With the strobes on either side and the entire system slightly negatively buoyant, the rig is quite stable when taking landscapes/horizontal shots. Unfortunately, with the popularity of vertical shots on social media, I have started to try composing my shots vertically. However, when placing the strobes at 12 and 6 o'clock, the entire system wants to torque back to the horizontal position.

 

Does anyone have tips for strobe/float placement to avoid this? 

26 minutes ago, shokwaav said:

With the strobes on either side and the entire system slightly negatively buoyant, the rig is quite stable when taking landscapes/horizontal shots. Unfortunately, with the popularity of vertical shots on social media, I have started to try composing my shots vertically. However, when placing the strobes at 12 and 6 o'clock, the entire system wants to torque back to the horizontal position.

 

Does anyone have tips for strobe/float placement to avoid this? 

12 and 6 o'clock strobe positions is generally not recommended for a number of reasons, lighting from below by the 6 - o'clock position strobe tends to look un-natural.  Plus the bottom strobe might be a lot closer to substrate and blow it out.  The general recommendation tends to be put your strobes in 9 and 3 or 10 and 2 or some variation while in portrait as well.  See this video at about 9:35 for the positions:

 

https://tutorials.brentdurand.com/underwater-strobe-positioning/amp/#wide

 

I would also add if you are getting a lot of torque like that you might have too much flotation on your arms and could benefit from less on the arms and transfer some buoyancy to the housing possibly under the base.  I had this issue with my rig which had around 1.5kg in float arms and it was difficult to twist upwards.  I ended up pulling the two smaller float arms and replacing them with standard ones and diving the rig a bit negative.

25 minutes ago, Chris Ross said:

12 and 6 o'clock strobe positions is generally not recommended for a number of reasons, lighting from below by the 6 - o'clock position strobe tends to look un-natural.  Plus the bottom strobe might be a lot closer to substrate and blow it out.  The general recommendation tends to be put your strobes in 9 and 3 or 10 and 2 or some variation while in portrait as well.  See this video at about 9:35 for the positions:

That's a good point. I've been lowering the output of my bottom strobe to deal with it, but I've also had shots which looked a bit unnatural.

 

25 minutes ago, Chris Ross said:

I would also add if you are getting a lot of torque like that you might have too much flotation on your arms and could benefit from less on the arms and transfer some buoyancy to the housing possibly under the base. 

My main issue is that the Backscatter strobes are so darn heavy that I need flotation near them. Ideally some sort of foam ring for the strobes would work best. 

 

Do you have any recommendations for adding floats to the base?

4 hours ago, shokwaav said:

 

My main issue is that the Backscatter strobes are so darn heavy that I need flotation near them. Ideally some sort of foam ring for the strobes would work best. 

 

Do you have any recommendations for adding floats to the base?

That's a big reason I wouldn't consider them, but you've got them already so need to deal the weight.  I assume you have your floats on the closest arm to the strobe.  I'm not sure what you are using for floatation but ideally if you get the strobe and float near neutral on it's own and closely linked to each other it should be less prone to torquing. 

 

However if you are using a lot more than the 200-250 gr per side that is required to offset the strobes then they'll want to torque,  You could transfer the rest of the buoyancy to the inner arms closer to the housing and potentially bolt some foam underneath. 

 

10 Bar have this:  https://www.divesea.shop/shop/10bar-base-tray-float-29093#attr=3681

 

It could work if 400 gr is not too much.  The principle is that if the buoyant part is above the non buoyant part it's stable and the closer the buoyancy is to the centre of gravity the more stable it will be.

 

 

Agree with Chris: I would think you'd have to move the strobes to 9 and 3 o'clock or thereabouts to get your lighting to work. I would love having some wrap-around floats on the strobes much like some video light manufacturers (Kraken, Keldan) do.