aquaplane

Thanks so much Wetpixellers, you've come to my rescue again. I put black electrical tape all around the front corner of the housing and left a small window where the FO cable was fixed by the mounting block. Working wonderfully now! This is all still a mystery to me so thanks everyone for being patient with me. (Hi again, Jim!).

Ahh that makes so much more sense now! You're right - I did have the tape on the camera body itself. So I'm guessing now I need to figure out some way to block my camera's internal flash while still letting enough light through to my fiber optic cable. I have a fiber optic mounting block from reefphoto that just sticks to the outside of the housing http://reefphoto.com/index.php?main_page=p...roducts_id=4023 but that's all I received with the kit. Would really appreciate recommendations from anyone!

Thanks for the suggestion Andy, I'll give it a go ASAP. What I'm a bit confused about is why the TTL function seems to be "working" ok when the internal flash of my camera is uncovered, but is wayyy out as soon as I cover up that flash. I know next to nothing about the intricacies of strobes or cameras and I just can't figure out why it would happen! I'm positive that it's a user error, but if anyone else has experienced (and resolved) something similar with the D2000 I'd love to hear from you.

Hi there, I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me out with an overexposure issue I'm having with my BRAND NEW Inon D2000 (it's my first strobe, so please forgive the dumb questions!). My camera is a fully automatic little Olympus mju1020 which doesn't allow much manual control of anything. I've been running some test shots on land with the strobe and the fiber optic connection and have found the images are exposing nicely. My problem is when I block the internal flash (I've been using black electrical tape with a pinprick hole to allow the optics to detect the preflash), all the images turn out hugely overexposed! I'm not sure if it could be something to do with the camera trying to brighten the images because the preflash is virtually blocked and it's not receiving the information it needs to expose correctly? I know that Inon does a tape that blocks out all visible light but allows IR wavelengths - not sure if this could be a solution, or if it's something else entirely? I've been using the strobe in Low sTTL and dialing the EV down to '5 o'clock' (about 7) as recommended by the manual. If anyone can shed some light on this I'd really appreciate it. Hopefully it's just something I'm doing completely wrong

Wow, even more info! Jim, was wondering how long it would take before I bumped into you. I stalk around the place a bit (creepy...) and have seen some of your new dSLR pics. It looks like there's no stopping you! If you're THAT keen to snap a handfish, they're surprisingly easy to find down here in Tassie if you know the right places to look. You'll find them on the most boring dives in the world where everything else is apparently dead, but those little guys make the boredom all worthwhile. I'm not too concerned about the lack of an electronic sync cable because realistically I'm not going to be investing in an SLR for many years (if ever) on a continued student salary. I would however like a strobe that will work in well with any compact that I decide to upgrade to. I trawled through some more threads and it seems there's enough of you rooting for the D-2000 for the EA mode thingimy and the more even strobe coverage to make it sound like the more attractive option for +$100ish. I emailed Ryan at ReefPhoto and he advised me that the EA system is a little outdated and much more prone to user error compared with S-TTL, but I guess if you don't have the option of using TTL then you do whatever you can! I do like the idea of an aiming light also. It will probably remove a bit of the guesswork with aiming when I'm learning how to use the thing. Unless anyone else has drastically different ideas, I think I might go for a D-2000. Again, thank you all so much for your help

I'm not sure if the manual for the D-2000 is sufficiently similar to the S-2000 to be helpful, but just in case: http://www.deduiker.nl/pdf/INON%20D-2000%2...ed%20Manual.pdf

Thanks again, Chris. I'm VERY new when it comes to all this sort of terminology, but I saw you posted some similar info regarding the EA mode of the D2000 on the G11 thread and it made slightly more sense to me there... With my current mju1020 camera, I have no manual control (everything is on Auto) so I assume that the lack of EA on the S2000 wouldn't make any difference, is that correct? If I was to upgrade to a camera like the G11 which does allow full manual settings, would the lack of EA on the S2000 strobe mean that I couldn't use the TTL setting? Is EA required to properly expose the strobe to match the camera's manual settings? I'm sorry if that's all a bit jumbled. There's so many new words to learn

Thank you all so much, you've been incredibly helpful :-). I really appreciate the time you've put into responding. So it sounds like the consensus is a strobe is the way to go! I'm thinking perhaps the Inon S-2000... or would I be better with the D-2000? Ugh, so many questions. I'll go trawling through some threads to see what I can find. Again, thanks to everyone who offered advice. You guys are an amazing resource!

Hi there, I'm not entirely sure if this is the best place to be posting this thread, but I consider myself very much a beginner and I'd love some advice! I've been shooting UW with a housed compact for a couple of years. It's the first camera I've ever owned - a little Olympus Stylus mju1020. It does the basics you'd expect but, like a lot of snap-happy compacts, has no manual control over aperture, shutter speed, focus etc. I'm a poor student and aren't exactly rolling in money, but would really like to upgrade to have a bit more freedom in the sort of photos I take. At the moment, I rely on internal flash and torch lighting and shoot in cold water (10-16 C), so backscatter is a massive problem for anything other than macro shots. I've given some examples below of what I've managed so far - not really much scope for experimenting with lighting, DOF etc. I still love snapping away, but I am increasingly feeling like I've 'outgrown' the capabilities of my current setup. My question is this: would I be better off purchasing a better compact (was thinking maybe a Canon G10 or G11) and learning how to improve my photos using manual control before adding a strobe, or would it be a better learning pathway to go the other way around and add a strobe to my existing camera until I can save up for the next upgrade? Eventually I'd like to experiment with adding some macro and WA wet lenses, so that needs to fit in somewhere too! Thanks in advance for your help. I'm terrible at making decisions!

Aengus, that's a phenomenal photo of the weedy eggs! You even managed the embryonic eye contact But yes, they look a lot more like the egg colour I'm used to. Perhaps it's something to do with adult diet or developmental stage of the embryos or something.

Are those eggs in the second-last photo above purple? Even that is really interesting - I've probably seen 100ish males with eggs around Tasmania over the last few years and they've always been red.

As a born and bred Tasmanian, I can vouch that we have quite a lot of these little guys floating around. You find them in both Ecklonia and Phyllospora beds (usually our rocky reefs are dominated by a combination of these two), and also hanging around the Macrocystis forests. I haven't dived much outside of Tasmania and haven't seen the weedies in other areas, so it's really interesting to see there's such a range of morphologies across similar temperate rocky reefs. I've attached a few snaps of different Tasmanian weedies. The male with eggs isn't quite as fat as the females, but it's certainly not all gross and emaciated like the Melbourne one... EDIT: just edited this to add locations to the images in case they're relevant... Fortescue Bay, TAS Kingston Beach, TAS Fortescue Bay, TAS Bruny Island, TAS Kingston Beach, TAS Bicheno, TAS

I agree with loftus, that I think it looks better in landscape orientation. Perhaps you could crop it in and rotate just a tiny bit so that the edge of the kelp and angle of the nudi is more of an upwards diagonal (bottom left to top right). I'm no expert on any of this, I would just find that more aesthetically pleasing :-)

Now THAT is a freaking cool froggie and backdrop!

Wow. I love love LOVE the dramatic lighting and shadows, particularly in the first three images!