I remember that in the past i read several articles in which it was explained that even a powerful torch could hardly provide as much light a strobe provides within 1/1000 of a second or so. Thus torches not being an option for photography.
Two weeks ago during my stay in Bali i had a minor leak in my housing which was detected by the housing leak detector. I was at approximately 20 meters when this happened. I immediately cancelled dive and surfaced. In order to prevent a camera damage i was holding my 105mm macro port down. I realised on the way to surface my Inon's connected to housing via optical fiber cords were firing all the time.
I immediately opened housing cleaned and dried everything. However i realised that the electronic circuit in the housing was not lighting the led's for optical cords. Thus the strobes were not firing. I also tried alternative wire connection between housing bulkhead and strobes. However this also did not work. I had spare strobe, spare optical cords, wire connection for a failure of the optical cord etc. The only spare i did not have was the electronic circuit which was damaged. I still had more than a week of dives and i was left without strobes.
I had a very sceptical mood when Graham Abbott(Diving4images) who arranged my dives and have been my guide in Bali told me that the worse case option would be the use of torch. The same day as a coincidence at the dive site we have met Ajiex Dharma who told us that he could supply one Minigear MS-03 snoot torch.
The next day in the morning i was diving with this tiny torch as my main light source.
After the first dive i understood that it would be more practical for me to use the torch either attached to a gorillapod 5K or hand held by Graham.
My camera is a Nikon D850. In order to be able to freeze the movement i shot all my photos both macro and supermacro(105mm lens with +5 /+10 wet diopters) with high ISO values such as 1000 - 1250. With these ISO values i was able to shoot 1/160 - 1/320 with diaphragms from f/16 to f/32.
To my surprise, I think that i have images of acceptable quality(even though not potential contest winners) and the torch saved my trip.
Here are a few images i shot with this setup.
Would be happy to hear comments or similar experiences.
