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I just missed the chance to get some well priced secondhand Retras locally which would have been great to try, although with the the boosters they lose some of that compactness, and not willing to pile that much cash into strobes for the new versions. And yes very familiar with the high prices here! The reduction rings is interesting, maybe something to experiment with on a shore dive here which can range from 10m visibility to 0.5m 😅 I'm not sure what route I'll take next, if I want to upgrade to a Nauticam system I'd want a newer body like an A6700, but then I'd need a trigger too. Upgrading to a full frame A7RV or one of the older variants would be the other alternative, but I suspect the trade offs in size and escalating cost may not be worth it to me when I can't currently dive that much.

Nice! When were you? We were in July last year. Our cuda dive was a bit late in the day so not much to show, light was not enough 🤷

I'm with Chris. A Retra diffuser cunningly fitted to the Backscatter strobe. Fiendish.

Do extended fast bursts of high power flashes underwater cause migraines or trigger epilepsy episodes for marine creatures? Just askin' for a friend.

This thread has perfect timing. Was driving to work just thinking of starting something around Sony A7 and A6xxx cameras and strobes, and here this was :) A friend who's been shooting for >20 years )Nikon FF and TG-7) just convinced me to get the YS-D3, he says it's a great little package, and more than good enough for WA (what I want to do). As @Lewis88 points out, they can be found at a great price. Not sure how much they would add up to (import duties + shipping) to France, but they can also be ordered locally from Photo Denfert for 650 euros a piece. I'm kind of divided on this one. I recently got a A6400, a Tokina 10-17mm + Canon adapter, but haven't made the plunge yet for the housing, as I'm strongly considering the A7C II instead. I could still use the Tokina, and a housing of similar size. The motivation is less UW photography, but mostly for topside shooting with other lenses, where I believe FF will make more of a difference. The problem with the A7C II (vs the A6400) becomes the triggering of the strobes: I can only find TTL hot shoe triggers in the ball park of 500 euros, and this seems crazy to me... With the A6400 (which is considerably cheaper) there is a built-in flash, but the A7C II needs a trigger, and I find exaggerated the cost of something like this. Are there any alternatives ? I would use two YS-D3 strobes with the A7C II, but I can't really wrap my mind around spending an amount similar to a strobe just for a pair hot-shoe LEDs ... I know this is niche, and things are not mass produced, but still ... seems ridiculous - but maybe I'm missing something, and we're talking about crazy complicated tech ?

They are basically only used for stills to keep shutter speed within range of flash sync speed if you shoot macro lenses fairly wide open for shallow depth of field. something like a 4 stop filter would allow you to shoot a lens at f2.8 where you ordinarily use f11 and be happy with the Background brightness. For much of Lembeh unless you are in shallows and also wanting to shoot wide open ambient light is not that strong.

Looks like you've swapped a HF-1 filter diffuser with Retra diffuser and put them on different strobes.

The bumpers are cool. Diffusers are different colors. There’s a crease in the background. Strobes have their asses cut off.

I don’t think they’re terribly useful for most still photos, but they’re absolutely necessary in bright conditions for video. I’m sure there are creative ways to use them underwater, but my brain is limited at the moment. I would think HSS is another way to get the effect you’re after. There are variable ND filters, which can cut from 2-5 stops, for example. Better still would be a camera with built-in NDs.

I saw the same episode and will be going to Lembeh in a couple of months. I will be using a 4/3 60 mm. Looking on line I see them listed in # stops. Any advice on which one to purchase?

The Marelux strobes worked just fine and dandy with my Sony A6400 Nauticam both using the pop up flash as trigger and a (LED) UWT trigger. And in both configurations the TTL worked well as did manual. They are a very solid and strong shooting strobe with high build quality being all metal, also perhaps a little on the heavier side though nothing unusual for the power output. The Backscatter strobes will not work for TTL because they have no slave TTL without buying their special Backscatter trigger and even then I am doubtful. Manual modes should work but there is no slave TTL mode. Otherwise, aside, they look like a good strobe. The YS strobes should work in both TTL (slave mode) and manual modes.

As far as I can tell my Olympus flash unit in combination with the OM-1 does auto super FP, I normally have that turned on in flash menu and the flash knows what speed is set on the camera. it seems that this might be incorporated into either the flash or the trigger? When I get back home I'll see if I can test this out.

Great framing, focus (even on moving macro critters!) and exposure. Good stuff! Ajay

Both can focus very close in air on both FF and ASPC. I haven't tried the 15mm underwater on FF, focus was kind of soft on ASP-C. I'll try it on FF tomorrow.

As you are in Australia you'll know prices can be high. If you are sticking with wide angle work you could consider the INON S220, a surprisingly capable little strobe with good coverage and quite even light. They are quite reliable. If you want more power there's been quite a few released recently. I've seen good reports on the new circular tube AOI strobe on the forum recently. Like you I shoot in sometimes murky temperate waters (I'm in Sydney) and I recently upgraded to Retra strobes, I got the pure model before it was discontinued. What I found was the combination of that strobe with the reduction rings was night and day to my old Z-240s in terms of backscatter reduction. All using the same strobe positions. Not in every shot, but I had way less particles being lit up. I'd suggest getting strobe that allow you to add reduction rings. Regarding full frame I am convinced it's not needed UW if you are not doing it professionally . Sure if you can afford it and can handle slepping the bigger rigs around go for it, but it's really not needed IMO. I shoot m43 and I remain happy with that - lenses, ports housings are all smaller and lighter and as you don't need to stop down so much (f8 is fine) lower powered strobes will do the job.

In fact, years ago I used to always upload an image in two different color spaces to forums so that owners of wide gamut displays could also enjoy it.😁

Yes that is correct. The advantage of the 2x is you can you all the way from 8-15 with more reach and with the Sony 2x image quality is reported to be as good by several people.

Agree, you can see what happens when you convert to sRGB, The water colour goes off completely. I used to convert to sRGB for web display, but these days I leave it in Adobe RGB.

In my opinion, it is not only useful, but even necessary to use Adobe RGB gamut for blue water. sRGB cuts off most of the important cyan.

All I'm trying to say is two people have done reviews and found the HF-1/maxi performing a little better in the high FPS performance and you have tested and found your Apollo III better. There is the possibility based on this that your samples of HF-1 or their batteries aren't up to speed, just like you suggested that the Apollo III strobe samples one of the testers has were not up to scratch. To be fair high FPS is not important to everyone I used to use high FPS on land a little and ended up getting sick of examining hundreds of near identical images to pick the image I thought best. But each to their own if you see an advantage to this in your shooting, more power to you. If it's important to you, make your choice of brands that can perform like this using testing like we have seen on this post to guide you.

appears it is a standard gamut monitor covering sRGB only. I find the extended blues and greens in Adobe RGB particularly useful for UW work. The Eizo panels cover all of Adobe RGB colour space.

Both lenses? I know at least the Nikonos lenses don't reach focus in air. I would assume the S&S lens would be similar.

I would suggest examining the port chart to see what you can re-use or minimise buying new ports. If you have or want to use a macro lens in future consider if you can use the same port with an extension tube. I believe the collapsing pancake lenses, at least some models aren't that reliable. For example the Panasonic 14-42 (not the- PZ) takes the 35 port, you can add a 30mm extension to use the 60mm macro. There will be other combinations.

Very interested to hear how you find the ergonomics, and the precision of the camera/housing interface. Thanks for being the brave early adopter. Oh yes, and the Video was nowhere near as challenging as you made it out to be!! :)