bvanant

I now have a much better feeling for the difficulties of running workshops. Last week I was cajoled into leading a photo workshop for Blue Water Photo on a Rocio Del Mar trip to the Northern Sea of Cortez. On the trip there were only 4 photographers (2 novices, two relatively accomplished ) and teaching this group was quite challenging. After every dive I would go over the photos with each person and try to get them to change their approaches appropriately. The only thing that really worked was to leave my camera on the boat; give the group a set of extremely explicit instructions (shoot each of the 4 common bennies/gobies head on) and then set up the shot for each of them to get what I was saying. That worked but nothing in the class lectures seemed to have a very big effect. Running such workshops is hard and in spite of the large amount of 1on1 instruction at the end of the week there was a lot less improvement than I would liked to have seen. Of course it was probably my teaching style that was at fault but I have a lot more respect for the folks that run big workshops. Bill

We have some good HD but nothing in 4K BVA

Just don't try it on your plastic ports. Bill

I have both the diving labels ones and the ones from Amazon. While the Amazon ones (from myscubalabelsID) have square corners, not round in my hands they stick better than the diving labels ones. Don't know why and maybe they are made by the same guys but they do stick better Bill

The Underwater Tribe workshops are great in that regard, Mike and Luca are very helpful in the water. The workshops that Mike Bartick runs are very informative when you are topside, Mike teaches a ton about lighting particularly if you are into snoots and such. Bill

certainly there are underwater workshops where you are subsidizing photographers to pad their portfolio. There are others where the workshop leaders are in the water without cameras and teach and show how to set up shots. Ask questions before you go, any workshop where the leader is underwater with a camera should be a red flag. Bill

The 613 core fibers I am using are from Asahi and I can get them by the meter. Couldn't find anywhere else to get them. Coiling them is pretty simple and they fire my S&S YS D1 and D2 using the Nautical LED trigger. Pretty much any end glow fiber can trigger the Z240 (it is very sensitive) but I can not get a single core fiber to reliably trigger the S&S from the LED. From the camera flash no issues with either type of fiber. Bill

for multi-core fiber (like the S&S) the only place that you can get short pieces is industrial fiber optics about $6/meter for the 600+ core stuff BVA

I don't think I have ever washed or rinsed the inner cap of the strobe and I am sure I never have lubed the connectors. Theoretically these should never get wet in any way so never need cleaning. The contacts do occasionally get compressed too much and might need a slight bend to get them back to making contact. Bill

I know the battery compartment of the Inon strobes have o-ring seals, but I flooded one and the whole strobe head was full of water, I suspect that the battery compartment got a real high pressure event that allowed a leak past the seal. In any case, I agree that the major strobe guys have mostly figured this stuff out. Bill

still for sale? Bill

Yeah and cold California salt water with white eneloops also make gas. Not clear though that they continue to work. Cheers Bill

I don't suspect that the Nauticam housing is in very wide distribution yet. And it is not clear that it is so much better than the EM1-II Bill

Nice display. I had a bit of trouble calibrating it with an EYE-One but looks fine. Bill

The RX100V system was awesome in Tonga with the whales, but its use for macro (real macro not scorpion fish sized things) is quite poor even with a CMC diopter. Without the diopter filling the frame means something on the order of 3 inches wide. With the CMC this goes down to a bit more than an inch and a half, great for a clownfish but not so great for say small nudibranchs. Cheers Bill