Cross-post from Beginner section:
I’m not a complete newbie at underwater photo (on my second year with a Nauticam housed Nikon D90 SLR and with 4 years’ experience with a housed Oly 5050 P&S), nor a “newish” diver (>100 dives), but my last dive trip was my first trip with external strobes and I had tons of trouble adjusting the UCLS arms.
The arms were either too loose and flopping all over, or so tight I could not adjust at all. My buoyancy is pretty even, but I found that when I hovered, I could not get the “right” angle on the camera to get the strobes in the place where I wanted. In one trip I effectively ended up almost tearing through some of the o-rings on the end balls! I spent so much time dealing with the strobes, that I found I needed to set at f8 & 1/125 full time due to strobe task-loading.
I started each dive with the arms/ strobes crossed over the camera and tightened enough to not flop all over when the camera was handed to me from the boat.
In the water, as everyone was readying to dive, I tried general positioning the arms for the lens mounted (over the lens “ape-hanger” style for macro, on each side for wide angle). Then on the descent, trying to finesse the position.
Again, a constant problem with too-loose=wouldn't stay where I wanted / too-tight=impossible to move / struggling to get in right position as camera turned in the 3-D world underwater.
At first, I tried 2 arm segments per side (one segment was the Inon Mega-float M), but the floats were horribly complicating, so from the second dive on I just used single 8” arms. This was not too bad for macro, but terrible for wide angle. Some of my macro shots would/ could have been better, had I been able to quickly adjust the arm position.
I’m headed to another dive in 2 weeks, and would love some help/ pointers!!!
If it works out, I will be exchanging the float segments for standard 5” UCLS arms – adding to the potential geometric nightmare.
