Hi All,

Only third time posting on here, a few weeks back from a 20 day dive trip with K2 in Lembeh with a total of 60 dives and 67h 24 mins underwater having recently experienced a flood in my very old omd-em10 rig I had just taken the opportunity to upgrade to the A7r V with nauticam housing and backscatter atom strobes with snoots, just shooting the 90mm macro currently so this trip was a good opportunity to start learning the camera (I can only learn so much using it on land). But I came back with what I think are some reasonable shots. Would love some feedback!

Thanks for this nice pictures

These are all fantastic images! Good job mastering the new gear.

My one bit of feedback is that using a snoot can create a sort of "stage spotlight" effect where you see the ring of light. Sometimes this is a nice effect, but it can also be distracting. What I often like to do is to use the second flash at lower power to create a bit of fill lighting at an offset angle. You still get separation from the background with the snoot as the main light source, but a more graduated fall off of the light into the background. It looks a bit less artificial this way.

Example: Atom Snoot as key light, MF-2 as fill light:

Nikon Z8 w/Nikkor 105mm lens, MFO-1, f11@1/200s iso125, Backscatter Atom with snoot, MF-2 strobe

Nice work!

Really nice pictures. Thank you!

On 6/11/2026 at 9:19 PM, Dave_Hicks said:

These are all fantastic images! Good job mastering the new gear.

My one bit of feedback is that using a snoot can create a sort of "stage spotlight" effect where you see the ring of light. Sometimes this is a nice effect, but it can also be distracting. What I often like to do is to use the second flash at lower power to create a bit of fill lighting at an offset angle. You still get separation from the background with the snoot as the main light source, but a more graduated fall off of the light into the background. It looks a bit less artificial this way.

Example: Atom Snoot as key light, MF-2 as fill light:

Nikon Z8 w/Nikkor 105mm lens, MFO-1, f11@1/200s iso125, Backscatter Atom with snoot, MF-2 strobe

I definitely agree, some handle the spotlight effect well, some don't the bobtail beinf an example of the latter, whilst a nice shot of the bobtail itself I'm less keen on the lighting. Critters sitting on substrate is always a little tricky for me. I'll definitely try that next time, thanks for the tip! It works great in that example.

Edited June 13Jun 13 by wyvern