I have a single strobe (*My set up is with a canon ixus p & s with a single inon strobe and wet macro lenses) for underwater photography. As most of you would know from the forums, a recent technique being discussed among UW photographers is the use of a strobe "snoot" as championed by Keri Wilk. During the process of fine tuning my own basic snoot, it occurred to me that if I could redirect the light energy from my strobe (*and its 2 flash points) I could not only pinpoint it like a snoot but also possibly turn a single strobe into a dual strobe effect. I thought about how the strobe I was using was fired by the on-board flash of the point and shoot camera to a fiber optic cable which sent a signal for the strobe to fire. Why not use fiber optics to split (or redirect) the light intensity to 2 separate arms? Hence the fiber optic project was born. First let me please thank Paul at thefiberopticstore.com for the encouragement and help with this project.
Other than the fiber optic cables, pretty much everything else was found at a local hardware store. Also I have kept this design raw and an inexpensive DIY exercise. I really didn't want this to cost so much that a second strobe purchase would seem more reasonable given the effort, time and initial cost. For now it works and I am more interested in getting in practice to use it properly (*and produce decent images) instead of worrying about how it looks. Of course there is another positive side to this, people steer clear, parents pull their children in and away from the weirdo walking down the jetty, and I did get a little enjoyment from the first public reaction (*my first dive with this setup was a night dive with very VERY few people around at the site, I was greeted with a: "What the F@#k is that??!" from the big bushy fisherman getting into his car next to me).
As I had hoped, the use underwater and manipulation of the arms worked well. It was not unwieldy, not heavy, nor cumbersome to swim with. Probably the main area I think needs improvement is not with tweaks in the design or construction but with my ability to aim the arms and adjust light output accordingly.
A few pics to share:
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/pmercurio/F...Jes9KWooez3swE#
Cheers,
Phil
Adelaide, SA
