ianmarsh

You need a one inch ball mount, https://www.ulcs.com/index.php/products/universal-adapters

Oops... Just noticed the post has been edited and the flooded gear is no longer listed:( ian

Hi Pavel Hope you are well:) Could you post a few pictures of the flooded 13mm, especially the front and rear glass? Thanks ian

bump

Totally agree... peer review is the only valid way of validating claims and Biorxiv is not...

I think Interceptor 121 may be correct... this might be a long process, but maybe something good will come of it. The world does generally seem to be coming together and maybe there are long term lessons we can learn for this, in many areas of human interaction. That said, and not trying to be unrealistic, but the SARS outbreak lead to rapid escalation of research activity, and bypassing of some regulations. (It's too bad we didn't learn long term lessons from that outbreak!).This is not without some risk, but people are pretty smart these days. I have confidence that the scientific community will get ahead of this. I saw this: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.987958v1 This type of "treatment" may serve as a bridge until a full-on vaccine is on the shelf. One of many areas of investigation:) Fingers washed and crossed!!

This is the single most useful aggregation of factual information I have found so far: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

Boletus Sobering indeed.... I just heard a CBC program on the situation in Lombardy and other parts of Northern Italy. It sounds very dire. The head of the Italian society of critical care was interviewed. His comment was the only control measure that will have any real effect is "social distancing". Forget the masks until you are infected, and gloves are of no use at all....False sense of security and possibly makes things worse. Wash your hands, but most importantly stay away from close contact with unknown people and stay away from mass gatherings... Fingers crossed for the affected people in Italy, and a cautionary tale for the rest of the world. This is NOT the 'flu' or a 'bad cold', despite what conspiracy theorists will say. In the end, concern about cancelled basketball games and cancelled dive trips will seem banal. ian

The point of government action is not to eliminate new cases, but to flatten the curve. It’s all about the Rate of Rise of the transmission curve, so that we do not swamp the health care system. That is what is going to kill people. All humans on the planet have a responsibility to each other, and especially the elderly and compromised, to do their part as governments direct. There are lots more smart people running the show than Youtubers, Facebookers, Tweeters and the like. As a recently retired physician, my provincial medical licensing body has put me on notice I may be called back into service if the shit really hits the fan.... ian

Got it! Thanks ian

Let me see if I have the concepts straight: In a system using a Nikon DSLR in a Nauticam housing with #11031-HSS (for Nikon) installed, with Retra pro, the UW Technics board works as the interface between camera and strobe. This serves the same function as the circuit in a Nikon Speedlight that makes it Nikon, or in a Seacam strobe specified for Nikon. 1) The Retra is "Brand Agnostic" in the sense it can be used on all camera platforms as long as there is a controller available for that brand. Otherwise it is a simple manual strobe. 2) TTL is controlled via the installed board, which communicates between the camera and strobe, based on profiles written by Pavel. These would be different from the Nikon Speedlight profiles, as they are determined by the characteristics of the flash tube output, which are unique to the strobe. The profile must also take into account the method used by the camera firmware to generate and interpret the pre-flash data returning from the subject to calculate the main exposure flash. This is also unique to the camera brand. 3) HSS is pretty straightforward from the conceptual side. I would presume that other camera brands would be slightly different, depending on how the shutter curtains work, if they have this option, but the main concept holds for all brands. 4) The Smart SL feature on Retra is a way to bypass the TTL underwater if you choose to shoot manual, once the board is set up for TTL and the housing closed. It ignores the pre-flash TTL pulses and just fires the strobe. Output will be dependent on the power setting on the back of the strobe. Not sure if this thinking is correct? 5) Not sure what would happen if the Retra strobe was set at the "Manual" on position #1 and the TTL board was set in TTL mode? Would it accomplish the same thing as 4) above? Since I don't have the UW Technics board as yet I am trying to understand how all this will work, before taking it under water. If anyone has comments or corrections of the thinking, please weigh in:) Shout out to Pavel and Oskar for their considerable efforts and intellect in making this system a reality. Anyway, hoping to put all this into practice in Anilao with the Reef boys in April, Covid-19 permitting.... ian

I will say that with the mantas, I sometimes had problems getting away from them... they would swim over top of you and stop. They would settle down on top of you, expecting to be cleaned. Strobes came in well here to light the beautiful white underbelly:)

Retra V1 I had hoped to use continuous light for rapid sequence, dolphins etc. Nowhere near enough light for that. Humpback mother and calf... did not approach, all the usual suspects every dive, whale sharks, one tiger shark. The boat had a resident videographer called Adil who produced an amazing video for the trip... well worth the money for me as I don't do any useful video. But I will say if you were diving near him, you were always in the thick of the action... ian

Stu I did Socorro last April on the Nautilus Explorer and had the same concerns... great trip by the way. It was my first venture into this type of trip. My plan was to use continuous light with a pair of Sola 3800 lumen video lights. I did about three dives with that set up and switched to strobes for the duration. There was nowhere near enough light for stills. The dives tended to be deep (100ft) and the visibility was not great. Also the diving was "heavy" with lots of gear and thicker wetsuits than I am used to. Keeping as streamlined as possible was key to keeping gas consumption under control. I usually ran out before my non-photo buddies. I pretty much did the whole trip with my 13mm Nikonos RS. I used the Superdome on a couple of dives with the 8-15mm FE but noticed way more drag when swimming. Also, heads up on the customs scam at the Cabo airport. I got dinged for my housing and strobes. Having said all that, the boat and crew were awesome, and the marine life spectacular:) ian

Thanks for the replies So, do I have this right? Smart SL is a means of switching between TTL and Manual flash mode (Nikon D850 and UW Technics TTL Nauticam) without changing the selector dial on the TTL board? I have only ever shot manual before, so this is new territory to me. ian