JACohen

As a recent owner of two Seaflash D150s there are many aspects of this strobe that I like. I am delighted with the power, the colour of the light and the elegantly engineered Seacam system. However new buyers might want to be aware of a potential problem, a design fault that can result in the batteries ceasing to work.

The battery cover is very close to the edge of the strobe and acts as an area for water to get trapped that is very difficult to access in order to dry it out. This has to be totally one hundred percent dry in order to remove the cover as any drops of water reaching the battery can cause it to stop working, something that Seacam considers a user error flood. I have tried a number of ways to dry this, and have ended up using tissues to get right into the edge in order to suck up the water, but even then there are still water drops that won’t dry unless the strobe is left to dry naturally for a period of time. This means a quick battery change between dives is not really practical. One has to take great care when opening the battery compartment, even when it appears to be totally dry, and have a tissue in hand ready to mop up any small drops that are trapped in the ridges of the threads.

It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the batteries were not so sensitive, however two small drops caused mine to stop working, which Seacam called a user error flood and charged for the repair. Two drops of water can cause any camera, or any sensitive piece of electronics, to stop working if they fall in the right (or wrong) place. That is a given fact. However, the way that the strobe has been designed means that these two drops of water are much more likely to get into that right (or wrong) place than they would do if the design had been a little different.