ChrisH

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I have found my perfect solution for me in two ThinkTank items: a Airport Advantage XT roller and a Retrospective bag. I use them as Carry on Luggage and my personal item. For my trip to Anilao (macro) I have the following items: in the roller bag fits my Nikon Z8, Seacam Housing, Seacam Fisheye Macro port, two Seacam 150d strobes, my Nikon 8-18 Fisheye with FTZ Adapter and Zoom Gear, the 105mm Z Macro lens, the 60mm Macro lens, the 1.4 Teleconverter, Weefine +13 diopter, Seacam 45 viewfinder, 4x power pack for the strobes, some batteries, cables, adapters and my Laptop. the Retrospective holds the Seacam Macro Port, my Trioplan copy, Tablet, headphones, 2xdive computers, and some personal stuff but has plenty of space left. The rest of the equipment is in the check-in luggage (strobe arms, extension rings). But even if my check-in luggage would not arrive, I could start shooting with the gear that is in my carry-on. Now lets hope they will not check the weight 😬 (16-17 kg) at check in. But usually if they do, I just show them whats inside and how fragile and expensive it is and had never had a problem.

The amount of TC1.4 sold for use underwater is probably very low compared to the TCs sold to use on tele lenses above water. So none of the TCs was designed for Fisheye-Zoom lenses but the Kenko was the only one I know (until the Sony now) that worked with this Fisheye Zoom lenses at all. Actually, I would love to have a housing manufacturer design such a TC for underwater use, optically designed for those Fisheye-Zoom lenses, instead of the long tele lenses. But I might be dreaming here 😉

Thank you! Happy you like it! 😊👍

Thank you! 😊 Lets make it a little bit more interesting: for the „bubbles“ you will need something that you have in your kitchen and a blue light 😬

Thank you! Happy you like the pictures! 😊

Wow, that would be great! But I use Seacam...

Thank you! 😊

Unfortunatly I never did any comparison shots between my Retras and the Seacams. Also, I have the older 150D Seacams not the newer 160D. I would guess (!) that the Seacams are a bit more powerful. For my shooting style, I had the Retras often on 1/2 power, with the Seacams I tend to use more 1/4 power setting. But I don‘t use diffusors with the Seacams, the Retras were used with the warmer wide angle diffusors. So the diffusors cut a bit of light. On the other hand I have to pull the Seacams a bit more back than the Retras, also reducing the amount of light that gets to the subject… I remember the first shots with the Seacams in my usual position with the Retras and I had a lot (!) of backscatter and flare in the corners, so I think they spread the light wider. My impression (!) would be that the Retras with the warmer diffusors come close to the Seacams without diffusors, with the Secams still have a bit more power and a wider beam. But it is not night and day, they are roughly in the same ball park. That‘s impressive regarding the price and smaller footprint of the Retras compared to the Seacams. Also I loved their various accessories and bajonet for attaching them. That is what I really miss on my Seacams, but I think the newer 160ds also got a bajonet. Regarding reliability, I had never issues with the Retras, nor the Seacams. Both worked absolutly fine and gave me „peace of mind“ for all the trips I used them. The Seacams sometimes fire without me taking a shot, but its rare and they fire everytime I take a shot so that is not a big deal for me. It might be the new Z8 has a little different flash protokoll, causing them to fire. But as I said, I never missed a shot with them and that is what it is all about for me. Overall I was very happy with the Retras and would still be shooting them, if I had not switched my entire equipment to Seacam and had gotten their strobes for testing. The price difference is still significant (got my Seacams luckily second hand), but I found the Seacams suiting my needs or taste regarding the light output a bit better. Also most of my regular buddies use them, so there is a better chance of getting maybe a replacement battery or o-ring if mine broke or I forgot it. And last but not least I wanted to get rid of the LED trigger and get back to „old school“ sync chord shooting. I noticed the converter that Retra sells and considered it, but it has its own battery and I had the fear of changing one possible point of failure to another one, rather than get rid of it.

Thank you! ☺️ Thanks! The first shot of the frogfish was taken with the TTArtisan copy of the Trioplan 100mm lens for that „bubble bokeh“, a fully manual lens which is very frustrating to use underwater as you have to pre set aperature and focus before the dive. But it does give you this unique effect that cannot be recreated with other lenses.

A few more shots from my first trip to Bangka and Lembeh, including my first Mandarin diver ever 😬 Equipment used: Nikon Z8, Seacam Housing, Seacam strobes, Retra snoot

Yes that might be true. Also, LED triggers are still a relatively new product to underwater photography standards and maybe existing issues will be or have already been fixed in recent generations. My point regarding the strobes is: having options and a possible back up is a nice feature for some and a key feature for others. With prices going up, the Retras might have to stand against strobes that do have those features and be of interest for people that need or demand those things at that price range.

It was a UWTechnics Trigger 😬🫣 (for my Isotta Housing). I have to say it worked mostly without problems, but sometimes it would stop working during the dive just to start working after the dive again. Sometimes new batteries were suddenly dead in two days, so I had to constantly check. I hab two trips during which I changed to the pop up flash of the D810, just to be „safe“ because I got the impression I could not trust the LED trigger enough. But it seem to me that LED triggers in general (all brands) are the weakest point at the moment of all underwater camera systems when it comes to reliability. Having a back up solution should be considered, especially for once-in-a-lifetime-trips…

Yes, exactly! The better the strobe the more the diffusor is an option rather than a necessity! If the strobe has really good quality of light, you might find yourself using the diffusors only for special applications like CFWA and leaving them on land most of the time. Actually I don't even own diffusors for my Seacams and used them on the Retras only to get warmer color temperature. In your test shots, I think you can clearly see the Ikelite just lighting up the whole scene overall quite nice and even and other strobes having a much harder "fall off" towards the edges (floor, plant and the picture on the wall). Based on this test shots, the Ikelite would be my preferred one. EDIT: sorry for OT!

Yes, that is true. However, with better quality of light you will find it much easier to produce good results right away. And having the benefit of being able to further improve the image in post processing rather than having to "fix" it also really makes a difference in my opinion. As stated before in different topics, my main goal would always be to get the strobe with the best quality of light (wide even beam, warm color temperature). At least for my shooting style. Technical data doesn't give the real picture of the performance of a strobe. So I really appreciate that you are testing the strobes! Regarding the Retras: I had the first version with the round flash tube (the first Retra Pro model I think) and was really pleased with the quality of light I would get from the strobes. They were eating batteries, but back then there was no real competiton in their price range (regarding the quality of light). With the latest prices they will get more into the high end territory, like the Seacams. I found the Seacams a bit better (for me), but they are still more expensive than the Retras. However one thing I noticed: the Retras only offer optical triggering. You can buy an adaptor to use sync cables. But without that additional piece (with its own batteries in it!), you can only trigger them via optical cables. Maybe it is just me, but I found the LED triggers to be the most unreliable part of recent equipment for underwater use. And I hear from a lot of people having problems with the LED triggers and also there are often reports about problems in forums. I had several times failure of my LED trigger, leading to dives with not pictures. Fortunately my old Nikon D810 had the backup built in: a pop up flash. But none of the newer camera bodies has that "backup feature" anymore. Yet it seems that optical triggering is becoming the new standard... so it might just be that there is not enough demand for using sync chords anymore and Retra has decided to cut on this and just went for the optical route. But then again, with increased prices, they get in other territories, with Seacam D160 and OneUW 160 offering sync chord as well as optical triggering, giving you both options and a backup if needed. I just use sync cables now and haven't had any issues since then.