Dave_Hicks

I dove today with two HF-1s and the floats. They both worked well and retained integrity. The overall rig was basically neutral and just slightly negative. However, with the two strobes extended forward of the port, the system wanted to roll backwards. With neutral floats and my ULCS float arms, the extended arms were a bit too floaty and torqued upward. With the strobes in-line with the housing it was balanced. I am going to make another change and make the floats a little smaller and less buoyant by about 25 grams each. I think that will result in just a little better balance.

I was using the overall buoyancy setup i use with the Retra Maxi strobes. So it would be pretty negative with the Backscatters. The HF-1 float fully negated the weight of that strobe so the rig ended up much lighter. I loosened the arm and it would float around freely. The Atom was still negative by 150grams or so and and the rig was noticably unbalanced. I will print a second float for the 2nd HF-1 and do another dive with the balanced setup.

I dove today with an HF-1 + Float and Atom with Snoot. The HF-1 was weightless and the Atom was negative. Guess I need a float for that now. The float seemed to work well with no obvious water intrusion. I'll weigh it in the morning after its dried out more to be sure. Sporting a 105mm macro lens I came across a big GPO out in the open: I shot from about 1.5 meters back and opened up to f5 iso400 to get something more than an eyeball in frame!

I doubt overheating will be an issue. The radiators are more than half uncovered, and even where the float wraps around one side it is not tight. But it will get tested shortly. There is no reason I can't make an Atom version as well and will consider that if there once this project is wrapped up.

The final draft is looking good. Filled in a few more interior gaps to make it conform better to the strobe and moved the bungee anchors to better locations to grip the strobe. Time to print a functional version now with ASA. 10-hour print time!

I'll take it! If it tests out okay, I will upload the design to Makerworld, as I do with all my designs, for anyone to download for free. It will require an enclosed printer that can print ABS or ASA preferably with a heated chamber. Printing watertight pressure resistant bodies is tricky business.

This is still a draft print, maybe one more iteration before a functional waterproof version. I will plan to dive it this weekend for a test run. The draft print is less dense than the final article so it is positively buoyant. I intend for the pair to be slightly negative, around 20 grams. Versus 250 grams negative for the HF-1 itself.

I sort of designed a HF-1 form fitting float today that leaves the strobe about 20 grams negative in the water, adding ~230 grams buoyancy. Much less janky than foam blocks.

Thanks for the feedback. +1 for Turtle. The UL&M trigger doesn't support HSS or Rear Curtain either and it does not seem to have a Nikon/Nauticam option, only Aquatica. Strange.

The Nauticam manual flash trigger included with their Nikon housing is very basic. It does not support HSS or Rear Curtain features. I would like to enable these features, so I need to get a new flash trigger. I'd like it to work with both Retra and BS strobes. The TRT i-Turtle SMART 3 MANUAL trigger explicitly calls out that it supports these features with Nikon including support for Backscatter and Retra strobes. No support for TTL. The UW-Technics 11032-HSS-TTL trigger also calls out support for Backscatter and Retra, but includes TTL for over $240 more. Except TTL doesn't work with Backscatter. I don't need or want TTL, so I am inclined to try out the Turtle trigger at a better price. Does anyone have some experience with this or similar Turtle trigger? Are there other products I should consider?

I'll send you printed one for the cost of postage. If you are brave enough to try it! I want more testers. Pull a vacuum for a few days and give it a dive without the camera to build confidence. Run it over with your car, whatever. Anyway, I've been using a 40mm for the last month on about 20 dives, several past 100 feet. Another diver has been using a 20mm successfully as well. Plus you can choose black, white, or blue! :)

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I saw someone with something like this, maybe on a Kraken strobe? A molded HD foam attachment for the strobe. But I think you can do just as well with some Jumbo Stix floats on the outer arms. When I put on the Retra Maxi strobes to replace my HF-1s, the rig was out of balance and too buoyant. I removed two Jumbo Stix blocks and everything was back in balance. While the HF-1s are more negative for sure, it's not that big a difference or difficult to balance out.

What are you camera are coming from? Sony is not in the only player on the field, or necessarily the best one.

I use a little printed memory card wallet to store 10 numbered SD Cards. I put a big 500gb CFExpress card in my camera as primary and a 128 or 64gb SD Card as secondary. I swap in a new SD Card at the end of each day and download from that. The SD Cards act as a backup should the camera or laptop be lost. Many modern cameras have two slots, so this should be easy to do for most people. It would be smart to leave this in a dry-bag/go-bag on the deck or camera station of a liveaboard. I think I'll add this to my liveaboard routine!