I am looking to upgrade my strobe to a z-240 or d-2000. My question is about strobe arms. I had one of the larger dealers quote me a price on the strobe arms and lens caddy, and of course it got very expensive ($370). It was a high quality ultralite set with two arm extensions, but I have seen other sets for much less and I was wondering what are some cheaper alternative that will still provide what I need? I use a nikon p5100 in ikelite housing and want something that I can position correctly for wide angle as well as something flexible enough for macro, I also like the idea of being able to adapt the arm (add different arm lengths if I decide in the future something else works better for me?
Would something like this beable to do the same job for considerably less money?
I've got a similar question concerning the strobe arms from Opticaloceansales.com. They advertise arms and ball clamps that are a LOT cheaper than anything I've seen for more familiar brands (i.e. Ikelite), averaging about $24 for the clamps and $10 for the arms apiece. The arms are black-anodized aluminum and only seem to be sold with the 1" diameter balls. Anyone have any experience with these? Are they sturdy?
I don't know about the particular one's you are looking at. I got some cheap HK ones from Ebay and they weren't as good as the likes of UCLS etc.
The balls were pinned onto the arms and after a while, developed a couple of degrees of rotational slack. The clamps and balls seemed to gall a little more than the more expensive ones too.
That said, they did the job and I still have them as spares in my kit - in fact I'm still using a couple of the clamps.
This was on DS160s with 12" + 9" arms so clamping loads, particularly out of the water were quite high.
