TimG

Thanks, I hadn't thought of something like that. Sorted! Thanks, guys

Dann-Oh if you have specific questions, just post them. I know Adam has used the Anglerfish a fair bit; and I've had a few outings with one.

Thanks Elias - yeah, that might do it. Don't know how I missed those. I've spent many a happy hour scouring Amazon pages for them.

I can chip-in a bit: Essentially the Anglerfish can be switched on or off underwater. It has a sensor that detects the flash of a distant strobe which then triggers an initiating LED. A strobe connected to the Anglerfish by fibre optic will then fire. So when your primary strobe fires, the Anglerfish detects that and fires the remote strobe that is connected to it. The response is so fast you cannot distinguish a delay. The Anglerfish is battery operated and compact. They are very good if slightly finicky in working out how to turn them on and off. Essentially you have to slap them into the palm of your hand. A technique that takes a little practice!

All looks good to me, Massimo

Bit late to this party but: I've been humming and hahhing for ages about whether to get a rectilinear for my D500. Since moving back to DX the Tokina 10-18 has been my go-to wide-angle lens. It is very rare indeed that, for me, the fisheye distortion is noticeable and unpleasant. Looking at Wolfgang's table coral examples, it's pretty hard to tell the first one is a fisheye shot. Does it need adjusting? It's in the eye of the beholder. Maybe the Thistlegorm shot exaggerates the perspective slightly. But some would argue that it increases the dramatic effect. As Chris suggests, and the conclusion I have come to, that adding a rectilinear is helpful if you want to shoot subjecs that are a bit more distant (as Chris says, sharks, whales etc) or ,interesting point made by Massimo, if its fast moving subjects that might well end up near the edge of the image and which will need cropping (though this then gets into the soft edge issue) For those reasons I decided recently to buy the Nikkor 10-24 - essentially to have a lens that is better for those bigger, slightly more distant subjects. Lots of sharks here in Sint Maarten! I hope to get it in the water next week.

Nice! If you have LR I'd be tempted to: - use the Dehaze slightly on the whale shark pics. I think that would give them slightly more eight and definition. And maybe cool the pictures a bit - they seem to haver a red tinge to them (the fishball one especially) - reduce the highlights on the fishball. The fish to the right of centre look over exposed and reducing the highlights might sort this out a bit - one the final shot, the wreck with the cables, maybe lighten up the shadows a bit? Both those wreck shots are nicely atmospheric. I hope that helps a little.

Hope springs eternal eh?

Others with more detailed knowledge will, I'm sure chip-in - but 2018 was pretty early days for HSS on the Retras. I'm not sure the strobes at that stage had HSS so the likelihood is that the trigger didn't either. That said, you can't go far wrong just by trying it. I've got a UWT board in my Subal housing that let's me use HSS on Retra ProX. It's a really great feature especially for those heavily backlight or sunball shots.

Does anyone know where I can find the cable management clips shown in this photo? They are part of the system in a Subal housing and I'd like to fit a couple more for the vacuum valve cabling. But I can't find anything like them after many a Google expedition. They are 15mm long and 8mm wide. I've not been able to find any that are so small. Thanks!

Hi Tim If you are planning to buy a commercial fibre optic cable they are all pretty much the same - other than making sure you have the right plugs at each end. If you are buying through an u/w camera company just let them know what you want to connect to what. You can chose between coiled cable and straight. Coiled seems a good idea but I found the coils can put an unnecessary strain on the connections - and I now only use straight. You can make your own cables by buying the plugs which are readily available and some 617-strand fibre optic cable. They are easy to make, tailored to your own needs, inexpensive (certainly compared to commercial ones) and very satisfying!

No worries. I hope we can get it sorted quickly for him

Hmm, sorry about that. We'll sort it out. Ask him to be patient!

There shouldn’t be a problem. Could he post something?

Hey Steve. No, it shouldn’t take long. Let me take a look. “foot doc” is the user name?

I think you make a good point there. You can add more and more pixels and better and better "image quality". But to what end? For many of us (most of us?) looking at an image on screen does not require tons of pixels or tons of IQ. And even for commercial usage, as Alex M pointed out recently, magazine cover images need to be interesting images not megapixels. I'm still selling images taken on a Nikon Coolpix 5000. No-one has muttered about the lack of pixels or the dodgy IQ. Maybe if you want to create massive prints and have the house walls to handle them, then fair enough. Otherwise, what is the point? As I've written here before, we are seduced by camera manufacturer marketing. Moving gear around now is such a headache with airline limitations. Seems to me being able to transport gear to dive locations is now a bigger issue than having loads of megapixels and the sharpest optics. Sorry this is all Off Topic but, hey..... And I'll now shut up......

LOL, a buddy of mine here in Sint Maarten combined u/w photog AND rebreathers. I could see the reason but, mercy, the amount of gear, the space he needed on the boat - and the care to set up and monitor was incredible.

I'm sure Phil and Alex will reply, but just to fill in the gap.... Anglerfish remote triggers work pretty well for those situations: http://www.anglerfishlighting.ca/anglerfish-remote-optical-trigger.html

Yep, that's what I use

Yep, I agree with Stu. I think I've come to see the three elements (shutter speed, aperture and ISO) in underwater photography use as: - Shutter speed: to vary the blueness or blackness of the image background especially for macro. The faster the blacker. Fires the strobes up to a certain point (maybe 1/250 depending on system) and higher using HSS. Freeze motion when strobes not in use. - Aperture: controls depth of field so a large element of creative control. - ISO: increase when the shutter speed has got especially slow to help avoid motion blur or camera shake. Higher ISO helps with motion freeze when strobes not in use. These may not be entirely classic photography uses - but I find these work for me underwater.

Super tip, Stoo. I knew I should have paid more attention at chemistry

Please do feed back here, Mags. LOTS of interest.

Hmmm, interesting. I use Retra strobes on a D500 via a UWT Subal HSS v4 trigger. The flash icon in the viewfinder always illuminates when the camera is turned on with the trigger connected; and the Metadata does show: Flash "did fire". Maybe it's a S&S YS thing? Which trigger have you got? UWT, right?

Woah! That's quite something! For those with a long neck?

You probably squeeze in, right?