Stewart L. Sy

Scubanomad,

How about we schedule your visit in conjunction with a visit at the same time of that of an Authorized dealer?  ;-)  I've yet to go bug Jean at his office...only by phone or email.    But he's already come to visit me so turnabout is fair play!

Stu

Reminds me of the old joke of the Admiral vs the Lighthouse.   The US Navy was given a token fine...should have been bigger since they blatantly ignored the warnings of the rangers who were stationed at Tubbataha.  As for the poachers who had the 200 Pangolins, their boat should be sunk and turned into an artificial reef!.

Stu

I strongly recommend the red filter in Anilao on night dives.  Keeps the worms from swarming all over you.  I'll be in Anilao a month from today.

S.

I switched my Aquatica 7D from N5 to FO mainly for increased reliability.  Sync cords can (and in my case) fail a couple of times over the years. Spares are relatively expensive to carry. FO Cords are cheaper and lighter (great for the traveling photog where these days, it's like every ounce counts).  I had a guest on my trip last year accidentally yank out the hotshoe wires of his housing.  I had a spare set of optical bulkheads and cables so we swapped his electrical cords to FO and he's not looked back.   You also remove a potential source of failure since there is no electrical contact between the strobe and housing, easy enough to see a kink in an FO cable, not so easy with electrical cords unless you bring a multimeter with you on a trip.

Another benefit is that FO users gain back TTL (assuming their strobes support DS-TTL and it's various versions). However, the camera does slow down, in TTL, you 'll wait for the on camera flash to recharge, even shooting in manual mode with the flash turned all the way down, the 7D went from 8FPS down to 3fps.  Not a big deal really when shooting UW.

One is limited to maximum sync speed of the camera, whereas on electrical cords, you can fire at any shutter speed.  Handy on those cameras (like the 7D) that can actually sync at 1/320th when the shot is a vertical.

Horses for courses....if N5 works for you, then leave it alone, but there are lots of benefits (and a few minor drawbacks) with FO strobe triggering.

Cheers

S.

Stephen, if you want to balance out your dome then then maybe consider investing in ankle weights and securing 1 round your port extension, some DIY folks cut a bicycle inner tube and get fastex buckles and lead shot to make their own.   Another option is the lead weights used by a tire shop to balance your car's wheels, stick those on the bottom side of your dome port.    When I'm using my 100 macro on my housing, I find it front heavy, and I use the Stix port collar to balance out my rig.

AV, the Megadome is pretty heavy since it's glass,  2 of the large Stix floats fit on 1 8" arm, (Ultralight or TLC), 4 floats give about 1.6lbs of bouyancy.  If you want more, TLC has a float that you mound on the cold shoe mount of the housing.

S.