Dave_Hicks

Welcome Jenny!

A friend who just went said Lots of fish, lots of Dead corals. A sad decline in the last few years.

The strobe should not phantom drain overnight even if left on. That sounds like a defect either in the build or in the design. Maybe strobes will drain eventually keeping the capacitors charged, but 12 or so hours seem pretty quick. Other strobes on the market automatically go into standby mode when left idle for 15 minutes to avoid this problem.

Does Retra have a pre-flash learning mode? You want that to be OFF. If there is no way to force it off, it could be a trigger problem. I've reported and had issues with the Nauticam trigger before, but with Backscatter strobes. In my case Backscatter was able to get Nauticam to send me a replacement trigger with modified firmware to address the problem. Contact Retra directly and discuss the Nauticam manual trigger with them.

A couple of Marlin, Sealion, and Baitball photos!

You should be able to look at the meta data in an image file to see the shutter speeds and other settings.

What was your shutter speed? If you set the shutter faster than the sync speed of the camera, you get a partly black vertical band. A quick search says the max sync (shutter) speed for the Canon 7D is 1/250th of a second. Anything faster than that will create a black curtain.

All of your galleries are very nice with some great photos! To be honest, I don't see any real difference between the Inon and Retra images. Some of the Inon sunballs are better than any in the Retra galleries. I think you got great results with both sets of strobes. I still have a pair of Inon 330s and they are still great strobes. I moved to HF-1 for features not available with the Inons. Super fast recycle times, 5000 lumen video light, and much more power. I'm keeping the Inons for backup. They are currently on loan to a buddy with a busted Retra.

Keep the camera out of the cold as long as possible. Add a USB bulkhead to charge between dives.

I went through everything you are doing with resin and poly. What i suspect you will find is that the float will crack and leak regardless of coatings. If your part is not strong enough to withstand the pressure it will crack. Only mechanical strength will solve that problem. I found 4 perimeters of .5mm and minimal infill was a sweet spot with ABS. At least 100ft with 50+ dives so far. ASA may be similar. ABS and ASA can be acetone smoothed for sealing and aesthetics.

What material did you print with? I found ABS to be a lot lighter than PETG and 2mm perimeters to be strong enough. 6-8% infill was enough to support the top layers and keep weight down. I also rounded the edges.

Magdalena Bay really paid off. We splashed on several mother/baby pairs like this a few times over the week. Running the customs scam gauntlet was a risk but worth the journey.

A trio of Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) escorted by Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and California Sea Lion (Zalophus californianus) as they hunt and feed in Magdalena Bay, Baja Pacific, Mexico. Seeing whales underwater for the first time was definitely the highlight of a snorkeling trip to Magdalena Bay with Nautilus Liveaboards. Nikon Z8 w/8-15mm @15mm fisheye lens, f8@1/250s iso640, Natural light

It's not the first time I've had Allen wrenches taken. I usually have two sets, one in the scuba bags, one with my housing. I often remove the ball mounts, so i need that 4mm! They also confiscated a few regular sized 6" zip ties in my bag. You could not even fit those around a single wrist.

Returning from Cabo SJD today: 4mm not allowed, 3mm allowed:

Very nice! Looks like a big fella too!

I passed through Cabo SJD last week on my way to Magdalena Bay. I took my chances at customs and pressed the button for a Green Light! Avoid a minimum $1000 hit. A few others on the trip got screened and screwed over for the tax, but fortunately had P&S system with low value so only payed about $95. I am using my Z8 with 8-15mm FE.

Seems like maybe you could just stretch some Panty Hose over the unit and rubber band it at both ends. The hose material would be a very fine filter to keep the chunky bits out of the optics.

The MWL is a lot more expensive than the KRL for about the same product. Perhaps the MWL is better quality but I don't have experience. I have some great images with the KRL09s + 60mm but it is not as good a the WWL-C for sure. The reason to use this is maximum flexibility not maximum quality. Based on your expectations I would try before you buy to avoid disappointment.

Correct. All F mount lens on the FTZ adapter are identical and use the same ports as DSLR.

I have the Kraken krl-09 which i pretty much the same as the MWL. On my Z8 i use the Port 60 and Nauticam dual flip adapter. Krl on one side, MFO-1 on the other. Like many wide angle setups, it is probably sharpest at f13 or so. Edges are not as good as the WWL-C in my experience. I bought this lens when I was shooting a DSLR, D800 or D850. The ability to shoot macro and wide angle on the same dive is sometimes nice to have. However, with a Z camera and the WWL-C with the 24-50mm lens you can do much the same focal ranges without removing the wet optics. And with sharper edges. As a result i am using this combo less often.

What?

The battery compartment is the most likely part of any strobe to flood. The MF / HF strobes are actually fairly resilient to battery compartment floods. Putting a usb port in there would make it less robust and increase the size of the strobe.

There are more expensive lights available no doubt. I prefer the simple focus lights with a standard type rechargeable battery. IMHO the Auto-off feature in a focus light is fairly useless. Unless you are shooting extremely slow shutter speeds (1/10th of a second or longer) or very high iso a focus light is not likely to be visible in a flash photo.