Dave_Hicks

I am occasionally useful. 😉

You are beating a dead horse and repeating yourself. This is not a big deal. I don't care what "topside strobe" makers do. In the photography market there are upsells and revenue generating proprietary battery packs that they can sell for 10 times markup or more. So of course they sell them that way. It is refreshing to see a manufacturer skip out on this fantastic opportunity to squeeze their customers. Back when I used Ikelite strobes their NiMH battery packs would fade and die after some years of use. Rather than buy a new one for $250 I would just buy $15 of Sub-C batteries at BatteryJunction and rebuild the pack myself. I even had some rebuilt at a Batteries+Bulbs retail store for a mere $25 in labor. And yes, the MF-1 was problematic, but it was a wildly innovative and very well received product. The MF-2 fixed all the reliability issues and made the initial implementation and features even better. I hope I can say the same of the HF-1 strobes after some more time in market and personal experience.

I don't see the logic of this. My reading indicates that a matched pair of cells is a good fit. At worst, combining mismatched and protected cells may reduce charge cycle lifespan. I'm no expert on the topic, so fill in the details if I am wrong. I'm willing to be educated!

TLDR; I think you are making too much of this Single Cell vs Battery Pack issue. Okay, I read this and a bunch of other articles and papers on this topic. This ScienceDirect article is about battery lifespan vs matching of internal resistance. I am not overly concerned about potentially maybe reducing the lifespan of a $25 battery from 500 cycles to 300 cycles. (40% reduction in lifespan per the article) It would take several years for even the most active shooter to run though 300 recharge cycles. Secondly, the specified battery (and most similar batteries) includes protection circuits, pressure release, and other safety features that mitigate much of the potential for things to go sideways. Reading up a little bit on the properties of battery packs and cell matching, the best practice is that individual cells of the same age and model number may be combined under a single protection circuit. In other words, pack builders are reliant of the quality control of the batch vs individual cell characteristics.

Interesting observation and the controlled discharge rates. Where can I learn more about this issue? Regardless, it seems it could be easily resolved by pairing the two cells used in the strobe with a bit of colored tape so you don't mismatch them. Thoughts? As for contract manufacturing, this is the way much of the world works. It is not inherently bad if the company involved has done a good job in specification and testing of their design. The Backscatter example with MF-1 is a good one actually. I bought an MF-1 in 2020 and used the hell out of it. I had it fail at least three or four times, an BS always took care of it. I have had the MF-2 for over a year now and it has been flawless. They iterate the design and made significant improvements in function and reliability. This is what gives me hope for the HF-2 and the confidence to buy a pair.

How about an extra $400-500 per strobe on a $1600 USD Retra Pro Max? That's ridiculous for something that should be included in the base price. And that Retra Li-Ion pack is a monster. It's looks ridiculous and cumbersome as hell. Even an Ikelite looks sleek in comparison. Compare to the Backscatter HF-1 which I recently bought and am currently evaluating. It's $900 or $950 if you include a pair of the recommend 21700 Li-Ion batteries. That's better than half the price for a strobe that is more functional and in the same product segment of powerful WA capable units.

I fail to see a tangible difference. How is one cell safe and two a hazard? Have you looked at the new Backscatter HF-1, which uses TWO 21700 cells?

I believe that is a very narrow point of view that puts a lot of limits on innovations available in the battery cell market. There are high quality Li-Ion cells available and there is some real crap. Just like nearly every product sold in every category. Backscatter has been selling Li-Ion powered strobes for at least 5-6 years now and I have not heard any horror stories come out as a result. They are VERY specific in the documentation about what cells they recommend and emphasize using safe and reliable batteries. Monolithic proprietary battery packs are NOT the cure all either. There are stories in the news every day about E-Bikes or Powertool batteries catching fire. I diver friend had a Powertool battery pack used in a DPV/Scotter catch fire and burn her car up. It's up to the equipment makers to spec and recommend reliable batteries, the user to use and charge them safely, and dive operators maintain an environment with safe zones for charging and adequate safeguards to deal with accidents. It's really no different than any of the other Scuba tech we use like regulators, high pressure cylinders, and compressors.

I was just in Palau a few weeks ago, and at the start of the trip another photographer shooting a D850 in a Nauticam housing + trigger could not get his strobes to fire. We went over it together and quickly found out that the flash trigger was at fault. (mine worked with his rig) Fortunately we had access to a multimeter and soldering iron and started looking for broken connections. There was a disconnect on the center pin of the hotshoe. There are just 5 pins on Nikon hotshoes, this would be a nightmare on that sony connector. We looked at the cable to circuit board first and resoldered those wires. But it still didn't work! The Hotshoe connector is a little plastic box with a metal plate and pins. It has 4 tiny screws which we removed. Opening it up looked like a mess! Frayed copper wire strands all over and one of the solder joints had failed and we had a loose wire. We cleaned it up, cut off the frayed wire, spliced the broken wire to make it longer, and soldered it back to the hotshoe pin. Problem fixed, and the diver only missed a couple of dives without his camera. My lesson from this is to always bring a soldering iron and small multimeter or continuity checker. Here is a really nice and small USB powered iron I've have for a little while that seems to work well. There are a number of similar usb or rechargeable soldering irons available that work well. Edit/PS: We had to scrounge an AC powered soldering iron, but it was 110 volts. The Boat ran on 220V!!! Fortunately, there was an expresso machine in the galley that needed a 110volt inverter, so we were able to run the soldering iron off of that. It would have been much better if I had brought my USB powered iron with me instead. null

Let's see a picture of the sync cord/strobe connection. It should be completely blacked out by the little cup over the sensor, which should eliminate any external signal from getting past. If you look at your housing LED/Flash trigger, does it blink randomly?

Two expensive add on options to compensate for an inadequate default design/specs out of the box. Not impressed.

That is outrageously expensive for what are already very high-priced strobes. I guess that know their market.

I actually dislike the "spotlight" effect of a snoot and much prefer to include a fill flash at low power or to hit the subject from the side with the snoot. This lets me isolate the subject from the background and does not create that spotlight. So, I am not looking for crisp edges at all. Here are a couple of shots I took yesterday with a Backscatter MF-2 snoot and HF-1 for fill light. null

Ok then, do you need two focus lights? Using a focus light on a strobe means you have to point the strobe directly at your subject. This is rarely the best way to light a subject. You really should get a dedicated and more functional focus light anyways.

Do you need the focus light to work? I only ever turn it on by accident.

Cool. Thanks for sharing. 3mm is not much more than what I used, but I have not tried upping the extrusion multiplier. I also stayed at a standard 0.2mm layer height. I will consider your formula when I try a new project. I need some better arm floats for the heavier HF-1 strobes, so I may have another project shortly.

These is very little difference between the two unless you have very specific requirements. After consideration I saw no advantage of hoping up to the X1. I am very happy with the P1s.

Please share a profile or setting for how you do this. I found that to get a good balance of weight vs buoyancy and strength to not implode, printing with 4-5 walls and minimal infill provides enough strength. Epoxy takes care of the waterproofness for minimal cost in weight.

I've made some waterproof parts with my 3d printers. To the best of my knowledge, you can't expect any 3d printed plastic to be fully waterproof under pressure. You need to do some post printing process to treat and seal it. Acetone smoothing, resin, etc. I've successfully created and tested a Nauticam m87 & m60 port float that can add about 10 ounces of buoyancy to my rig. I printed it in PLA+ on my Bambu P1S and on my earlier Creality Ender 3 S1. I printed with 5 walls perimeters, 8% infill. To finish and seal the print I painted it with a layer of epoxy resin. This has worked great and has been tested up to 80-90 feet and used on about 5-6 dives so far. I plan to add a carbon fiber wrap to it soon for better durability. If you plan to spend $1000 you should buy a Bambu P1S Combo (w/AMS) no question. Get 3 colors of PLA and 1 on PETG to get started. Maybe a TPU later on for specialty objects. The P1S will get you going fast and work great. I started with the Creality last year as it requires more tweaking, tuning, and trail/error, but I learned a lot. I replaced it with the Bambu and it's so much better in every way. null Pictures:

Only 150 flashes from 8 AA batteries? That seems to be shockingly bad performance. I did 9 days in Palau a couple weeks ago and was getting over 400 flashes from 4x AA Eneloop Pros. Mostly at 1/2 to 1/4 power, sometimes higher in the shallows.

A bathtub is not going to help. If your vacumm didn't fail, but you got a leak on a dive the difference would be from a few extra atmospheres of pressure at depth.

I will be shooting with my new HF-1 strobes today in Puget Sound. I am using the same (home made, 3d printed rubber) S&S style connectors that fit the MF-2, Inon 330, etc. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6134211

I would think that it's perfectly OK to use this if it's been stored in a reasonable location. Tens years is not that long for the materials in a dome port. I've got an 8.5" Nauticam acrylic dome at least that old or older. No worries about it at all.

The post processing above did the trick, but your shutter speed of 1/200s is pretty fast if you were going for a rich and bright colored background. Shutter speed should be your #1 tool for getting the water color you desire, before ISO or aperture. At the surface there may be lots of light, but I think you shut it down too far. Try moving from 1/100 in bright light to faster shutters as needed.

Never leave your camera in a rinse tank, especially if you don't have a vacuum on your housing. There is no pressure to squeeze the port and back together so the port oring can be dislodged and leak with ease. If you have a working vacuum, you have bigger issues. Likely a leaking button or knob.