Dave_Hicks

The light is on a YS mount attached to a ball one the top of the Nauticam housing. The ys mount makes it easy to flip the light up for snooting or shooting a portrait of someone without blinding them.

That Kraken 1800 is very similar to my OrcaTorch. The 21700 batteries are the way to go.

Try a night dive! But seriously, in clear bright water you may not need a light for focusing. The camera may be able to achieve focus much if the time. But go under an overhang, swim-through, cloudy sky, or even setting sun in the shadow of a wall and it might be a problem. For me, i actually want to see the true colors of everything and a bright wide beam focus light is both my focus light and primary dive light. I bring it always even to the brightest destinations. You will always find a situation where it helps you get more from a dive. I am using the Orcatorch d710v mk2 these days. Small, simple, bright, with good battery life.

A fair summary. The Maxi and HF-1 are competitive with each other in relative brightness. All the shots are in air. See the electrical outlet on the left. 😀 I do have a pool but it is about 8c in there at the moment. Not gonna do it!

The 4500k filters loose .5 fstop vs unfiltered. It's a significant difference. I don't expect that to change in the boost levels.

Likely there is dimenishing returns or efficiency at the high end. The histograms at the top levels do show more light but it is a very minor difference stepping from boost to full on both strobes. Setting such a small apeture and ISO might flatten the gradient some what and a light meter could show a different spread. None of these strobes did any throttling as I took only two or three frames at the high power levels. And i don't think i have ever shot a wide angle strobe at full power on a proper dive. My poor snoot strobes like the MF-2 and Atom get a much tougher work out.

https://makerworld.com/models/2322173?appSharePlatform=copy

I updated the Power Level comparison, trying to find a better and cleaner way to visualize the range and alignment of power levels across the three strobes being compared. Feedback is welcome! (PREVIEW) Power Level Test Suite For this comparison each strobe was set to Full power, Half power, Quarter power, Eighth power. The images were taken with a Nikon Z8, 8-15mm lens at 15mm, 140mm dome, at a range of 65cm from the wall. No filters or diffusers were used. The color temperature of all three strobes is similar at 6200k (Maxi), 6500k (HF-1), and 6400k (Atom). Aperture and ISO were f25 & iso50. As I have compiled the comparison images of brightness and coverage, it became clear that the “Labeled” power levels between the Maxi and HF-1 really don’t map to a common scale. After a variety of methods to visualize the data, I decided to rank the power levels from each strobe by their relative brightness. I used the brightness information from the Photoshop Histogram Information display to capture a common and comparable value. I am sure a professional light meters or similar instrument would be better, but I used what was available. The comparison images align well with the measurements, so I am happy enough with this methodology. The HF-1 has a power level scale from +2, +1, Full, , Half, Quarter, , Eighth, Sixteenth, *. The +2 and +1 levels are documented as Boost modes, but they are fully accessible on the dial. The Maxi has power level scale from +4, , +3, , +2, , +1, , 0, and down to -4. There is a hidden Boost mode accessed by pressing the Center button while at +4. It’s active for just 5 shoots. I suspect this Boost mode will rarely get used due to poor discoverability. (Does anyone ever read the manual?) The Atom keeps it simple with clearly demarked power levels from Full down to 1/32. Additional even lower power levels of 1/64 to 1/1024 are available under a Low Power Mode accessible via the Mode button. Findings: The Retra Maxi is a little brighter at Max Boost mode compared to the HF-1 by a tiny 1% difference. The HF-1 +2 mode maps almost directly to the Maxi +4 level. Backscatter advertises that the Atom at Full is equivalent to the HF-1 at Full. It is close but the HF-1 at Full is 13.75% brighter than the Atom. Summary Notes:The Maxi at +4 is nearly identical in brightness to the HF-1 at +2. The Maxi Boost mode does not move the needle very much further, but it is about 1% brighter than the best the HF-1 can deliver. The fall-off of light is similar across all three strobes at around 1 f-stop 50 degrees from center. The Maxi has the greatest fall off at 1.22 f-stop reduction from center. The HF-1 @ 11 has the least at 0.92 f-stop reduction. The HF-1 and Atom are remarkably similar, as advertised. The HF-1 is 13.75% or 0.07 f-stops brighter than the Atom at full power.

The only part i designed was the MF-2 body form. In fusion360. I auto generated the tray, then positioned the MF-2 as a negative modifier to the tray in the slicer. Added some text and color accents in the slicer. Here is the MF-2 negative model. BS MF-2 Strobe Negative.stl

20 minutes to design. 3.5 hours to print it out! Will share it out after it's validated. I needed one of these anyways, will also be making cutouts for the HF-1 and Atom too, if they will fit in my drawer. The lens cutouts were a start on cleaning out a chaotic cabinet full of gear and getting things into the drawers currently full of random plumbing and electrical parts.

I will update with the boost modes soon. I found all three of these strobes wanting in the cold-water ergonomics department. The HF-1 power level knob is horrible. Round, hard to turn with gloves, and impossible to tell what setting it is at by feel. The Maxi knobs are much better in that they are easy to turn with gloves and feel what position it is in. But unfortunately the two knobs are identically shaped and you can't tell by feel if you have the Mode switch or Power Level knob. The Atom has a decent power level knob, but it also has two buttons to control mode and the spotting light. Of course these are impossible to distinguish wearing gloves and it is hard to press the button to change the spotting light without screwing up the aim and position of the strobe. I came up with fixes for the HF-1 and Maxi but have not figured out the Atom yet.

I can make an MF-2 tray pretty quickly. I played with tooltrace and similar but they only created flat outlines and a sculpted round one is better for this application of lenses and strobes. These are easy as you just make a stack of appropriately sized cylinders to model the object. Then you save that model. Make a gridfinity tray of the needed size using a parametric modeler, fully filled to the brim. Import the object model as a negative modifier and position in the tray. Done!

Gridfinity Storage for Nikon Underwater Photography Lenses I designed this set of gridfinity lens cutout storage trays for the full set of lenses that I use most often for underwater photography. Some of the trays will also be useful for any user of these lenses. I shoot a Nikon Z-mount camera (Z8) and the following lenses: Nikon Z 105mm Nikon Z 24-50mm with Nauticam Zoom Gear Nikon AF-S 60mm Nikon AF-S 8-15mm Fisheye with Hood, Nauticam Zoom Gear, and FTZ adapter Storage trays with cutouts that fit each of these lenses are provided in the set. Each is on its own plate with STL files available. The trays are 4x3x7 or 3x2x7 gridfinity units. https://makerworld.com/en/models/2316979-gridfinity-nikon-z-underwater-photo-lens-set#profileId-2530092

A very constructive reply! Thanks for that. Feel free to delete the marketing accusation in your earlier post.

Thanks Brandon! So far the Atom is pretty good. So far i have only shot if for macro scenarios and fitted with a Snoot. In this regard I am thinking it may replace my highly regarded MF-2 / Snoot configuration. The MF-2 is demoted to secondary fill light. The bigger battery capacity and higher refresh rate makes the Atom a superior option. I need to pair it with an HF-1 for some wide angle work. The studio shots are promising, positioning it as a smaller, lighter, low cost HF-1 replacement with no video light. I will say that the control ergonomics of the Atom are not as good as the Maxi or HF-1. In particular the two offset buttons that control mode and spotting lamp are awkward and easy to transpose in the water. Putting the OFF setting on the power level knob is a poor choice as well.