Chris Ross

Yes, it's unfortunate that some of these things are not well made. Bear in mind you'll also need a 1"ball mount Z adapter to add to the strobe, with INON they are purchased separately. The mounting system for the INON strobes is quite sturdy. I had my INON Z240s for 10 years and they are still in good shape. Don't be afraid to use a single strobe while on this trip, the the TG-7 doesn't require particularly strong flash as it's f2.8 at the wide end and the single YS-01 will provide OK coverage there. For macro, you are closer and using one strobe for macro is quite straight forward for most situations. Also be aware that f8-f18 is achieved through a ND filter on the TG-7, the only time you would want to use it is if you are trying for a black background, it doesn't provide additional depth of field.

Incredibly annoying, but the problem is people buy them without research only to discover this and then complain about on internet forums as the manufacturers are behind a firewall and hard to contact and even if you do, it falls into a black hole. The only way to force change is to stop buying crappy solutions like this. That is why I have an INON focus light, it turns on by rotating a knob to low power, rotate it further and get high power, seems like it's a magnetic switch with two positions. Simple and robust, uses AA batteries, not incredibly bright - but enough for focusing, no auto off on strobe - it is not needed as the light is dim. On lights with higher output and more power levels they add another dial.

If you refer to the port charts you will see that the A7 port chart consistently requires 5mm more extension on the same lens/dome combination compared to what is listed on the port chart for later bodies. It appears they re-designed the housings placing the camera flange 5mm further back in the housing, perhaps to accommodate new lenses better, or even to allow for the grip on newer bodies?? Whatever the reason, the port charts changed due to change of housing design and this required a different Nikonos adapter. if your refer to the below webpage and scroll down to section 8 you will see the A7II has a deeper grip so this seems the likely reason for the re-design of the housing and new port charts: Mirrorless ComparisonSony A7 vs A7 II - The 10 main differences - Mirrorless C...The A7 was Sony’s first ever full frame mirrorless camera. It was released at the end of 2013 alongside the A7R. One year later, the Japanese company caught everybody by surprise with the launch of th If you look at the 37202 adapter, it has those two bolt-on pieces which act as the adapter flange to prevent the water pressure pressing the adapter into the housing. They are removable to allow space for the control knobs to rotate into position. This is consistent with having to place the lens 5mm further into the housing. The modification of the camera tray was discussed on another thread is un-related I believe, they are talking about very small adjustments because the location mechanism for the tray is not precise enough to get the accuracy required to achieve infinity focus. The different adapters are purely to accommodate the change in the housing design.

One thing with non matching strobes is it's not as straight forward to keep the lights balanced, also a video light is nowhere near as powerful as a strobe. The other thing to consider is trying to use manual - it's not as hard as it seems. You don't say what setup you have, but if you are doing macro having the strobe at the same distance means the strobe exposure is constant. It's also easier to use a single strobe for macro. IF you end up buying one strobe I'd suggest the little INON S220, it also uses AA batteries and is an excellent little strobe. If you want to balance the two strobes together one way you can try is have one strobe in TTL connected to your camera and the second strobe also in TTL can trigger off the flash from the first strobe. I expect it would trigger without a cable, but if you do use a cable run it off the first strobe. If I recall correctly the YS-01 have a port on front of the strobe for a trigger cable. The cable runs from the front of the strobe to the fibre port on the second strobe. INON uses a screw on connection at the strobe end end but the camera end is the same as the YS-01.

I have heard of many S&S strobes failing similar to this - the TTL circuit dies and can't quench the flash when required. It is possible it may spread to only full power on manual control. I'd think that with 26 days to go, you would be pushing to get it repaired in the available time, unless there is a repair shop in country, but even then it will take to to assess and possibly get parts. Also given repair costs a new strobe might be the best solution. I would suggest researching what is available to buy now, if they have to get stock in, again time might be tight. Might be another Solis - or perhaps a pair on INON S220 - a nice little strobe and INON seem to have a better reliability reputation.

Based upon the reviews and the fact it only gets to 1.1x, I don't have an MFO-1 and don't plan to buy one. Seeing as how you already have the CMC-2, mounting it on a flip seems the best way to go. I agree I'd take the MFO-1 along, you might as well try it out, it's not like it takes up much space.

No not exactly - the suggestion is to work out if you regularly find critters that require that amount of magnification. My experience with the 60mm macro is it's very rare for me to find something small enough that I feel like I need a diopter. From a week in Lembeh with over a hundred critters found only one or two were small enough that a diopter might have been useful. Your experience might be different, I think it depends on where you dive, how good you are at finding small stuff etc. The CMC-2 will be challenging to use at max magnification for sure, I'm not suggesting don't use it, rather I don't see it as an either/or situation with the MFO-1 as they have different magnification ranges and I would choose based upon how much magnification I need. If you find you are getting down to 1:1 all the time currently and wishing for more and are OK with lighting subjects right on 1:1, then a CMC-2 is possibly the next logical step. The 90mm macro I think would be a lot easier to use at high magnification, it has about 65mm working distance at 2x compared to 22mm with the CMC-1 also at 2x, but it's an expensive lens, needs a new port etc. I'd want to be sure I would make use of it and could live with the extra working distance. At 1x it's only maybe 10-15mm more working distance than the 60mm, at 0.5x (35mm wide frame) you are at 170mm then 330mm at 0.25x. So for 60mm long subjects you are getting quite distant. I have the 90mm macro and use it a lot on land, but have not been tempted to take it UW.

Thanks for the update. I suspect it is something similar to what i see with e-shutter on my OM-1 . In focus stacking I do on land with an Olympus flash - the flash fires very rapidly on low power. I trialed doing a short stack UW, using the mini flash on manual at 1/64 power for triggering. The little strobe can fire rapidly at such low power but it was like it was waiting to confirm the flash was ready again before firing. The standard way of getting around this is to make use of the X-sync on the camera, which it basically a mechanical contact built into the shutter - the camera doesn't recognise there is a flash attached and fires every time the contact has closed as long as it has charge. Did a little searching to find this, seems the problem is by design from Nikon:

The MFO-1 should be thought of as a high quality low power diopter. In the case of the 60mm macro it only improves magnification to 1.1x while the CMC-2 achieves 1.7x but it will only focus between 33 and 122mm. Based on the focus distances there might be a little overlap with the CMC-2. It seems there are some benefits on image quality on full frame sensors and also prevents hunting with some macro lenses which readily switch to the background. However it seems that for m43 lenses there is no reported improvement. It seems to me that whether to keep it or not comes down purely to whether you can find subjects in the magnification range covered by the diopters. There is less case for diopters with m43 lenses, first the working distance is small and diopters work by reducing working distance, second the field covered at 1:1 with these lenses is 17mm across, half that covered on a full frame sensor. The CMC-2 covers a field 10mm across at a working distance of 33mm which means it is difficult to aim and to light the subject. Because diopters like the CMC-2 limit the focus range to a a limited working distance, they are in general more difficult to use compared to a bare macro lens, the MFO-1 limits the range but the maximum working distance is over 1m so you can use it just like a regular macro lens, you can find the subject from a distance and close in while looking through the viewfinder, not so easy to do if the subject isn't in focus until you close right in on it.

If you can fix it. but only have one cable, try running the other strobe with a bare port it will likely trigger off the other strobe. If you need to cut the cable to repair it - DO NOT use scissors, a sharp box cutter or razor blade is what is needed, it needs to be cut at right angle to cable.

Unfortunately the evidence is that the cables are not putting enough light through, the INON strobes are usually easily triggered. The strobes should trigger through the cable with an IR remote. try the test with the strobe in manual - first thing to try is to get it working in manual - a strobe in manual is better than no strobe. It's not 100% clear from what you have said, you mention more light coming out of the cable at position 0 compared to position 1, however some questions to clarify: Have you tried to trigger strobes in both positions 1 and zero with the trigger? Have you tested both cables? Are you testing with the cables plugged into the housing? If so have you confirmed the LEDs are well seated in the fibre ports, i.e. pushed all the way in? The instructions mention this and I recall a few times this was the problem people had with triggering. Is there someone else there who has a cable being used with a LED trigger that you could borrow briefly for testing purposes. What were you triggering the strobes with before this trip? A different trigger? an onboard flash? It's important to check all of these things and report back if we are to have a chance to successfully troubleshoot.

Don't know where you are, perhaps the dive shop could loan a screwdriver or are there any hardware stores around? The little dials don't require much force to turn so perhaps a small nail file might work? Probably some other household or kitchen items might be put to use.

It would depend on the type of coating, but I expect it would require strong mineral acid to have any impact, magnesium fluoride is often used as a glass coating and it's reported to be quite resistant to acids. Searching showed that magnesium metal is treated with HF to provide a MgF coating which resists corrosion by acids, much more so than the bare metal.

the method shown below using Levels will automatically setup your colours - providing you have a full histogram with a bit of room at each end to allow you to make the needed adjustments. https://www.photoreview.com.au/tips/editing/advanced-levels-adjustments/ It will properly correct a photo that is under flashed for example, very occasionally it might need a little more green removed or blue added, which you do with the midtones slider in the appropriate channel. Sometimes you might need to tone down specular highlights, but it works well for 95% of images.

The cheapest path would be to adapt what you currently have most likely. Recently another member was looking at switching from Aquatica and went with an Isotta housing and an Aquatica adapter ring: Isotta is well supported in Australia with a few dealers selling them and they also have solutions to use WACP/WWL with their system. Aquatica also have a dealer in Cairns. You could start out with a metabones adapter with your Sigma fisheye. For easy travel a small dome with a fisheye is hard to beat IF a 180° diagonal fisheye has enough reach for you. Another Australian member recently went with an adapted Canon 8-15 on SONY along with the Sony 2x TC. A few members are using that solution it's not as sharp as the bare 8-15 but gives superb flexibility zooming all the way from 180° diagonal to a frame that is wide as a 28mm rectilinear WA lens. I don't shoot Sony but I use an adapted 8-15 on an OM-1 and used it for the entire trip when I went to Walindi in 2024 I get the same field of view range with the bare 8-15 on a m43 sensor.