Chris Ross

Yes, very pleased to find that, it was around half way between Bitung and Nudi Falls

Thanks ! 😃 I'm using OM-1 with 60mm macro, Retra strobes and of course the newly purchased MFO3 for some shots. Nauticam housing.

Spent a week at Diver's Lodge Lembeh last month. This is a family run resort located at the SW end of Lembeh Strait, the accommodation is in Bungalows of various sizes, layouts and price points - they are basic but comfortable. Some bungalows have air conditioning, others like mine have fans, I found them quite comfortable and temperatures were quite mild for the tropics. Food was plentiful and freshly prepared, staff were very friendly and helpful. The Owner and his family are often around the lounge/dining area and often eat their meals there. I found the prices for diving/accommodation very reasonable. They have a no-deposit required policy - just forward them a copy of your airline ticket to hold the room and pay for your accommodation/diving at the end of your stay. You pay with cash or bank transfer (no cards) I used Wize for the transfers and is was trouble free. I booked direct with the lodge. Conditions when I was there included a couple of quite windy days, apparently due to a typhoon passing through the Phillipines and Taiwan drawing in a lot of air even though it passed 1500-2500 km to the north. Other days were more typical with fairly flat conditions and a mix of sunny and cloudy days. Not a lot of rain. Water temperature 28° on all dives, some shallow parts were 29°C. The diving was as it is at many resorts on Lembeh strait, up to 5 dives a day, Nitrox is available and they will go to any of the dive sites in the straits. They have a fairly unique arrangement in that the pricing is split between boat hire and dive charges. You can have a private boat if you like or share with other divers there and split the costs. Diver:guide ratio is 2:1. You can of course request critters you are keen to see (though of course can't be guaranteed) or dive sites you would like to attend or you can let the guides choose based on what has been found recently and conditions. Wind may make some sites less comfortable and some sites are impacted by tides a little, for example we had some current in the deeper part of Nudi Falls divesite, but it wasn't noticeable in the shallower sections. My dives were all in the 60-70 minute range starting deep and heading shallow as air ran down. Diving is from smaller boats with capacities from 4 to about 8 or so divers, entry by backward roll and they put a ladder over to get out. They look after all your gear and will carry everything back and forth to the boat. On the final day gear was washed and delivered to the bungalow dry to be packed. You can have lunch on the boat with a typical schedule of 2 morning dives with surface intervals, lunch then an afternoon dive. Dusk or night dives also offered, the dusk dive for Mandarin fish which is found on the house reef. The house reef can be accessed from shore where they launch the boats. Lembeh of course is well known for muck diving, but it does have a lot of sites with corals in the shallows. We experienced visibility up to around 10-15m there. A great many critters were photographed including some not so common species, with something new coming up constantly. There is a lot of fish life to found around the coral sections and there's a great many anemones and plentiful anemone fish, which are always entertaining to shoot. On my trip I managed to photograph seven different species of anemonefish. I shot with an OM-1/Nauticam with Retra strobes, 60mm macro for all dives and I had the MFO-3 for wider views on larger critters. Some shots from the trip: Peacock Mantis shrimp Lacey Rhinopias Porcelain Crab Juvenile Warty Frogfish False Clown Anemonefish Painted Frogfish and (well fed) Hairy frogfish Whip Coral Goby with a Whip coral shrimp . Disclaimer - I booked and paid for this trip myself.

To me the problem seems to be that Nauticam has too many port systems. The N85 is a bit too small for many of the newer wide angle Micro43 optics and there a lot you need to mount from the front after installing a port adapter. If they condensed their line to only N100 and N120 it would be easier to have a full range of extensions and ports in both systems. With the Sony and now Nikon/Canon APS-C mirrorless housings all using N100 port system, it would be nice to have a full range of ports and accessories.

If that's what is happening the camera is emitting a pre-flash in both situations. The double lightning bolt is setup to ignore the first flash and only fire when the main flash trigger comes through.

If you get a set that works line them up and draw a line across them with a marking pen. I always keep my eneloops in sets of 4 from new - they come out of the strobe into the charger next to each other and are removed either back into a strobe or a carrying case. the second set can have two lines etc. That way they are all the same age. I use MAHA chargers for mine, seems to work well.

The problem is not removing salt deposits, the problem is that the water you are soaking in has dissolved salts in it and you are adding to the salt by adding another type of salt. It will help dissolve scale, but the whitish buildup on housings etc is not a buildup of mineral scale. It is formed by allowing rinse water to dry out on the surface. As the water evaporates the salts become progressively more concentrated until they begin to etch the anodizing of the housing. Anodizing is just developing a thick adherent Aluminium oxide coating on the housing and the colour is from dyes incorporated into the coating. The coating resists corrosion , however strongly acidic or basic solutions can begin to dissolve it and may also react with the dyes. The solution - as Dave says - don't let water evaporate to dryness on the housing. Blow off droplets and wipe dry when most of the droplets are blown off. This can also remove excess water from inside the buttons and help prevent corrosion of the button/lever shafts and springs. No additives needed.

Send Oscar from Retra a message and ask him, there's probably a few things you can try and he's quite helpful. You can DM him from Waterpixels.. In the meantime have you looked at error section of the manual, the procedure for misfire might be worth trying if you haven't already.

When I got my Retras, set them up with the housing etc on the bench with the normal strobe position and did some test shots increasing the output till the exposure was corrrect using my usual shutter speed, aperture ISO. The basis was using the camera settings I usually do and getting the strobe output right. Distance was for an "average" subject. That was my starting power on the first dive and the exposures came out correct. Flash output only needs to change if you change distance at the same camera setting. In close shooting similar size subjects, the required exposure doesn't change much. I figure that changing camera settings to get the right exposure would be the tail wagging the dog. I have the Retra Pure which is lower power and basic starting point was 25 on the dial or 1/4 power or two stops off full. On the INON Z240 I was about 1.5 stops off full. The Retra PRO Max II is something like 1.5 stops more powerful than my strobes. I think if your photos are blowing you are certainly using more battery and the response should be to turn them down. Likewise HSS if it activates will use more strobe power - this should only happen if you are above the cameras max sync speed.

I recently got the MFO3 and quite like it, though carrying it is difficult as it is such a big lump. On my recent trip to Lembeh I carried it in the pocket of a pair of dive cargo shorts. Easy to extract but a bit fiddly to shove back in single handed. Attached using the Nauticam bayonet. It seems quite secure in there if pushed all the way in. I thought about a flip but using it to enter at my local shore dives - rocky and some swells put me off the idea, I've ordered a parking bayonet which I hope to try out when it arrives.

I don't know if the lever is adjustable, I've never looked into that. What I was referring was getting the grip handle closer to the housing to make it less of a stretch to reach. I can adjust my housing, but yours is an older model and I'm not sure how much adjustment it allows. This is my grip and you can see its easy to reach both levers, note the tight grip around the handle. The 5DIV housing is quite old now so they may have improved the layout a little, the centre line of the lever are about 85mm apart which probably helps. If you could turn your lever 180 deg it may be similar to this, but no idea if it is practical or even possible? and this is the housing to show the levers:

The standard approach to deal with this as I recall is adjusting the handle in and out to get to a comfortable setting. I don't have this particular housing to judge but the way you are holding it seems odd, probably just the way it has been photographed, typically I wrap by 3 non-index fingers around the handle, extend the index finger for the shutter lever and the BBF lever falls under my thumb. It looks like your palm is well back from the handle, mine is in tight contact- when holding for shooting. My hands aren't as supple as they once were so I vary my grip and periodically hold with my left hand while stretching my right and adopt a looser hold when travelling as opposed to shooting. To be it looks like if you gripped tighter with the palm tight to the handle you could reach more easily. Combine that a looser hold and resting stretching your right hand when not shooting would be my initial thoughts. Experiment with moving the handle in and out as well if our housing accommodates this.

Yes camera needs to be set to manual and the strobe the same, the pre-flash chews up too much flash power responding to pre-flash at higher powers meaning it can't fire the main flash. It's not a sync issue - you need the camera on manual flash when the strobe is on manual.

Nice work Ben, I saw their relatives in Lembeh a couple of weeks ago, indeed quite tiny. Impressive keeping it in focus during the swim.

TTL or manual? If it's manual it seems like perhaps you have the camera emitting a pre-flash and it takes some of the strobe power when it fires on the pre-flash and at higher powers there is not enough charge to fire the main flash. Which setting are you using on the strobe, see if it behaves differently in one lightning bolt vs 2 bolts setting. You can test is it is pre flashing if you can set second curtain sync in camera then take a test shot at a slow 1/2 - 1 sec shutter speed. If the camera allows this the preflash goes off at beginning of exposure and main flash goes off 1/2 - 1 second later at end of exposure. By using a slow enough shutter speed you can see both flashes . In manual you should only see a single flash, if it is being cancelled properly, This is only to test if the strobe is firing a pre-flash to assist with trouble shooting.

I use the standard 4 battery set up diving at home from the shore in Sydney, I average 70-80 shots over a 70-75 minute dive (I have to find my own critters) and I do a single dive. The 4 battery setup will last for 3 dives before needing charging. It's a 30 metre climb up from the waters edge as well, so I feel every gram, but seriously it's good enough, so I keep the boosters for dive trips where I have guides finding things for me and I do 100-110 frames per dive, 3 dives per day and it will need batteries charged every other day,

Hi there, I upgraded to Retra a few months back. I got the reduction rings and the white diffusers. Previously using the Z240 strobes. I'm on m43 so I shoot at f10 mostly on macro. I recently did a trip to Lembeh with them. I can offer a few observations. The reduction rings I would suggest are essential. Shooting in Sydney and then in Lembeh I immediately noticed a lot less backscatter using the retra with reduction rings used at a fairly standard 10 and 2 strobe position close to the port. You do need to adjust positioning some more when getting in really close to somewhat non standard positions at least compared to what I used prior. Simplest seemed to turn the strobes in a little. I work fairly close with the olympus 60mm macro , so longer lenses would be less prone until you venture into wet diopters as the working distance is greater. It wasn't backscatter proof as such, just a lot less compared to what I saw with the INON strobes. I also tried some inward lighting and that worked well. The booster is quite useful. Shooting at f10 and one click past 25% power (this is a Retra pure) I got about 600 shots and the the battery test LED was hovering on turning yellow at the end. This was 3 dives a day over two days each dive about 1 hour 5 minutes. So I only pulled batteries and re-charged every other day. More powerful models may go through batteries faster if you use the power. Likewise is you are shooting at f11-16 on full frame you will need more power. This was all macro work. Classic HSS usage for wide angle is a sunball, where you might want to use 1/320 - 1/500 range for shutter speeds. I have not done much wide angle work with mine as yet, only used with 60mm macro and now with the MFO-3 so far. I traveled with the standard battery caps with the boosters separate, basically to improve my packing , with the booster the strobes were too tall for my backpack. Hope that helps, let me know if you have questions.

try this if the link above doesn't work, any boating store would have one: Marine Supplies DirectOutboard Fuel Primer Bulb 3/8&34; 95mm"HI. TECH" primer bulb suitable for outboard engines for any horse power.

I recall seeing a few posts on this possibly on Wetpixel??? most seems to be some kind of sock that is strapped around the assembly. On land the solution would be a blower bulb to blow particles away. If there was someway to attach a tube to the air release ring you could use a large syringe to push water through the opening, and you could presumably rig up a filter for the water. Without seeing the ring in person, it's hard to judge if this is feasible. If you could attach something like this ( a primer for outboard fuel supply) with a filter on the suction it might work: https://www.whitworths.com.au/outboard-fuel-primer-bulb-premium-6mm

In general terms depth of field varies with magnification at the same f stop. Focal length does not impact DOF apart from changes it makes to the magnification achieved. The background blur does change with focal length at the same magnification with shorter focal lengths showing more detail for want of a better word in the out of focus background, while a long focal length produces a smoother backgroud. However when talking about macro lenses with diopters the only real variable if magnification once you have selected your f stop as the focal length doesn't move very much. It appears that some wet optics can produce less depth of field with a specific example being the fisheye conversion port, likley related to how it interacts with the virtual image. A Diopter however basically just allows a lens to focus closer and the SMC lenses have optics to correct distortions caused by the air-water interface, but this is a fairly monor adjustment and I can't see it impacting depth of field.

You would need 7 1/2 Stix jumbo floats at 180 gr each, so if your arms are short you might need 2 each side to fit them. 4 STIX jumbo floats are 57 Euro at one store in Europe I saw while the INON mega float is 70 Euro, You might be up for another arm with STIX potentially but the INON float arm is an arm so you won't need another one, so very little difference in cost.

You should be able to access ISO 50 - it's called extended ISO, by default the camera goes to ISO 100, but enabling extended ISO alllows one stop lower and one stop higher to accessed, you need to menu dive to enable it. This video explains: Going to ISO 50 will reduce dynamic range slightly but it might be worth trying it out - in most cases UW you don't need very wide dynamic range. The MF-2 would also be worth trying out.

I would expect you would need to play every card to try to use this strobe under the conditions you are mentioning, You should be able to to ISO 50 I think and perhaps you need to close down a stop on your lens? You could also try reducing output using the widest angle diffuser on the strobe. This is a downside of using a very powerful strobe, it's harder to turn down. I would guess that what the strobe is doing is running at a set frequency for the duration the shutter is open and probably does that so it can work with any HSS system as the HSS protocols are likely different for each camera manufacturer.

whatever you do read the fine print, you often need to specify high value items as the value of individual items is limited often to a relatively low value and a great many policies will exclude water damage to electronics. Also any advice is country specific, you can only buy insurance for gear in your country of residence and for example credit card based insurance will have different T&Cs in different countries and home insurance may be a good option in the USA but not in the UK, the devil is in the details and unfortunately buried deep within the terms and conditions document.

The other consideration with video is stability, I guess the GoPro has decent stabilisation, but giving it less to do is probably a good thing. So this means getting the trim right as well, having the rig trying to twist up is a problem and it far easier to keep steady if you don't have to resist that torque. I dived one time with a photo rig that was positive and the dome kept wanting to twist upwards, quite difficult to use. Similarly my wide angle rig uses lots of buoyancy in the arms and it's rather difficult to twist it upwards even though the rig itself was near neutral overall. My rig is always clipped off and close to neutral so if I let it go it sinks quite slowly. I think a 1.36 kg rig could definitely benefit from some buoyancy. If 1.36kg is correct two of the INON 650gram mega float arms would be about perfect.