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In case you see or are approached with a an offer for a Nauticam OM1 rig: About 2 months ago I have lost a whole OM1 rig during an underwater emergency while diving East Bali (Tulamben). Setup was slightly positive hence it was drifting in the water. Despite my and my friends efforts here, we have been met with a wall of silence from the local community, nobody had seen or found anything. Or so it had appeared. As it turns out, camera was very quickly found (or possibly fished out straight away, while we were still in the water, as it has disappeared suddenly while we were being bombarded with fishing lines from the shore). I was only able to recover the strobes + a couple of 70mm arms just yesterday, and that is only due to these being sold by a local who kept part of the "loot" (and urgently needed money for a religious ceremony) to another local who in turn brought it to a resident photographer here in Amed to help him clean and sell it (claiming it was a "gift from a guest"). Unfortunately according to him, the rest has been long smuggled to/via Jakarta for sale via extended family of some locals. Hence If you hear about any Nauticam OM1 being sold in the general APAC region (or could be beyond), the chances are it is this one... What is still missing: Nauticam: OM1 housing with M14 Vacuum Valve II Port 45 Extension ring 20 Diopter Holder Carbon Arms 90mm x2 Bayonet holders for 90mm arms x2 OM SYSTEM: OM1 body Olympus 60mm Macro lens with 3d printed zoom gear Turtle: o-TURTLE 2 SMART TTL trigger for Olympus / Panasonic ULCS: 4 short clamps 3 long clamps Mares: EOS 4rz torch with ball mount Inon UCL-165M67 diopter Misc: 2 black neoprene covers for the strobes Handmade bright orange strap with two xDeep snapbolts 1st picture of the whole rig below (from the fatal dive, taken by my teammate GoPro). 2nd picture from another dive with a 14-42/WWL configuration. It had a very distinctive orange strap on top (or what I now think of a perfect hooking up point for a fishing hook....). Naturally I do have serial numbers of most of the parts as well as invoices for those.

I have two HF-1's almost since they came out. At the first dive I was shocked by the torque that the (UW) heavy strobes produced on the rig (Nauticam/Sony A7R5), but coming from Z-330 I was used to place most floats on the inner arms. Since I place more floats on the outer arms no problem any more, everything is fine, no need to overtigthen the clamps... I never considered TTL, but I find it useful that with the Backscatter trigger for Sony I can switch to HSS just by switching the flash from "Manual" to "HSS", without any further adjustment on the camera...

I was looking at the Maxi's for an upcoming trip to Galapagos, but honestly, the HF-1's are likely going to be my answer. Having shot the HF-1's using my TLC arms and clamps I have not noticed the need to overly tighten them in the water. It might be the o-rings on your ball mounts(?) The TTL thing doesn't bother me at all - I never shoot TTL (although my daughter, shooting a Sony A7RV, used it extensively with a single HF-1 earlier this year with the new trigger - worked flawlessly, easily delivering really good TTL results). The ability to easily control an off camera Mini Flash was a great benefit shooting macro (and snooting).

I have understood that all Backscatter strobes are made by AOI. But i could be wrong.

Dear Tim, I‘m glad to read all this from your own writing and not as an obituary. I will be pondering this for a while. It‘s an expensive hobby with equipment, travel and diving costs - I would be very, very tempted to go and grab the stuff (in particular the memory cards!). One tends to forget that the most important Megapixel is a beating heart. Glad you showed us a good example. That said, have you already thought about the new gear? Mirrorless after all?

I saw someone with something like this, maybe on a Kraken strobe? A molded HD foam attachment for the strobe. But I think you can do just as well with some Jumbo Stix floats on the outer arms. When I put on the Retra Maxi strobes to replace my HF-1s, the rig was out of balance and too buoyant. I removed two Jumbo Stix blocks and everything was back in balance. While the HF-1s are more negative for sure, it's not that big a difference or difficult to balance out.

I saw a post that mentioned how negatively buoyant the HF-1 strobes are in the water, and how tight clamps need to be to secure them. While this is something that hasn’t bugged me too much, it did make me wonder if there is some way to wrap the body of the HF-1s with rigid float material to make it more neutral? I think I saw something from Marelux or Mares that used floats and a strap for dome ports or strobes, but I can’t find it now. Has anyone tried something like this? Is it a dumb idea (I know the heat sinks need to be exposed, but it seems like there’s still space to strap on ~ 0.5 lb of positive float material)? Thanks, Evan

Maybe the message is that you need new Retra Maxi strobes? The problem for me with the HF-1 is are two fold. They are very negative in the water, enough so that my clamps have to be overly tight to prevent the strobes from not falling down. Second, they have proprietary (RC) TTL that only works with the TG series cameras and I guess the OM1? May work with some Sony cameras but uses a proprietary trigger that will not fit in my housing which already has a UWT trigger. Backscatter could not have told their China box factory to add a universal TTL mode? Does not work with my Canon either. Same thing with the Atom. Cannot have a standard TTL mode? I have now used my new Retra Maxi strobes in the pool on practice subjects and found that the TTL works quite well with both my Canon and Sony. Yes, I mostly shoot in manual strobes mode but having TTL is a solid requirement for me because there are times I want to shoot TTL. And the Maxi is essentially neutral ln the pool and possibly slightly buoyant in salt water. I do not have to tighten my clamps down to support them.

Hi guys I’m looking for one of these housings — preferably the Sony Alpha 7C II or the Sony Alpha 7R V. Please let me know if you have one available :)

What are you camera are coming from? Sony is not in the only player on the field, or necessarily the best one.

A very good point, John. The conditions were "ideal": daylight, in the harbour, calm, rescue boats nearby. It would have been totally different on a dive site. At night it would have been a disaster. One other thing on reflection: the boat safety briefing included a good explanation of the sundeck-roof mounted liferafts. They were the standard type in drum-like, white-painted metal containers. In the event of the boat sinking, the rafts would release, inflate etc..... But In a fire? We estimated it would take 4 of us to lift one of the containers off its mounts and throw it into the sea - with flames all around.

Flying back to the US from Singapore after spending a week in Lembeh (Lembeh Resort). My son shot with 2 (Backscatter) Atom Flash strobes (I was shooting with my Retra Flash Pro Max strobes) - after a week of changing batteries, etc. I've warmed up to the idea that I might look at the Atom Flash strobes for macro work. Don't get me wrong, the Retras are great strobes, but dealing with two batteries (vs 8) has some significant appeal (even when considering the different chemistry). I've had Retras now going back 3 generations, and I still love their strobes. However, the Atom Flash feels solid, performed really well, and made wirelessly connecting to an (off camera) Mini Flash very easy (and easy to control). The good news is that my son heads back to college in the fall, so I can "borrow" his strobes for any trips later in the year. We'll see what Retra announces next as well. MY daughter shoots (w/a) with HF-1's, my son is now shooting (macro) with the Atom Flash - I feel like there's a message in here somewhere that I'm not picking up ;)

Hi Terri! Great to have you with us. A warm welcome to Waterpixels. If you're looking for specific advice on the Sony system, by all means search our site or post a question in the relevant forum. I'm sure you'll get lots of help. Best wishes

Wow. Thank you for posting this!

It seems like this could be a great thing for blackwater on a 30mm M43?

Hi all. I have been diving for about 40 yrs. Do technical, cave and muck diving. I am after advice about moving to a Sony Full frame mirrorless set up I dive a lot of the Pacific as well as caves in Europe and US

Terrifying, thanks for the vivid retelling and cautionary tale. It would be great to keep the data from the trip but better to keep the family safe.

At least we have Alex and Matt and the Underwater Photography Show to get an underwater camera fix 😀. As soon as my wife hears that intro music she gets up and leaves the room, "if you are going to listen to that again, I am going to go read a book!" I keep trying to explain to her there is more than one episode, ha.

Thanks for sharing the account and reminding about not being complacent about alarms and not worrying about possessions. Great that the operator did well in handling it. Lucky it was not in the middle of the night or out at sea in windy conditions.

I use a little printed memory card wallet to store 10 numbered SD Cards. I put a big 500gb CFExpress card in my camera as primary and a 128 or 64gb SD Card as secondary. I swap in a new SD Card at the end of each day and download from that. The SD Cards act as a backup should the camera or laptop be lost. Many modern cameras have two slots, so this should be easy to do for most people. It would be smart to leave this in a dry-bag/go-bag on the deck or camera station of a liveaboard. I think I'll add this to my liveaboard routine!

What a terrible experience, Tim. Thank you for sharing your story--it is one to learn from and live by. We were on the Philippines Siren last month, and during the very solid safety briefing, the CD offered to put passports in her jump bag, which stayed at the bridge, which on that boat is at the muster station. We didn't take her up on it, but should've done--and will if offered again. In fact, I might suggest it if the crew doesn't. Thinking about the loss of belongings, it occurred to me that on our next LOB--in July, as it happens--I hope to rotate one of the memory cards out of the camera every day or two, and keep it in my jump bag with passports, cash, meds, etc. The photographs are less than insignificant in the grand scheme, but having them might take on new meaning under the circumstances.

I recently (yesterday) put the original DSLR 45 degree viewfinder on my A7RIII and it definitely goes through more battery. But I prefer using it so far after just one wide angle dive. The older viewfinder doesn't show the edges where the settings are that well unless I adjust my angle of view. But for now it was worth getting the older unit at a major discount to see if it's what I want to use. I'm sure macro will be a different challenge.