RomiK

My wife and I cabin luggage. 2x10ish kg 50x40x20 + 2 personal items Laptop bag carries - camera body - 28-60 + 90mm lenses - EMWL - laptop duh 😂 Housing by itself as a personal item my wife carries Blue suitcase - WWL-1B - Shinobi monitor and housing - 2 flat ports for the lenses - 2 Retra Pro X + superchargers - Retra LSD - dive computer - batteries Red suitcase - 3x Weefine Smartfocus 10000 - Divevolk Seatouch 4Max with floats - 4000 lumens dive light - 2x Nauticam 200/70 and 300/50 float arms The rest like clamps and hardware and floats goes into dive bags checked. The idea is that should the shxx hit the fan whether at check in of gate we could have Red suitcase or it’s content checked and split electronics and optics among ourselves. If I would travel myself I would have had extra checked bag for hardware, video lights and monitor as I dive sidemount and my bare dive bag is 18kg. But if I would go on single cylinder the bag would be 15kg (one reg and lighter wing) and the rest of my photo gear would fit in.

It's just a tool the filters and it has its use case depending on artistic taste of the author... there is no right or wrong really... I might use blue filter for this image but not for this image as there is no way I could recover colors of clarion fish... same dive... and since things happen so quickly I hate changing the equipment on the fly... so each tool has its own use case

The answer would be no and for explanation we can reach physics. What makes color as perception by human eye? A surface reflection of the light which reaches it. No reflection - black. Total reflection - white. In simple terms. So if the filter blocks red portion of the light then this red won’t reach the surface which in turn will not reflect it. No filter or processing in the camera will change this as there is nothing to recover. The surface does not emit light. It only reflects what comes on it. No red in means no red out. By using the blue filter you get more uniform - but bland - foreground and background. Which is fine for some applications and not for others. Backscatter.com example visualizes this nicely.

I would say there no such thing as free lunch in UW photography 😁 The cool filters will not bring reds - the opposite they will block them. So in theory when you push reds in post the closest to you part of image won’t get ‘red hot’ and the color expression of the image will get more uniform. It also means though that you can forget about real reds and the image will be kind of - without RED. If it makes sense.

This may be just a theory and thought from previous YSD2/3 current Retra Pro X owner - the small rectangular bulbs of Inons Z and alike will produce more concentrated beam of light and although the published angle parameters might be the same it is still a point source. And reflections are just simple function of angles. Whereas circular tube will disperse light under wider variety of angles and therefore less light may fall on backscatter in angles that matter. Just a thought trying to find some logic in things we all hate 🙂

Guys, before things get personal why don't you agree on definition of red perhaps? There is RED, middle red and not so much red? Perhaps depending on the distance? Perhaps one red is good for one and not good for the other?🤷‍♂️😁

HaHa so funny your picture is great as the fish is coming onto you in the formation while the OP claiming know it all and harassing people thinking otherwise shows pictures (in the other thread) where either fish is running away from him or he is successfully braking the formation 🤣🤣 so much for understanding the fish 🤣🤣

Oh hello, I thought I’ve got a privilege of being on your ignore list 🤦‍♀️ I wasn’t talking about Retra Pro Max in my post. You may want to take a class of cognitive reading especially before insulting other people by telling them to take physics. I was talking about strobes without diffusers. From some reason the max version has diffused glass from what I see while the previous generation Pro X has a clear glass. now you take physics and read something about photons travel from the concentrated light source - a bulb - vs traveling through the diffuser. You may get surprised.

Haha funny I share exactly the same experience! I too switched from YSD2 and YSD3 to Retra Pro X 2 years ago and boy oh boy what a difference! Much more pleasing light! FWIW I think that other factors make or break the photo than the power itself. For like large landscape like fish shoal etc definitely something that pierces the water without diffuser will provide clearer better results. Cheers

No worries @ChrisH, off course you are right and contrary to the original post you can actually explain it. OP doesn’t understand the term ‘lit by the edges’ the same as 99% of photographers refer to this technique and that’s alright, everybody has their own vocabulary. He shot the image with flash using just that ‘lit by the edges’ technique he just doesn’t know it. Peace ✌️

Interesting, do you have buoyancy data and name for material you mentioned? My google search for Delrin POM brought metal replacement material which I guess is not it 🤷‍♂️ "Delrin® acetal homopolymer (Polyoxymethylene POM) is the ideal material in parts designed to replace metal."

Actually mines are made from Divinycell HCP30 and it wasn't cheap by any means... 600EUR delivered for 1730x850x50mm ... offers 0.825g/cm3 buoyancy with operational depth of 190m and crush point 300m. Used for submersible devices and mini submarines . Yes, the cost of floats then comes down to like 10EUR (one video light) or 25EUR (EMWL incl screws etc) but it's material only, no tools no time etc. From commercially available I found StiX material change buoyancy with depth so it collapses under pressure in regular depths of 50m while Fotografits own label doesn't. So it seems not every closed cell mats are equal. https://fotografit.eu/products/63-floats-for-arms/

Designed and carved out with my hands (and tools)! 😁

Thanks, the hardest thing as always is to come up with the concept, materials etc and the rest is just labor. But boy my head is tired! 🤣 No videos with EMWL yet. I use it not on tripod but in the water column and the amplitude is just to big for anything meaningful to come out 🤷‍♂️. This is the type of shots I am using EMWL for in the water column.

I will test and tweak all of these next week in Red Sea and I thought I would share the freshwater test results. All setups: - Sony A1 in Nauticam housing - Shinobi monitor with 750bat in Nauticam housing - Retra Pro X with supercharger - Weefine WF074 Smartfocus 10000 with custom floats - Nauticam 200/70 and 300/50 buoyancy arms - Nauticam clamps with shackles and triple Setup 1: - with 90mm F2.8 macro and port - Retra LSD Setup 2: - setup 1 + EMWL 130 with custom floatie detachable underwater in case of need Setup 3: - 28-60 with flat port - Nauticam WWL-1B I am happy to say that all three combinations are neutral to few grams positive in fresh water so I will add just a little bit of weight to balance it neutral in the saltwater. I could shave video lights floaties but I would like to keep this neutral for fresh water. Most importantly because the endpoints are neutral as well as EMWL the rig does not fight different angles and is completely agnostic towards the lights placement. So the system is travel friendly as I don’t need to cary redundant arms or floaties and what can I say - I am quite happy and hope this will help anyone with similar sized components 🤙.

Beautiful Brother! 👏 To me it's even more interesting with sloping water line.

Nice! So bigger body does pay off 👏👍 If only video lights mfg would follow the suit … what is sleek slim body worth when it weighs a ton underwater… any insides on Lithium pack parameters and or vs NiMH re:my comment above @Oskar - Retra UWT ?

1.Could somebody with the new bigger bodies Retra Max measure their negative buoyancy with batteries? My previous generation Retra Pro X with supercharger and bumpers and wet neopren cover show around negative 260g. Thanks! 2. It's going to be interesting to observe the real life performance of the Li-ion battery pack. During a research for NiMH batteries I run across several articles stating that NiMH are better for strobes because the recharge time is shorter. So while Li-Ion are better for constant power devices the NiMH are supposedly better for Discharge and Charge devices which are originally designed for Alcaline or NiMH power sources. Off course the battery pack could be designed with some more circuitry a balancing intermediaries so we shall see. Here is empiric test using standard dumb Li Ion vs NiMh on strobes.

Interesting thread especially with many WACP-C owners experiences which I am still weighing pros and cons to replace my WWL-1B with 🤷‍♂️ when Nauticam themselves answered me they would like me to buy at least WACP-1 🤑 where I don't like the weight...🤷‍♂️ I wanted to chime in re:acrylic for splits as it is tempting for costs and weight but wouldn't it be prohibitive when you decide to do sunsets? Couple weeks ago I briefly tested used Oly setup I got for a friend no flash no nothing and this came up as split with 140mm fish eye acrylic dome. Granted it was used but in pristine conditions and judging my own Aquatica acrylic I have with GH5S it seems to me that micro scratches are unavoidable with acrylic. Invisible for regular shots but may show with sunsets based on subject...🤷‍♂️ And second picture just to add to samples - 180mm dome with A1 and aperture 5.6. Seeing samples above I'd say WACP-C is going to be similar?

wow! the 3:15-3:45 shots are epic! just wondering how long were you finding these...👏

Side by side with Shinobi real world use comp will be interesting 🙂

yeah, sorry, I don't make much distinction about arms... I have few of those and few of these and don't really know which ones am I using at the moment. Then I am sorry if it would be kind of sticking point.

My wife is entering the world of underwater photography and so I've created a fully balanced neutrally buoyant rig :-). It's Divevolk housing iPhone13Pro and Weefine SmartFocus 10000. I added ultralight arm and one handle and I replaced the base with aluminum profile saving me about 100g (!). So the total to balance was around 900g. First version had just 900g carbon float arm but the issue was that unbalanced endpoints - light -360g and housing -530g were then tilting and fighting each other. So I created this (picture still the prototype phase 🙂 ) , tested in Maldives and it's perfect! Floats are Divinycell incompressible to 180m. Happy diving 🙂

I thought Chris, that forum admins are to be impartial. So since you quoted me above how impolite I was what if you would step a little back up in the thread and see that in the topic itself I asked for just samples and no theories no speculations and after his first rude response I asked him again politely and yet he continued in his rambling like some kind of ignorant sociopath? 🤷‍♀️

Nice kit! Would you be willing to share your experience with the UWTechnics strobe trigger? How did TTL perform with which strobes? Thanks!