Home-made Snoots? for Ikelite 161

[divegypsy]

Hi Gang,  On my last trip to Bali, September and October 2023, I finally got around to trying a pair of home-made snoots on my Ikelite 161 strobes.  For years I've had a few delrin parts that  bayonet onto the front of the strobe, but only recently finished the project with some short lengths of PVC pipe, some swimming pool noodle and small round sections of Paul C Buff grids for their studio strobes. The Buff grid is listed as reducing their strobe light to 20-degrees. The first shot shows a rear-view of my snoot. The second shot shows the snoot attached to the strobe and also shows a piece of styrofoam I put on the back of the strobe which makes it neutral in the water.  Both are hooked to the strobes sync cable bulkhead with monofilament leashes so that if they come off of the strobe, they won't float away.  This is especially important for the snoot because I can easily take it on and off underwater. The blue pool noodle on the snoot causes it to float above the strobe and not interfere with the strobes full wide-angle beam when I want to shoot normal lighting. With the easy bayonet mounting and monofilament leash I took the snoots on almost all of my dives though I didn't use them very much. Maybe because I'm an old dog and don't learn new tricks easily.

 

The third shot is of a Devil Stinger, Inimicus, where I found it ans shot with a combination of ambient and flash light. In the second shot I've bugged the Stinger to cause it to raise its venomous spines.  The third shot shows the stinger lit with the snooted strobe from the left and fairly strong fill from the right strobe. The fourth shots shows the stinger with the same snooted strobe on the left but with less "fill" on the right achieved by moving the right strobe farther from the stinger.  The fifth stinger shot is with the "fill" strobe even farther away, but still providing a little detail in the shadows. I feel this really accentuates the venomous spines of the fish.

 

Next a shot of a nudibranch using first no snoots and then snoots on both strobes to darken the background.  And finally a small lionfish shot with two snooted strobes to separate it better from the background.

 

The camera for all shots was a Nikon D850 with a 70-180mm micro-nikkor zoom lens.  When shooting the little lionfish I added an Inon wet-diopter close-up lens in front of the zoom so the lionfish would fill the frame.

 

Overall I'm pleased with the results of my "budget snoots" and especially pleased at how easy it is to attach and detach them from the Ikelite strobes.

 

Fred