Starting DSLR underwater

Hi..

I have few questions for you guys. After reading and reading about underwater photo housings and accessories I have come to conclusions buying Aquatica house for D200, 10,5mm Nikon, 15mm Sigma or 16mm Nikon and 60mm Macro Nikon.

By buying prime lens I make it simple and skipping buying Zoom gear right ? And of course having faster and brighter lenses!!

Sea & Sea YS-110 Dual Strobe Kit with Double Sea Arm Light and Two Fiber Optic Cables. Can you check these out for me☺

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/4687...Strobe_Kit.html

These must almost fit my need taking photos in the Artic? Do they have sutiable focus light inside or do i need one ? Is there any Cons about these lights, the strobes are the hardest to understand and thereby buying!

Focus gear, is that absolute necessary?

I am sure there will be more questions but i have been sitting way to long in front of my Mac trying to sort these things out and my head is almost exploiting .

Can you help me?

Thanks, this website has been so far very helpful

Gisli

I think you may find the strobe arms in the website you mention to be too short and perhaps too brittle in cold water for artic use.

I have one of those arms and its fine for a YS-25 (a very small strobe) on a Point and shoot camera housing. I found it unsatisfactory for my new Inon Z-240 and I suspect you would feel the same about the YS-110 on a DSLR housing

Many on this website use ULCS (Ultralight) arms and similar competitive brands.

The thread below is 'pinned' and talks about length. The arms you are considering are shorter than those used by most on that thread.

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14131

ALSO, the arms are small in diameter that you are considering. I suspect you will have trouble with them with thick enough gloves for artic diving.

Most threads I see on focus lights have them on the housing and not using them in the strobe except on maybe night dives for lighting.

I am quite the beginner here but do have a few yrs experience with the arms you are considering.

Hope that helps.

Dave

Can't comment on Arctic water (brrr!) ... but I can comment on the target lights in the YS-110s.

I would call them "target"/"modeling" lights and not "focus" lights. They are most useful, I think, for modeling where the strobes will be lighting your subjects and not necessarily so good for focus assistance ... for one very good reason.

The best focus assistance come from a light on the lens axis pointing directly at the object on which you'd like to focus.

Very often, particularly in wide angle shots, your strobes will not be pointed directly at your subject.

If you think you will need a focus light, I would suggest getting a dedicated focus light and mount it close to the lens axis.

HTH!

Thanks guys.

Do you know of any strobes that gives you light just before you make the shot. I think there must be strobe with similar system above as underwater and that way you can skip the special focusligth, because that can give you hot spot, or am I wrong.

And can anybody comment on my thougths about skipping Zoom gear and focus gear by having AF prime lenses with of course very good focuslight as mentioned before. I must keep my system simple because of these thick drygloves and numb fingers.

Thanks again

There are some newer, small LED-based focus lights that sense the strobes firing, go out and come back on 2 seconds later.

They aren't hugely powerful, but they are inexpensive and last for 6-10 hours on a single set of AAAs.

I believe the Fantasea NANO and Fisheye Mini LED are basically the same light and go for less than $50.

I found the 10.5 a little too wide at times and wished for a little zoom. Bought the Tokina 10-17 recently and got my zoom gear from Divervision for just $100.

I did not miss a focus gear for my 60mm AF-S Nikkor......AF works well for me. However, I did invest in a focus gear for my 105 VR macro. Costly but well worth it.