TimG

Hi Kees! Welcome to Waterpixels! Great to have you with us. Diving in Dutch waters eh? Dapper, Kees, dapper. 😱🥶

A terrifying thought! No way, José. I reckon max 100 shots per dive with the aim of having maybe 5-6 true keepers

Yeah, I’m with Chris: a massive drop in capability. They are good for those “record” pics but no lighting, probably no manual control or ability to make significant change over speed, aperture, ISO etc. And, yes, significant weight loss and packability! I wouldn’t sell the big set till you’ve tried the phone setup over several dives…..

Yeah, my guess was trapping bubbles. Perhaps in an old port or even in an inverted glass. That might be easier than using a sheet of glass.

Totally agree, Alex. From my own experience of Retra over the last few years, really well engineered and designed products with excellent customer support.

A good point, well made, Dave

Good call, I reckon, Mark. You may well find those two lenses are all you need. Do let us know how you get on.

Hi Cashmorephoto - what an intriguing username! Great to have you with us. A warm welcome to Waterpixels!

Hi James! A warm welcome. I’m sure you’ll see lots of familiar names here from Wetpixel. Good to have you with us.

Hey gozturkeri! Welcome to Waterpixels. Great to have you with us. We hope you enjoy the forum.

🤣 Teaching aid. He runs a busy dive operation with lots of student divers.

Here’s that image of how a friend of mine stabilises a GoPro…… dead simple, very effective! The chunky carabiner provides additional weight to keep the slate on the deck. But the slate itself is sufficiently weighty.

Nauticam recommended the WWL-C and 24-50 kit lens for me to use with a Z6iii. I have no experience of the combination and my natural inclination was to go with the Nikkor 8-15.

Good to have you with us, Wags. Yeah, a lot of old geezers on this forum. But we stagger along eh……

Retra have just posted info about this new strobe on the Articles page.

Yep, sadly if you want to use any system mid-water, almost neutrally buoyant is nice. But if you want a system that sits on the bottom then you have to add weight. Id suggest putting some sort of ring underneath the system that you can clip a weight on to it. Carry the weight clipped on to your BCD when you don’t need it in the tripod. Other ways I’ve seen it done is to detach the GoPro from your float system and use a GoPro clamp on a bit of dead coral or old wreck. A mate of mine has attached a GoPro fitting to one of those magic writing slates to which he added a small weight. The slate provides a brilliant platform which sits perfectly on the bottom. I’ll try and get a pic for you. It’s a terrific, easy and cheap way of stabilising a GoPro on the bottom.

You may well find to create a stable platform that you need to add a weight. Not unusual for a GoPro setup.

Never a truer word……

No worries, Friso. Glad you have a solution. Your system should work no problem on the 7 setting and you then choose TTL or Manual strobes on the Retra control. One thought though: on the camera flash sync speed in the Menu settings, what does it show? Is it on a speed or the FP setting? That might be the issue. But it’s good you’re back in business. Happy shooting!

Yep, you can use less air without a camera! With practice though you can you use less! Just reviewing the images you posted, on the shot of the I menu screen. Select the flash symbol and turn the command dial. Does that change that lightening symbol to something else? Red eye reduction? Flash off? Rear curtain sync? Just rotate it to see. You do need, I think, the simple lightening symbol that you see on the image. But just check. One other thing to check: I’m assuming you’re using a shutter speed that will sync with the strobes? No faster than 1/250. The key though is to see if the trigger fires the LEDs when you fire the shutter.

Hi Friso Good that you’ve eliminated the problem as not being the strobes or the cables. I don’t have a Z8 so I’m not entirely familiar with the controls. However with a D500 when you connect the flash sync on to the camera, a small lightening symbol appears on the LCD screen which shows it is connected and will fire a flash. Can you see something like that? You've changed the batteries on the UWT trigger. Ok. When the camera is connected to the trigger, fire the shutter, can you see the trigger LEDs flash? That is the key indicator of whether or not the trigger is working, the sync connection is right and the camera set correctly. If there is no flash then one of those three things isn’t working as you need. You’ve reset the hot shoe connector. Are there any signs of dirt or salt etc on the pins under the hot shoe connector? Just give them a good wipe clean and same in the camera. I’ve found the UWT triggers very reliable so if you’ve changed the batteries, I’d suspect a camera setting. Do you have a standard flash gun nearby you could use? If so, stick that on the camera and see if it fires. If it does it’s not a camera setting. If it fails to fire then it looks even more like a camera setting. Can you Google the camera manual and just check how to turn flash on and off in a Z8 menu system? (I’ve not got very good internet access at the moment).

Have you by any chance turned the flash setting off on the camera? When the flash hot shoe is on the camera, can you see the lightening symbol showing in the viewfinder or on the Z8 info screen. If it shows you know you have a good flash connection to the camera. Is the UWT board on the right setting for the Retras? (That small dial on the UWT board)? It shouldn’t be too difficult to isolate the problem. It’s either a faulty hot shoe connection, a trigger board issue or the cables. Sounds like you’ve eliminated the cables.