Nicool

Beautiful pictures as usual Alex! Your dome is scary though

Hi Helene! Congrats for those beautiful pictures. Like you said it reminds us Indonesian great macro places (a small Secret Bay...). I'm also French and living in Antibes, so I'll try to dive there this summer :-)

Hi Don, Do you know how long does your Mini Fisheye stays turned off? I've had a look to the Big Blue focus light (FF 1x5), but it stays off for 3 seconds, which seems too much to me.

Hi Matt, Sounds great! I'll probably go for Inon then. One last question worries me: they don't say if this light would automatically shut off when the strobes fire. Is it the case? If not that's too bad, because it probably has a negative impact on your pictures...

Hi guys, I'm also interested in getting a focusing light for my D300 Ikelite housing, especially when mounted with the Nikon 105 Macro. The Inon LE 240, 250, and 550 series look great! I like the idea of the red filter, supposed to be less scary for underwater wildlife (anyone knows if this works)? Also, they have varying angle coverages (from 20 to 75 degrees). Anyone knows a good reason (other than price) to prefer a small angle coverage? dive safe! Nicolas

Thanks for this very comprehensive solution rtski! I'm gonna try this, and it looks less scary than using the technique mentioned above

One remark: I acknowledge it's not recommended to jump in with a housing, but I've met some photographers doing so (e.g. negative buoyancy entry; due to strong current), and they're just fine. I believe Sea&Sea housing have a screw-in for the port, that's more reasurring. Even when I don't have to jump with the housing, snorkelling on the surface (whales...) can be necessary, and I would be a bit scared to do so with my Ike housing. Would it help to go down-to 2-3m with the housing to 'secure the seal' before snorkelling?

Hi, one more advice to add: carefully lubricate the o-ring between the housing and the port (the wobbying one) each time you assemble the gear. This is the only o-ring you're supposed to lubricate that often. I guess it's because it's tight with pressure, it can be a bit twisted if the dome rotates before you enter the water... Not sure, but failing to do this lubrication costed me a Nikon D300, at my 8th photo dive... 3 weeks before liveaboard-honeymoon trip, aaaaahhhhhh!!!! Fortunately Ikelite has been very reactive and checked + fixed the sync cord (flooded too) before my trip :-)

Hi there, Three months ago I've had a bit of salt water inside my Ikelite 8" dome. I ended up the dive and the camera was fine, cool. Problems arrived after rincing the inside of the dome, and trying to dry it up: due to the shape of the dome's base, a bit of water couldn't get out! So I stupidely dried it up manually, using a soft cloth. Now my dome has a lot of very tiny scratches in the inside, and I'm afraid they lower picture sharpness. At least they increase the rate of out-of-focus picture So I may try the Micro-surface solution (thanks all for this advice!), but I wonder if it's not a hard treatment for my dome, considering that I don't have any big scratch. Anyway, my actual question is: what would you do when you get water inside your dome? You can't just let it evaporate, you would end up with stains on the inside. How would you dry it and avoid those micro-scratches? Maybe I should open a dedicated thread for this question? cheers,