Everything posted by TimG
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Fabulous job! Thanks for posting. I didn't realise there was any difference in the size of the two camera bodies. -
Good to know you have the familiar bank account depletion syndrome, Gary. Welcome! Great to have you with us!
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Really great to have you with us, Phil
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Thanks, svilen. Delighted to have you with us here.
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Hey John Yeah, I know that aging thing. I wear +1 or +1.5 glasses now for reading. I was finding problems reading the various labels on my housing and the top LCD. A visit to an optician told me that for that sort of distance I needed +2 which I then had fixed to the bottom half of a new mask. Works well although took some getting used to. Like I say, half lenses in effect. I do wonder if you go with a full lens at +2 and you have good long distance vision (as I do), you may well start to feel nauseated over the length of a dive by the blurry long-distance vision. I think I'd be wary.
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Hi Fritz I got it directly from Miso. He is hard to reach for sure of late. I had an email from him today as I wanted him to know about Waterpixels. So maybe try again? If you get no-where, give me a shout - you could have my V6. I'm now back from three years in the Caribbean and, very sadly, not sure how much diving I'm going to be doing. I've not even fitted the V6 into my housing yet.
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Hey Mark Welcome aboard. Great to have you with us.
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Great to have you with us!
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Great to have you with us, Alex. We look forward too lots of insightful comments from you. I'm tempted to say 60k images in a year is greedy - but that would be just jealousy.
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Great to have you with us John Draq. Welcome aboard!
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I'm with you, Stig. There was a time when I'd dive in a bucket of mud (hello Crystal Waters, Essex) but, now.... if it ain't 28 in the water, I'm not there.... Welcome to the community. Stig! Great to have you with us.
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I'm with JohnD to an extent on the "Boosters". Got to say though, if I was using a snoot (I've got the LSD) on the Plus-Xs, I really felt the need to use a Supercharger. I usually found I had to crank up the power with snoot shots especially on the smaller masks and that chomped through the battery. As John says, for the Boosters cost - and how little room they take up (bonus!) it's worth it and better to have them than not. I find the focus light very good for macro and usually use one with the LSD and the macro rings. If you're in low viz water I find them good too with a reflector. Actually using a reflector and lowering the power in poor viz was a revelation. So much less backscatter.
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And some things from the Baltics - also excellent quality
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Great to have you with us, Ben. I really enjoyed your piece on Japan and look forward to hearing more about your adventures in East Bali - lucky you!
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Hi I'm Tim, a Brit who lives in Amsterdam. I've been an underwater photographer for a little over 20 years and one of the moderators on Wetpixel for many years. I'm delighted to be involved in this new forum and hope people joining find it a great place for advice, help, share information - and connect with fellow travellers.
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Great to have you with us! Welcome!!
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Really like the idea of the Tutorials and it's something we've been discussing with potential industry partners. A number of them already have very good How To sections on their websites (Backscatter for example). So we are seeing whether we can link too then - as well as producing our own How Tos. So please watch this space!
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Fascinating, thanks! I ran a dive resort some years ago and had a good number of Japanese guests. This helps explain some of the aspects of managing their visits which I found unusual especially relating to the esteem (veneration, almost) in which they held their group leader.
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There's now a further Adobe Lightroom Classic update available to 13.0.2. This is described as bug fixes. I've just loaded it onto my Mac Studio and it seems fine. Phew......
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I installed my first Leak Sentinel vacuum valve, a V3, in my Subal ND800 housing in 2014. Over 700 dives, changes of camera housing and upgrades to the Sentinel system, I’ve moved through V4, V5 and now the newly available V6. As the slogan goes, I’d never leave home without it. Why? The Sentinel provides a unique extra level of security and reassurance to an underwater camera and has saved me from my own stupidity a couple of times…… So what is it? The Leak Sentinel is a small valve which screws into a spare bulkhead on an underwater camera housing to monitor for leaks even before the housing goes into water. A small hand-pump of the type used in the Vacuvin wine bottle corks then draws the air through the valve and out of the housing. (A small battery-operated pump is also available). This creates a vacuum indicated on the Sentinel by a green, “Good to Go”, blinking LED light. If the housing has not sealed properly because of a fault or, more likely user-error, the valve warning light will flash green/red or red indicating a problem. Vacuum valves are great devices particularly to help avoid user-errors and, more importantly, warn of an issue before the housing gets wet. It is this feature which makes them even more valuable than a housing leak detector which only works when water is already in the housing. Given the cost of the housing and its contents, installing one of these handy leak warning devices is money extremely well spent. I would argue it is one of the two best investments I’ve made in my system. (the other being a 45-degree viewfinder!) The Leak Sentinel system is simple to install. The valve is screwed into an empty bulkhead on the housing so that the blinking warning light is visible when diving. In earlier models (V1 to V4) the battery was part of the Sentinel’s valve assembly. In the V5 “XB” model the battery was fitted on a printed circuit board fitted inside the housing with a wire connection to the valve. This avoided the need to disassemble the valve to change battery. The V6 has just been released. Like the V5, the battery fits inside the housing. However, the cable is now fitted permanently to the battery circuit board and a connector has been added (see photo) linking the battery to the valve assembly. This is a big improvement as removing the V5 required disconnecting the wires at the printed circuit board – which could be problematic. In addition, gone is the square of Velcro which was supplied to hold the printed circuit board to the top of the housing. Now there’s a magnet! This should make battery changes even easier. Like the V4 and V5, once a vacuum is established and the LED stays green for a reasonable length of time (I usually wait an hour), the Sentinel can be switched off by pressing the LED and left until dive time. This saves battery life. Switch it back on pre-dive and the green, Good-To-Go LED should reappear and blink steadily. The Sentinel electronics allow for an element of temperature variation. It will cope for example if the camera is setup in the housing in an air-conditioned room – and then moved into a higher ambient temperature before diving. The system uses an easily available and inexpensive CR2032 battery. Battery life is certainly into the dozens of dives and many hours. On the very rare occasion when I’ve had a question, the Leak Sentinel’s producer, Miso Milivojevic of Vividhousings, has being unfailingly helpful at finding a solution in response to my emails. So, easy to install, easy to maintain and relatively inexpensive…. is it worth installing one on your system? No question. Who doesn’t want to reduce the risks of a flood and enjoy the additional reassurance a vacuum valve provides. Never leave home without one. -
A new version of the Vivid Leak Sentinel, V6, is now available. I bought a very early production one and have written a review of it in a recent issue of UWP magazine. See the link http://www.uwpmag.com/ Sadly not now living in the Caribbean, I’ve not yet been able to install or field test it. I have been able to give it as good a bench test as possible under the circs. My own battery testing showed the now USB-C rechargeable battery to last roughly 72 hours with the valve switched on. If you setup the night before, it is possible to switch off the LED which I understand will save battery power whilst the system continues to run in the background. My 5XB had two wires that fed from the sensor to the PCB. Although this was fairly easy to install, it was the devil’s own work if you needed to remove it and then reinstall The V6 now has a connector in the cable run which makes this much easier. I’ve always thought these leak sensors a No-brainer to add to a system. An additional security check for expensive gear and added peace of mind
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I have a spare Leak Sentinel V5 XB for sale. It comes complete with an electric pump, spare o-rings and instructions. The Leak Sentinel is a vacuum alarm which, in my view, is a no-brainer and one of the most useful things to have on your system. A leak alarm tells you when there is water in your housing; a vacuum alarm alerts to you to a leak even before you get in the water. Easy to install and use, the included housing adaptor will fit an M14 bulkhead. Alarm uses a CR2032 battery and the pump a PP3. For sale €200 or £190 including shipping in the EU or UK.
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I'm selling my Inon tripod system. This comprises: the Inon Tripod Hub; 3x Inon SS-T legs and a ULCS AD1420 ball mount. The tripod can drop as low as approx 26cms or as high as approx 43cms with both adjustable leg setting and height-adjustable centre column. The SST legs have both rubber and spiked feet. The whole system is in excellent shape, highly portable and highly stable. I used it as a tripod for a strobe with snoot. Price is €250 or £225 which includes shipping in the EU or UK.
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Thing is, Rich, you know you are going to weaken. So why go through these agonies? Have done with it. Splash the Cash. You'll sleep better....
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Retra Pro Max I’ve just taken delivery of a pair of Retra Pro Max strobes. Although I’ve not had them in the water yet, I thought a few initial comments might be of interest to anyone thinking of upgrading from the earlier Retra models or buying the new ones. As you may well have seen from images, they look pretty much the same as the Pro/Prime and Pro-X/Prime-X models. It’s the same very sleek design in aluminium. If the former Apple designer, Jony Ive, built a strobe, it would probably look like this. Specific things I’ve spotted so far: The click-stops on the mode and power selector feel a little clicker and more precise. They also now have tiny pointers. The ball mount design has changed with a bolt that now runs completely through the mount. The mount is held in place initially by a locator peg and then screwed in using an Allen key to tighten the bolt.The thread is not visible when the mount is detached from the strobe. This is helpful, I thought, when storing or travelling with the strobes. The 8x AA battery fitting has been re-designed and is now called a “Booster”. This is significantly more compact than the old strobe/"Supercharger" arrangement. In addition, and very usefully, the number of O-rings has been reduced from 4 to 2 when using 8x AAs. Less maintenance, only one size O-ring and less O-ring faff. The system now has just two O-rings on the strobe body rather than two at each end of the Supercharger - or two at the end of the battery cover if using just 4x AAs. There are no O-rings on the Booster or the battery cover. As before, Retra supply an extra pair of O-rings as part of the strobe package along with a tube of silicon grease. I found my two strobes have the slightest flicker on the pilot light when set on M. This does not appear on TTL or HSS. Retra tell me this is not a problem. Retra have advised though of a critical issue when using the pilot light with the Booster. This needs to be corrected with a firmware update and Retra have sent details of this to users. (I’ve found Retra’s service support consistently excellent). The new strobe design does not now have quite the same perfectly circular body. It bulges very slightly near the battery cover. I discovered (annoyingly) that the rear bumper from the older strobes will not fit on the new series. If you are ordering bumpers the Retra Shop website now offers two options - one for the new strobes and one for the original style for the older models. So choose carefully! I missed this completely. The Max version has a small OLED panel between the dials providing various useful bits of information. It now has a Charge indicator (CHG) when you switch the Max on initially. Once charged it shows, amongst other possibilities the Mode and Power setting. Very useful for night dives. So, now to get them in the water - although that might be in the bath for now! I’ll admit to being a big fan of the Retra range which I have been using since 2020. But I pay for my own strobes from my hard-earned cash. Well… hard-earned pension….
