Which arm to buy?

I'm looking to buy the S&S Sea Arm VI because the price is very affordable for a casual photographer like me. Would this be a good choice? Or is it more worthwhile to pay twice as much and go for Ultralight arms.

thanks

The new 1" ball arms by Ikelite work well and are very affordable in a pakage price with the strobe and quick charger. So if you don't have a tray and strobe, check out the Ikelite package prices.

http://www.uwcp.com/

Ask for Ryan.

Any reasons why you would not go with the Sea Arm VI?

thanks

Sorry, can't answer as I have no experience with the Sea & Sea arm.

I have used the Aquatica TLC arms for the past three years, and I really like them. Aquatica makes S&S strobe connectors, so this is definitely an option.

I'm not familiar with the S&S arms or the price difference, but I can recommend the TLC arm sets. It's very easy to build a custom arm set for whatever kind of setup you want.

Go for the UL arms. You will end up buying them sooner or later. Getting top shelf arms will be one less thing to have to mess with or worry about as you shoot. It's tough enough already!

If you buy the best, you only have to cry once.

Dive cheerfully!

I agree with jimbo, especially since you can often get lots of arm parts on eBay being sold off by B&H cheap.

TEdJ

I got the Sea Arm VI just over a week ago now and should be trying it in the water on Wednesday this week. The construction is good, using glass filled plastic sections, with metal ball clutch joints. The balls have chunky o-rings on them, so that the tension controls work smoothly. This seems fine in air, and I'll let you know what its like underwater.

The arm in total is fairly light as you would expect, but probably much tougher than some people might think.

I'm also trying to get a hold of an extra joint, so that I can set up an extra member in the arm for wideangle use.

Martyn

Let me throw in my $0.02, while being well aware that we all find it wasy to recommend whatever it is that we use. I've only ever used UltraLight arms, but (unlike my experience with strobes), I've never had reason to second-guess that decision or wished I'd invested in another system.

One of the strongest arguments for Ultralight (which probably also applies to TLC) is that this is a modular system. Whatever segments, clamps and connectors you get for your present system, you will almost certainly be able to adapt and use them on any future underwater camera system you may acquire. I started with a single strobe, with two longish segments for wide-angle and a single short arm segment for macro, basically duplicated all of that when I acquired a second strobe, and now also have a variety of ULCS connectors I use for my Ikelite light meter and various night dive/aiming lights etc. It's not cheap, but very well-designed and engineered, and built to last a lifetime.