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Hello all, me and my group are planing the 2026 diving trip, and for the moment we are thinking in going to Palau, but we don't want a dive cruise, we prefer from a resort. Can anyone point me in a good resort or diving center with good rates ? Or any tip is more than welcome. Thank you very much

I have a Subal Procase F5 owners manual if anyone needs one. Will mail it out just send me your address via PM

A lot depends on your lens and camera. Mine achieves focus readily in 95% of daytime conditions, event at dim depths, without supplemental light. But I always have my light with me (also a Kraken 1800WSR, a great light) for the same reasons Dave stated. I’d leave other things behind before dropping it.

It's not (just) for white balance setting although you can indeed set the WB using the grey part. Real-world underwater video LED lights, even the "high end" ones have a far from perfect spectrum that can't just be perfected by a WB setting. Ambient light is also a mixed bag as in real world water absorption is more than just "red-orange-yellow are gradually disappearing". Effectively, the PP software can use the defined color spots of the card to calibrate the entire image. Similarly to white balancing, besides white, other colors are "moved" to their right place, something along this line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmhGkVShSI That's a valid point. I see Keldan is selling their colorchecker card, but it obviously works only if the card is near the actual target and as you mentioned, angle to the Sun isn't much different either. Cumbersome to arrange in a recreational dive.

Hi Adrian, I’ve been using a focus light on most of my dives for years now. For macro, it’s either mounted directly on the port or on a strobe arm for a bit more flexibility. Here in Switzerland, especially in freshwater, you lose ambient light very quickly and the critters are usually pretty low-contrast anyway. In those conditions, a focus light helps the camera’s autofocus a lot, and it also means I’m not wasting battery power from the strobes’ built-in focus lights. I really only use the strobe focus light when I’m working with a snoot. For wide angle, I use a focus light less often. The main exception is night dives in the lake, when the strobes are set way out to the sides anyway. I’ve been using a BigBlue focus light for years now. Cheers from Lake Constance, Tino BigBlue Fokuslicht on top of the Port, but here not in use.

Thanks!

I'll snap a picture today. It's working well.

That's interesting.

I have a Kraken WSR1500 and I mount it on the top ball clamp on my arms, which is a Nauticam MP with extra ball. Gives more of a top down light and I can swing it back to illuminate the buttons on my housing if needed. Seems to stay out of the way better than mounting on the housing. Cold shoe mount is my least favorite.

That's exactly the setup I have.

The light is on a YS mount attached to a ball one the top of the Nauticam housing. The ys mount makes it easy to flip the light up for snooting or shooting a portrait of someone without blinding them.

Hey, Dave, How do you arrange and point the OrcaTorch for supermacro, especially if snooting? Or do you not use it, if snooting? Do you have it attached to a cold shoe mount? If so, with what connections?

That Kraken 1800 is very similar to my OrcaTorch. The 21700 batteries are the way to go.

I love night dives, and obviously the focus light always goes with me then. I have a Kraken 1800 WSR. Great light. I'm just trying to simplify my gear wherever it makes sense. Also, I always have my wife hovering above me with her dive light, pointing things out 😊.

Try a night dive! But seriously, in clear bright water you may not need a light for focusing. The camera may be able to achieve focus much if the time. But go under an overhang, swim-through, cloudy sky, or even setting sun in the shadow of a wall and it might be a problem. For me, i actually want to see the true colors of everything and a bright wide beam focus light is both my focus light and primary dive light. I bring it always even to the brightest destinations. You will always find a situation where it helps you get more from a dive. I am using the Orcatorch d710v mk2 these days. Small, simple, bright, with good battery life.

A fair summary. The Maxi and HF-1 are competitive with each other in relative brightness. All the shots are in air. See the electrical outlet on the left. 😀 I do have a pool but it is about 8c in there at the moment. Not gonna do it!

The 4500k filters loose .5 fstop vs unfiltered. It's a significant difference. I don't expect that to change in the boost levels.

I always dive with a focus light for wide angle, especially since the strobes are so far apart. For macro with the strobes closer together, from fish portraits down to supermacro, I'm not sure if they are necessary. Since I dive in clear, blue water (Caribbean), could I just rely on the 1000 lumen target lights from my dual Atom flashes, both white and red, even at depth? One less item on my rig and decreased weight would be desirable. What do you think and what do you do?

Hola a todos,os puedo contar mi experiencia,uso Sony A7R2 en su caja estanca Nauticam,normalmente con el mini trigger nauticam pero el destello de los leds es de luz roja y no tiene potencia suficiente para excitar mis dos flashes subtronic 160 pro opto,y como no hay espacio en el lugar del minitrigger,usé un miniflash tipo godox,Ulanzi sl01,tienes carga por usb c y bateria propia además de potencia ajustable y modo test,,no cupo por un par de mm en las esquinas superiores pero eso es fácil de arreglar rebajando con un cutter ,el siguiente problema fue que el destello va hacia adelante y lo necesitaba hacia arriba,fácil solución tambien,le hice un espejo de 42x22mm a modo de prisma y va sujeto con cinta americana negra y plastico fundido,,ahora a la mínima potencia me dispara ambos subtronic y da para más de 500 destellos,,de momento va bien y por poco más de 20E es una buena opción.....

Thank you for the test update, @Dave_Hicks! Since the high brightness apparently led to non-linear saturation effects, and since in reality (in warmer water) a warming diffuser is used in more than 90% of cases anyway, I would be very interested in a test at 4500K (as I mentioned earlier), as this would be much more practical (at least for me). The difference between max and boost would probably then be more clearly visible.

Pm sent

I have only seen it working in a studio, which means in perfectly controlled conditions. In the water, color absorption changes a lot with distance, and the orientation towards the sun changes much more than in the air. A good white balance is more than enough. The goal is to have colors that are pleasant rather than faithful

Be aware: the cooler color temp strobes will usually marginally win the brightness test. So as HF-1 and Maxi are really just 1% difference this can be solely blamed to color temp difference. Furthermore, here in the community of underwater shooters we are unable to fullfill industrial test standards, where we would take 10 units of each type and multiple measurements (a hell lot of work) to counter-act production variances and variance resulting from your own measurement errors. You commonly observe 3-5% variation across same production models industrial testing for the before mentioned reasons. So I would conclude,... they are basically equally bright and Retra Maxi caught up to the HF-1 . One more question to Dave: as you put housing and dome around for your test. Was this shot in Air (I mean the wall) or did you submerge everything in a pool test ? This would be an interesting detail for me. Maybe you want to mark this in your beam shot .jpg (in water / or in air shots) and also name the lens as a 15mm fisheye for readers who just stare at the table or will see this quoted somewhere in the future. Thanks for putting so much work in this @Dave_Hicks 💪

I totally agree with @Architeuthis on this point. In real world shooting switching from FULL to +2 level in M Mode on the Backscatter HF-1 has really efficient and high impact. It will substantially light bigger reef sceenes. Also I would like to point out, that the beam coverage and quality of light with my Apollo III 2.0 is really decent underwater and I have the gut feeling this might be related to the dome glas in front, which will have no effect in air but once submerged play out a substantial role. In land test the coverage looks like you have put a reduction ring on the Apollo.

As I recall the gamma curves from cameras flatten out in the highlights - it's certainly not linear response, I think that is what may be happening. In which case you could have a separate curve for the top end shot at a smaller aperture, lower ISO or an ND filter or some combination. Those high powers would probably manly be used where you can't get as close perhaps? Ideally you would use a flash meter.