwater church but in everyday practice the D200 has done a great job as well.

 

I have long year comparison to big strobes manufactured by SUBTRONIC. With the increased ISO performance of all cameras a few years ago the big guns have become obsolete for many use cases.

 

This is confirmed by my recent S220 experience. This strobe is rated quite conservative by INON when looking at the tech specs. It outperformed the higher Guide numbered D200 and equally spec Backscatter MF2. It is not to be mistaken as a macro strobe, like the similar sized red S-2000 was. If you want to shrink travel size and weight or have to live on a small budget, this is the goto strobe in 2024.

 

About the color temp discussions, I would like to point out the physics aspect involved. If you use gels or filters, or paying attention to the manufacturers golden tube coating you are holding it wrong. If you look at energy traveling in water you want your photons to travel in the colder spectrum. You can fix this with the camera by setting the white balance manually (in the camera, not in LR). If you leave it in auto and buy a warm strobe you are doing it wrong. I‘d like to compare this with Astro photography where the use of Anti-LightPollution filters just costs you some fstops. But many companies make money on the filter myth. In uw photography many companies make money on the warm color temp myth.

 

All that is absorbed by water.

 

[Guest]

One of my sea and sea ys-d2j has started firing at full power this is how they eventually get burned

Parts can no longer be found so I am in the market for second hand

it will eventually fail it is the way it goes. They lasted 5 years and many trips however my z240 have now over 10 years and i used them as spares

I did get a defective strobe from inon that was replaced in warranty once set they go a long way

I hate the new strobes with parabolic front. It does nothing for the angle of coverage it only helps the strobe deal with higher mechanical pressure and heat dissipation so the various new inon are unfortunately a total waste of space because they still have the two bulbs and require a diffuser

from that respect retra are much better built and do not need a diffuser as they have the element circular but protruding 

I dont like the fact they are metal and they are heavy i can barely lift my rig with the 230 dome and adding another kg is not something am looking to do

Interesting where dreifish is going with this so far am considering the sea and sea ys-d3

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Adventurer said:

I‘d like to report positive experience with SEA&SEA YS-D2 and various INON Strobes, such as Z240 and Z330 and D200. A lot of people were praising Z330 in their underwater church but in everyday practice the D200 has done a great job as well.

 

I have long year comparison to big strobes manufactured by SUBTRONIC. With the increased ISO performance of all cameras a few years ago the big guns have become obsolete for many use cases.

 

This is confirmed by my recent S220 experience. This strobe is rated quite conservative by INON when looking at the tech specs. It outperformed the higher Guide numbered D200 and equally spec Backscatter MF2. It is not to be mistaken as a macro strobe, like the similar sized red S-2000 was. If you want to shrink travel size and weight or have to live on a small budget, this is the goto strobe in 2024.

 

About the color temp discussions, I would like to point out the physics aspect involved. If you use gels or filters, or paying attention to the manufacturers golden tube coating you are holding it wrong. If you look at energy traveling in water you want your photons to travel in the colder spectrum. You can fix this with the camera by setting the white balance manually (in the camera, not in LR). If you leave it in auto and buy a warm strobe you are doing it wrong. I‘d like to compare this with Astro photography where the use of Anti-LightPollution filters just costs you some fstops. But many companies make money on the filter myth. In uw photography many companies make money on the warm color temp myth.

 

All that is absorbed by water.

 

Wrong idea

The water in the background is not affected by the strobe. By making the subject warmer the water looks cooler

This is difficult to replicate with masks if your background is messy

however warmer than 4900-5200 is not needed really

[Chris Ross]

2 hours ago, Interceptor121 said:

Wrong idea

The water in the background is not affected by the strobe. By making the subject warmer the water looks cooler

This is difficult to replicate with masks if your background is messy

however warmer than 4900-5200 is not needed really

This is correct, if you white balance with a warmer strobe to make your subject neutral you cool the image overall which means the water is colder/bluer, no masks required.  This happens because the strobe illuminates the subject and not the water.  Though I would say there is no harm in 4600K light, I've used in clean tropical waters and results are fine.

[Chris Ross]

Back to the original question, regarding strobe selection, The small INONs are nice strobes, however my experience is with Z-240  I find that shooting at f8 on m43 lenses I am at 1/2 power or the next level  which is 1/2 stop less than full.  at ISO200 I find lighting big scenes a struggle at times.  On full frame you will be stopping down to F11-13 most likely.  You can bring your ISO up to 400 but might find you are running into your sync speed if shooting sunballs or even bright surface waters.  1/250 @ f8 ISO 200 is the same as 1/250 @ f11 ISO400.  

 

I've just finished diving at Walindi in PNG shooting Barracuda schools etc.  I didn't really want to go full power as I was ready to shoot again quite quickly at the powers I used.  I kind of felt I'd like a little more strobe power.  You could probably get away with the S220 if shooting at less than 1 m distance and using full power, but might find them wanting when shooting big scenes.

[DreiFish]

11 hours ago, Architeuthis said:

 

=> Since you have the means to measure light output, it would be great if you could measure how much f-stops are filtered away by warming up the light (the more warming up, the more f-stops are expected to be filtered out).

 

 

I haven't done that with the light meter (since travelling currently), but I have test shots I can examine in Lightroom. 

 

1/4 CTO filter reduced light output by 1/2 stop (6200k -> 4800k on Marilux Apollo 3s w/ diffuser)

1/2 CTO filter reduced light output by 2/3 stop (6200k -> 4000k on Marilux Apollo 3s w/ diffuser)

 

The Inon 4600k diffuser on the S-220s is.. pretty ineffective. It reduced light output by about .2 stops, but also only took the strobe from 6100k to 5800k. 

 

You definitely lose light output... more or less proportionally to what the strobes gained in the first place by having a cooler color temperature. So I'd say, power-output wise, it's basically a wash. You can get more powerful cooler strobes, or warmer less powerful strobes. But if you use a filter on the more powerful strobes to improve the color temperature, you end up with similar light intensity as the warmer strobes.

 

(In my testing, the Retra Pro Max was only about 1/2 stop less bright than the OneUW 160/Marilux Apollo 3)

 

5 hours ago, Architeuthis said:

 

On the last diving vacation it were Carribean reef sharks. They encircle the divers during the entire dive, within distance for WA flash, but seldom (maybe 1x per dive, but often not even 1x) come < 1m, so close that they touch (almost) the domeport. I needed all the power the flashes could deliver. I also would have liked to have more power, for single shots, but especially for repetitive firing at 3 or 4 photos/second, in order to get multiple photos from a pass (turned out to be impossible with Z330 at the circumstances given, just too weak)...

 

Wolfgang

 

 

 

 

I do think recycling times are a differentiating factor for certain use cases (fast action, pelagics), but less so for general reef wide angle uses. That's the main reason I got the Marilux Apollo 3s -- for sharks and fast action bursts. But that seems to be primarily a factor of power output vs. how quickly the capacitor can be charged based on the current the batteries put out? Is there a reason the newer strobes with LI-ION batteries like the Marilux Apollo 3 and the Backscatter Hybrid Flash recycle so much faster than older NiMH strobes? The power output, if anything, appears to be higher (~175 jules for the Apollo 3, 350!! jules for the Backscatter HF-1). 

[Chris Ross]

15 hours ago, Interceptor121 said:

You cannot avoid backscatter by using edges or else If there are particles your camera will see them no matter if they reflect light or not

 edges of a strobe simply have less power than the centre and less field of view 

the idea of back scatter with strobes cones from compact cameras and using a single strobe

the only way not to get backscatter is to have no particles in the water

i shoot without strobes with ambient light and still see plenty of particles because they are there and they will come in the picture 

Technically yes you can see the particles but I would argue that un-illuminated particles are not backscatter.  The meaning of backscatter is light reflected back towards the camera and these particles are very close to the strobe so are very bright and objectionable.  Particles you avoid illuminating may or may not be noticeable depending upon what is behind them many times I can zoom into 100% and see stuff floating around but the final image you really don't see them.  For all practical purposes they have no impact on the image.

 

I've positioned my strobes badly often enough that I can say for certain that avoiding illuminating the particles is a real positive for the photo.  the most important parameter seems to be to pull the strobes well  back behind the plane of the dome port.

[DreiFish]

1 hour ago, Chris Ross said:

Technically yes you can see the particles but I would argue that un-illuminated particles are not backscatter.  The meaning of backscatter is light reflected back towards the camera and these particles are very close to the strobe so are very bright and objectionable.  Particles you avoid illuminating may or may not be noticeable depending upon what is behind them many times I can zoom into 100% and see stuff floating around but the final image you really don't see them.  For all practical purposes they have no impact on the image.

 

I've positioned my strobes badly often enough that I can say for certain that avoiding illuminating the particles is a real positive for the photo.  the most important parameter seems to be to pull the strobes well  back behind the plane of the dome port.

Hey Chris,

 

You might be mixing up two different things. If you think of the cone of light, wider strobes have a wider cone of light, but the principles are the same -- moving the strobes back (without moving them out) doesn't actually reduce backscatter -- if anything, it increases the area between the dome and the subject that is illuminated. Only moving the strobes out to the sides will decrease the backscatter.

 

What moving the strobes back does (especially with a wide lens like a fisheye) is ensuring you don't get light hitting the dome itself (which produces reflections and artifacts way worse than backscatter). Anyway, it's a fine distinction, but from a physics perspective there's no way moving the strobes back can actually decrease the amount of backscatter in terms of lighting up particles in the water column between the dome and the subject. 

 

What it does do is mean that less light hits those particles because of the distance between them and the strobes (inverse square law). But.. that also means that less light hits your subject for the same reason, so you end up having to increase light power to compensate, which gets you back in the same place.

Basically, move the strobes back just far enough to avoid direct light hitting the sides of your dome and then move them outwards proportionally to the subject distance (or inwards for close subjects) to control backscatter. 

[Adventurer]

5 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

This is correct, if you white balance with a warmer strobe to make your subject neutral you cool the image overall which means the water is colder/bluer, no masks required.  This happens because the strobe illuminates the subject and not the water.  Though I would say there is no harm in 4600K light, I've used in clean tropical waters and results are fine.

I expected this to arouse everybody and not receive flowers for my statement as just a minority of shooters has understood the physics behind this.

 

Underwater photographers are less open to this idea and the correct physics approach.

 

It‘s more accepted and understood in the underwater video community were some execute this by putting blue cooling filters on their video lights.

 

I can just encourage everyone to burry the old recommendation that you need warm lights or strobes underwater.

 

Once you embraced the idea that you have an absorption related depth of field for underwater color, you will improve your imaging and minimize travel weight.

 

Actually you are the able to colorize subjects more distant then 1.5 meters from the camera. Alex Mustards „Bohar Snapper“ from the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is a good example and also proof that you do not have to sacrifice cool blue water background when using this technique.

[Adventurer]

1 hour ago, DreiFish said:

The Inon 4600k diffuser on the S-220s is.. pretty ineffective. It reduced light output by about .2 stops, but also only took the strobe from 6100k to 5800k. 

 

You definitely lose light output... more or less proportionally to what the strobes gained in the first place by having a cooler color temperature.

 

 

Exactly! You just confirmed what I recommended earlier in this thread. Leave your CTO gels, diffusers and color conversion filters on the boat. It‘s a waste of energy, light and money.

 

Start massaging your cameras WB instead to archive the effect.

 

Especially INON S220, Z330 Type2  and D200 Type2 have such a great micro peened frontglas that you do not need diffusers.

 

[ChrisH]

There is also a good comparison to some strobes made by Retra:

https://www.retra-uwt.com/pages/flashgun-light-comparison
 

In my opinion you can clearly see the difference in even light distribution and color temperature. The results comply to my personal experiences with the strobes I used. 
 

Also the quote of Alex Mustard should be noted:

"The absolute power is also not so important because with most good flashguns we don’t use them on full power much. However, the quality of light, determined by pattern of the beam, always affects our photos on all powers. All good underwater flashguns give a wide coverage, but still differ in how much of their light they get out to the wider parts of the beam. A wide, even beam gives a better quality of light, without unsightly hotspots and produces a more even illumination on the subject in wide angle photography. These flashguns are also easier to use, being more forgiving of slight errors in how you position them.”

- Alex Mustard 

 

If you don‘t believe me, maybe you believe Alex Mustard 😉 

[Adventurer]

8 hours ago, Interceptor121 said:

I hate the new strobes with parabolic front. It does nothing for the angle of coverage it only helps the strobe deal with higher mechanical pressure

WRONG

 

I respect your personal opinion about not liking dome shaped strobes and lights. But please don‘t let your anger spread false information.

Dome shaped fronts do not benefit structural integrity. The particular products you mentioned have the same depth rating and it was not the engineering intention to compensate anything with that.

 

For the optical equation you know better, Massimo. You have written many great articles about dome port theory. When you reverse that and apply it to chasing the light rays from the inside to the outside water column through the dome, you will find that dome glas on lights will spread the light. Same applies to underwater strobes with domes.

 

Eveybody can simply verify this by shining a domed dive light into water. Once dipped it you will notice a more wide light cone.

[Adventurer]

7 minutes ago, ChrisH said:

If you don‘t believe me, maybe you believe Alex Mustard 😉 

 
I am aware of the fact that my good friend Alex Mustard has publicly voiced his subjective impression about warm strobes on many occasions, which I do not agree to.

 

Be aware that Alex processes most of his images, as frequently shown on YT.

 

His BBC Bohar Snapper shot is (almost) straight from camera, as the competition had very strict processing rules in the past. This is why this particular image lends itself so well into my argument. 

 

Again. I encourage everyone to get their head around this one more time and work through this by first principles physics. It‘s the scientific approach.

 

Scientific means not taking things for granted because someone with pristine reputation and excellent images has made a remark.

 

Instead try falsifying / verifying them to yourself again. Stay hungry!

[Architeuthis]

28 minutes ago, ChrisH said:

There is also a good comparison to some strobes made by Retra:

https://www.retra-uwt.com/pages/flashgun-light-comparison
 

In my opinion you can clearly see the difference in even light distribution and color temperature. The results comply to my personal experiences with the strobes I used. 
 

Also the quote of Alex Mustard should be noted:

"The absolute power is also not so important because with most good flashguns we don’t use them on full power much. However, the quality of light, determined by pattern of the beam, always affects our photos on all powers. All good underwater flashguns give a wide coverage, but still differ in how much of their light they get out to the wider parts of the beam. A wide, even beam gives a better quality of light, without unsightly hotspots and produces a more even illumination on the subject in wide angle photography. These flashguns are also easier to use, being more forgiving of slight errors in how you position them.”

- Alex Mustard 

 

If you don‘t believe me, maybe you believe Alex Mustard 😉 

 

Interesting link. Since the comparison is produced by Retra, there are, of course, conflicts of interest and I would not call this a "study" (as they do), but more an "advertising brochure" (same applies to the "review" of the new HF-1 strobes by Jim Decker from Backscatter 🙂 )....

 

Nevertheless, the light distribution of YS-D2 and Z330 without diffusers looks terrible, in the case with diffusers it looks much better ...

=> In they case they would be able to reproduce these patterns in water (these are UW strobes!), this would be really a strong argument and a step towards a real "study"....

 

 

=> Of course the reports/comparisons from users like you or Alex Mustard is a different story. These are people that have used different strobes for long and report from their own experience with them. I highly appreciate such information...

 

 

Wolfgang

Edited May 30 by Architeuthis

[DreiFish]

31 minutes ago, Adventurer said:

 

 

Exactly! You just confirmed what I recommended earlier in this thread. Leave your CTO gels, diffusers and color conversion filters on the boat. It‘s a waste of energy, light and money.

 

Start massaging your cameras WB instead to archive the effect.

 

Especially INON S220, Z330 Type2  and D200 Type2 have such a great micro peened frontglas that you do not need diffusers.

 

 

The reason for using warmer strobes is that you can adjust the white balance (for the whole image) to the strobe illuminated subject (e.g. to 4800k), so the subject looks natural. This overall white balance then has the effect of rendering the background, especially water column a more rich and pleasing shade of blue.

 

So it's not exactly correct that you can just fix it all with WB. If you have a cooler strobe, you must wb the whole image (or, selectively the subject at least) to a cooler temperature like 6000k to look natural. That leaves the blues as less pleasing and muddy. Of course, you can achieve everything that warm strobes achieve in post-processing by indepently adjusting the color temperature for the strobe-lit foreground subject and ambient-light-lit background, but this requires more work and time in post-processing. Many prefer to just use warmer strobes or filters and achieve the same outcome without post-processing. There's an old Alex Mustard post that explains this in detail. 

[Architeuthis]

43 minutes ago, Adventurer said:

I expected this to arouse everybody and not receive flowers for my statement as just a minority of shooters has understood the physics behind this.

 

Underwater photographers are less open to this idea and the correct physics approach.

 

It‘s more accepted and understood in the underwater video community were some execute this by putting blue cooling filters on their video lights.

 

I can just encourage everyone to burry the old recommendation that you need warm lights or strobes underwater.

 

Once you embraced the idea that you have an absorption related depth of field for underwater color, you will improve your imaging and minimize travel weight.

 

Actually you are the able to colorize subjects more distant then 1.5 meters from the camera. Alex Mustards „Bohar Snapper“ from the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is a good example and also proof that you do not have to sacrifice cool blue water background when using this technique.

 

In addition to several other filters, Backscatter offers also blue filters for cooling down the temperature of their HF-1 strobes. Is this the diffuser/dome you would take?

 

Wolfgang

[DreiFish]

For objective testing (in-water) of the effect of dome diffusers:

 

https://www.backscatter.com/reviews/post/Sea-&-Sea-YS-D3-Duo-Underwater-Strobe-Review

https://www.backscatter.com/reviews/post/Retra-Flash-Pro-Max-Underwater-Strobe-Review

https://www.backscatter.com/reviews/post/Ikelite-DS230-DS232-Underwater-Strobe-Review

https://www.backscatter.com/reviews/post/How-To-Underwater-Strobe-Flash-Placement

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Architeuthis said:

 

Interesting link. Since the comparison is produced by Retra, there are, of course, conflicts of interest and I would not call this a "study" (as they do), but more an "advertising brochure" (same applies to the "review" of the new HF-1 strobes by Jim Decker from Backscatter 🙂 )....

 

Nevertheless, the light distribution of YS-D2 and Z330 without diffusers looks terrible, in the case with diffusers it looks much better ...

=> In they case they would be able to reproduce these patterns in water (these are UW strobes!), this would be really a strong argument and a step towards a real "study"....

 

 

=> Of course the reports/comparisons from users like you or Alex Mustard is a different story. These are people that have used different strobes for long and report from their own experience with them. I highly appreciate such information...

 

 

Wolfgang

The comparison is accurate however if you read carefully the strobes are compared without diffusers

the retra are designed differently they have an opaque front and the element is protruding 

however once you put a diffuser on other strobes the gap closes 

i took the sea and sea ys-d2 diffuser image and overlayed in photoshop with a difference operator and it was essentially identical to the retra strobe 

which is the reason why I will keep using them until they go

inon z240 are considerably weaker despite the specs and the z330 are no longer made

i am interested in a flat front polycarbonate strobe that is powerful and reliable unfortunately I dont see any

[Guest]

2 hours ago, DreiFish said:

Hey Chris,

 

You might be mixing up two different things. If you think of the cone of light, wider strobes have a wider cone of light, but the principles are the same -- moving the strobes back (without moving them out) doesn't actually reduce backscatter -- if anything, it increases the area between the dome and the subject that is illuminated. Only moving the strobes out to the sides will decrease the backscatter.

 

What moving the strobes back does (especially with a wide lens like a fisheye) is ensuring you don't get light hitting the dome itself (which produces reflections and artifacts way worse than backscatter). Anyway, it's a fine distinction, but from a physics perspective there's no way moving the strobes back can actually decrease the amount of backscatter in terms of lighting up particles in the water column between the dome and the subject. 

 

What it does do is mean that less light hits those particles because of the distance between them and the strobes (inverse square law). But.. that also means that less light hits your subject for the same reason, so you end up having to increase light power to compensate, which gets you back in the same place.

Basically, move the strobes back just far enough to avoid direct light hitting the sides of your dome and then move them outwards proportionally to the subject distance (or inwards for close subjects) to control backscatter. 

Correct

The strobe emit energy that creates a cloud around the strobe if you dont pull them back the lens will see it more power more issues but this doesn’t avoid back scatter 

 

with regards to recycle time it depends on the ability of the battery to deliver higher current.

historically lithium didn’t deliver high current in burst this would ruin the battery perhaps something has changed or those marelux batteries wont last long

retra has also made a lithium battery pack

a lithium pack can hold considerable more energy of NiMh however typically this is for long runs at fixed current 

Lithium also takes longer to charge and reacts badly with water 

[Guest]

Anyway to answer the question of this post GN 32 for strobes with diffusers -0.8 works

or GN22 net

 

Strobes that are GN22 to start with are insufficient for wide angle big scenes based on my experience comparing my old Z240 with the Sea and Sea YS-D2

With a strobe GN32 and diffuser you can deal pretty much any scenes you want even strongly backlit shots at close range

 

Obviously the issue is that some of the declared power may not be true...

 

If anyone knows of any current strobe with this power with weight less than 750 grams please let me know

[ChrisH]

2 hours ago, Adventurer said:

 
I am aware of the fact that my good friend Alex Mustard has publicly voiced his subjective impression about warm strobes on many occasions, which I do not agree to.

 

Be aware that Alex processes most of his images, as frequently shown on YT.

 

His BBC Bohar Snapper shot is (almost) straight from camera, as the competition had very strict processing rules in the past. This is why this particular image lends itself so well into my argument. 

 

Again. I encourage everyone to get their head around this one more time and work through this by first principles physics. It‘s the scientific approach.

 

Scientific means not taking things for granted because someone with pristine reputation and excellent images has made a remark.

 

Instead try falsifying / verifying them to yourself again. Stay hungry!

First, the post you quoted was not about color temperature. The comparison made by Retra and the quote from Alex Mustard is not about color temperature. You just can see different color temperatures of the strobes in the picture made by Retra.

 

But also the fact that you find the Snapper shot suited for showing that you don't need a warm strobe or that you can light up and bring color to a subject more than 1,5 m away leeds me to the assumption that we are talking about very different things here:

- that shot has almost no color in it; just compare it to a shot of the same species made at less of a distance; that is not to say it truly is a spectacular and outstanding shot! but it can not bring down the law of physics and wasn't meant to

- I don't know from what distance the shot was taken, but using a tele lens the strobes were certainly brought forward a good bit to achieve the most amount of color possible (which is not much on a fish)

 

There is no need for light traveling far underwater. We don't need strobes to "light". We need them to bring back colors! It can help for taking pictures of sharks or pelagic that don't come that close. But then you can just simply open up the aperture and should have enough "reach" with all the mentioned strobes. There is no or not much color in those subjects anyway.  You don't need to use strobes to get blue color/backgrounds. 

 

The effect of warm color temperature of strobes shows almost only in very close shots of wide, colorful scenes. it cannot be achieved with global white balance (at least I can't). I think it can be mostly recreated with post processing, altering the white balance of the image and then adjusting the color temperature of the blue tones. 

 

I have tried the different strobes with the different color temperature, so I did the verifying for myself 😉 And I am quite happy with the pictures I get from my strobes and I didn't get them as easily with the strobes before 😉 

 

Also I would always trust the experience and judgement of somebody with "pristine reputation" and "excellent images" more than somebody else, because this person has achieved the "excellent images" and most likely must have done something right. And the person arguing against a claim made by such a person is in my opinion up to prove them wrong by bringing better pictures to the table and explain how it can be achieved.

 

If there were a simple way of getting the shots with less bulky and expensive gear, I am sure all the professional photographers would be very happy to leave a lot of luggage at home.

 

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, ChrisH said:

First, the post you quoted was not about color temperature. The comparison made by Retra and the quote from Alex Mustard is not about color temperature. You just can see different color temperatures of the strobes in the picture made by Retra.

 

But also the fact that you find the Snapper shot suited for showing that you don't need a warm strobe or that you can light up and bring color to a subject more than 1,5 m away leeds me to the assumption that we are talking about very different things here:

- that shot has almost no color in it; just compare it to a shot of the same species made at less of a distance; that is not to say it truly is a spectacular and outstanding shot! but it can not bring down the law of physics and wasn't meant to

- I don't know from what distance the shot was taken, but using a tele lens the strobes were certainly brought forward a good bit to achieve the most amount of color possible (which is not much on a fish)

 

There is no need for light traveling far underwater. We don't need strobes to "light". We need them to bring back colors! It can help for taking pictures of sharks or pelagic that don't come that close. But then you can just simply open up the aperture and should have enough "reach" with all the mentioned strobes. There is no or not much color in those subjects anyway.  You don't need to use strobes to get blue color/backgrounds. 

 

The effect of warm color temperature of strobes shows almost only in very close shots of wide, colorful scenes. it cannot be achieved with global white balance (at least I can't). I think it can be mostly recreated with post processing, altering the white balance of the image and then adjusting the color temperature of the blue tones. 

 

I have tried the different strobes with the different color temperature, so I did the verifying for myself 😉 And I am quite happy with the pictures I get from my strobes and I didn't get them as easily with the strobes before 😉 

 

Also I would always trust the experience and judgement of somebody with "pristine reputation" and "excellent images" more than somebody else, because this person has achieved the "excellent images" and most likely must have done something right. And the person arguing against a claim made by such a person is in my opinion up to prove them wrong by bringing better pictures to the table and explain how it can be achieved.

 

If there were a simple way of getting the shots with less bulky and expensive gear, I am sure all the professional photographers would be very happy to leave a lot of luggage at home.

 

I have spent a lot of time on light modifiers and used all sort of color temperatures

 

4900-5200K range is a good one to have

 

Cooler ones may create water color that is funny at times warmer ones can fool the camera white balance and come out with color cast

 

Xenon tubes have native color temperature between 5000 and 6000 Kelvin anything outside this range is the result of something else deliberate or accidental

 

I like my strobes to emulate daylight which is more or less 5200K however this is best achieved using something that is right there in the configuration you use

So if your strobe is really cool it may be difficult to bring it back to 5200K

You won't be able to see much difference between 4900 and 5200K I would not loose my sleep

 

Alex Mustard back in the days got Inon to produce all sorts of colored diffusers and went out on a lot of testing finally settled for 4900K which is what the retra have however 300K are not going to be a huge difference. While 1000K will

 

Some of the newer strobes like the Sea and Sea YS-D3 and the Marelux are fairly cold

 

By the way the retra are tested at 5800K so they are far way from the 4900 specified according to backscatter

Edited May 30 by Interceptor121

[Adventurer]

1 hour ago, ChrisH said:

And the person arguing against a claim made by such a person is in my opinion up to prove them wrong by bringing better pictures to the table and explain how it can be achieved.

You are misleading yourself and others with that idea. I claim myself guilty of having silenced discussions in the past by posting a spectacular image to make my point. 

 

Be aware: Some very knowledgeable technically good photographers with good advice are miserable at composition, animal behavior anticipation or simply don’t dive enough all year round. We are talking about IQ (image quality) here and what’s technically possible, not art.

 

To get you dialed into the topic, let’s Alex have a say about his picture: 

 

 

This is very recent but there is more from him on YT were he talks about that particular picture and what technique he applied in other interesting YT videos.

 

During the early 2000s many of the pros where using this strobe color plus calibration technique. Alex got the best shot ever, when he was going ALL-IN on this white-balance plus strobe thing. He simply had the balls to do it with a 105mm focal length while everybody else was using it with classic wide angle and fisheye lenses. Please note Christian, that there is vibrant golden color on the Bohar Snapper which makes this shot what it is.

Edited May 30 by Adventurer
Removed some obvious typos

[Guest]

54 minutes ago, Adventurer said:

You are misleading yourself and others with that idea. I claim myself guilty of having silenced discussions in the past by posting a spectacular image to make my point. 

 

Be aware: Some very knowledgeable technically good photographers with good advice are miserable at composition, animal behavior anticipation or simply don’t dive enough all year round. We are talking about IQ (image quality) here and what’s technically possible, not art.

 

To get you dialed into the topic, let’s Alex have a say about his picture: 

 

 

This is very recent but there is more from him on YT were he talks about that particular picture and what technique he applied in other interesting YT videos.

 

During the early 2000s many of the pros where using this strobe color plus calibration technique. Alex got the best shot ever, when he was going ALL-IN on this white-balance plus strobe thing. He simply had the balls to do it with a 105mm focal length while everybody else was using it with classic wide angle and fisheye lenses. Please note Christian, that there is vibrant golden color on the Bohar Snapper which makes this shot what it is.

Borah snappers are not deep we shoot them with filters many times and no strobes

I have also shot them with ambient light filters which to be fair are better for places like tiger beach where depth is constant

[Architeuthis]

4 hours ago, Interceptor121 said:

The comparison is accurate however if you read carefully the strobes are compared without diffusers

the retra are designed differently they have an opaque front and the element is protruding 

however once you put a diffuser on other strobes the gap closes 

i took the sea and sea ys-d2 diffuser image and overlayed in photoshop with a difference operator and it was essentially identical to the retra strobe 

which is the reason why I will keep using them until they go

inon z240 are considerably weaker despite the specs and the z330 are no longer made

i am interested in a flat front polycarbonate strobe that is powerful and reliable unfortunately I dont see any

 

The comparison was made without, but also with diffusers (regarding YS-D2 and Z330). The problem is, that the images were taken in air and not in the water. Water will scatter the light and also the beam angles will be different...

I never have seen such a weird intensity pattern with YS-D2 or Z330, as shown in the Retra "study", when I have used them without diffusers. If the strobes would perform like shown in the "study" UW, they would not be usable without diffusers..

 

Wolfgang