bvanant

A few months ago in November, Scubalamp showed a new "small strobe". I like small strobes and wanted one, but they have never appeared on the Scubalamp website. However there is a Fotocore GTM (the same ones in the Scubalamp posts that are available. I bought two of them, and last Saturday, I got to try them out here in Los Angeles. The strobe is a bit larger than the AOI RC strobes, and a bit smaller than the YS D3 Duo. The strobe is machined aluminum and appears to be very solidly built if a bit heavy (815 g without the 2 x 18650 batteries). The strobe has 7 power levels that are shown on a nice little LED screen on the back. The key advantage to the GTM is that it has beautiful light since it uses a circular flashtube. One peculiarity of the strobe is that it uses only flattop 18650 batteries that are both hard to find and expensive. I have boxes of 18650 button tops, but no joy in these strobes. To test them out, we went out diving to our local favorite spot off of Palos Verdes not far from LAX. I was shooting an OM-1 camera in an AOI housing with the 2 GTM strobes an a Leica/Panasonic 45 mm macro lens. The AOI has a built in LED trigger that never missed a shot with the strobes, I was using home-made fiber cables using the 613 core fibers. The Balonophyllia is a solitary stony cup coral, its main claim to fame is that in the colder months (it is always cold at PV, typically 50F, 10C) it can in fact sequester dissolved organic carbon from the seawater directly. Hopefully it can teach its warm water cousins the same trick. If California had a state nudibranchs it would likely be the Spanish Shawl These guy are everywhere and are quite beautiful. Interestingly the orange/blue/red and purple colors are all from the same molecule but with different arrangements of some elements. Black eye gobies are always curious, coming by to see what you are doing and smiling at you Two similar nudies are Porters and MacFarland; you tell them apart by the number of stripes. Porters has 2 syllables and 2 stripes, MacFarland has three of each. And finally there are clowns. Overall, I am very pleased with the performance of the GTM strobes. I didn't have a chance to see how they would be for wide angle (mostly the visibility was 2 meters or so) but at least in the studio they seem as powerful as the YSD3. If you are looking for strobes for macro shooting with some occasional wide angle take a look at these. Bill

I have long fascinated with shooting ring lights underwater starting with the Inon Quadflash, through the various Athena modifications to Sea and Sea strobe heads, continuing to the Saga fiber optic rings and now to the Weefine 3000. The Weefine 3000 is the latest version of the LED lights made by Kraken and Weefine. The Weefine 3000 CCW Weefine 3000 CCW Ring Light It's similar to the earlier 3000 lumen LED modules but has adjustable color temperature and a 3000-lumen burst (strobe) mode. It also has a super closeup mode that can shoot subjects as close as 25 mm (1 inch) from the strobe. It is powered by a protected, 26650, 5000 mAh Li battery. The battery can be charged via a built-in USB-C port. One very neat thing about the light is that it allows for a very small, compact system underwater. No arms necessary, just the camera/housing/port and a single fiber optic cable. The light is shown below on an AOI housing for the OM-1 camera. AOI housing for the OM-1 camera with the Weefine 3000 CCW Ring Light The ring light can attach to any port with a 67 mm thread and can be rotated for any angle once attached. One nice feature (or bug) is that when you are using the light in the strobe mode, it remains on at low power to act as a focus light. During the day it was not terribly necessary but worked fine at night, although you will also need some kind of dive light to find your way. My wife said it was very easy to find me in or small group, just look for the circular dive light. How well did it work? Better than I had anticipated. Years ago, I had the Kraken version of this light, and it was fine; this version with improved ergonomics (no multiple button pushes) worked great. Here is a nice little clown (Triopha catalinae) from a dive in local Southern California waters before the Raja/Triton Bay trip on the Wellenreng. This was shot at 1/160 sec, f/7.1, ISO 200 using the Olympus 30 macro lens on an OM-1 in an AOI housing. Certainly, enough light to illuminate the subject, I slightly reduced the shot exposure by 0.1 to increase the contrast a bit. For other local subjects, such as this anemone it also worked well. This one was shot at f/5.6, 1/160 sec and ISO 200. I shot with the light quite a bit on our trip to Raja/Triton Bay. Here is a nice little Goniobranchus coi, shot with the Panasonic 45 lens, f/6.3, 1/160 sec, ISO 400. I was very close; you can see the out of focus gills. I love Christmas tree worms, here is one from Triton Bay. Same lens, 1/250, f/7.1. Here is a crinoid shrimp, same settings. I shot a lot of tiny things, but also a bunch of anemone fish. Here is a Clarke in an orange anemone. f/14, 1/250, ISO 400. Overall, the light worked well for the things I was shooting, it of course is completely useless for anything more than 250 mm (10 inches) away. The color temperature is fine but shooting in raw lets me adjust as needed. A friend used the light as a video light for a TG7 with a 52 mm to 67 mm adapter and said that for most nudibranchs the light was much easier to use than independent lights on arms. I wish it had more power, a 6000-lumen burst mode for this type of light would be awesome, but the current version is adequate for micro 4/3 shooters and awesome for the smaller sensor cameras like the TG series.