lbaldwin99

I just managed to flood one of my beloved INON z330 strobes and desperately need to replace it. I am leaving for a dream trip Indonesia in December 2023 and need it before then.

I'm not sure of the Kelvin value. I should have said I set a custom white balance, which will vary at depths. I am so impressed by the ease of shooting and quality of the images. There is very little post processing I will need to do on these photos. I will definitely by using the custom white balance in the shallows more frequently going forward. I hope this helps!! Here are a couple additional photos you might enjoy.

Thank you so much Kraken de Mabini. I’d be interested in seeing how your shots turn out. Shooting without the strobes was great!! I didn’t have to worry about the settings or positioning the strobes. Plus no backscatter in the images. After manually setting my white balance, all I had to do was fire (and work with my camera settings of course).

Thank you to everyone who provided recommendations. I stumbled across a solution that may work for me in most instances. Yesterday when I was diving, I was having problems with my strobes so I started shooting in ambient light. 2 very curious squid came over to check out my hubby and me and let me fire off a number of shots. I was extremely pleased when I looked at the images in LR as the squid eyes came out nearly perfect in every shot. Typically we encounter squid in the shallows in the Caribbean so this solution should work in most encounters (barring night dives of course). Here are a few shots where I only fine tuned the overall white balance.

Thank you all for your input. Based on your feedback, it looks like increasing my shutter speed to 1/250, stepping down my ISO, increasing my aperture and dialing down my strobes will help. in addition pointing my strobes outward and moving them back slightly may also help to prevent the blowout in the reflective eyes. It will be much easier to correct the squid / water coloring in post if they come out too dark than to try to recover the blown out eyes. I will also practice on some reflective objects to help fine tune my settings and strobe position.

Thank you to those who responded. I uploaded 2 sample images. Both were shot using a Nikon D850 with a 60mm lens. Both were also shot in relatively shallow water (20-30 feet). My strobes are set for manual exposure and I've been trying to compensate for the ambient light so they were set to around -3 (I'm not positive on this setting). Let me know if any additional information would be helpful.

My problem is when I photograph squid I typically blowout their reflective eyes and I’m not sure how to prevent this. Can anyone provide some setting tips / suggestions for capturing images of squids without blowing out the eyes using a DSLR camera. I am using 2 z330 INON strobes so any suggestions for strobe positions would also be appreciated. Currently my strobes are positioned in the 10 and 2 o’clock position.

For years, I used TTL exclusively - never manual. There were already so many camera settings to be concerned about, I didn't want to have to deal with the strobe settings. As I became more comfortable with the camera settings and as my images improved, I became more critical of the lighting from TTL. I actually came out to Wetpixel for suggestions on improving the images, still wanting to use TTL but the majority of the responses recommended switching from TTL to manual. I decided to bite the bullet and give it a shot and it was surprisingly not that hard to learn. It does take some practice and you do need to be aware of your strobe settings at all times, but I am so much happier with the results!!! BTW - I shoot with a Nauticam D850 and 2 Inon z330 strobes.

I’m a little late getting into the conversation, but if you haven’t purchased your BC and reg, I’d like to make some recommendations. I’m a serious u/w photographer (Nikon D850 in a Nauticam housing). I used to dive with the Scubapro Hydros, which I highly recommend. There are no pockets, but Scubapro has designed many alternatives for attaching accessories. The only negative I can say about the Hydros is that it is heavy for travel (9+ lbs) - which is why I switched to the Hollis LTS. It is half the weight of the Hrdos, and it is semi-customizable. You can add pockets and Hollis has many accessories to customize. The only negative is that the weight pockets are small (not too small for me, but they are on the smallish side and I have seen this as an issue in some reviews). You can add back weight pockets to the cam bands if you need more weight or if you like to distribute your weight. And there are 2 cam bands - which I prefer. Regarding the regulator - I LOVE the Hollis 500SE. It is a side vent reg and I never have to worry about bubbles getting in my face. It also breathes very easily - no negatives about this reg, but the purge valve is on the side instead of the outside. It’s not an issue, just an adjustment. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

SOLD

I’m upgrading to the Inon Z330 strobes, so I am putting my pair of Z240’s strobes up for sale. Both strobes are in excellent condition condition with only a little sign of wear. Nothing serious, just some marks on the plastic and fading of the ball mount (all cosmetic). I’ve never had any problems with these lights – they are very reliable with quick recycle times. They have never been flooded. Included with the strobes are the ball mounts, extra o-rings, and all diffusers (2 additional sets of diffusers not shown in pictures). Price: $375 each (if you only want 1) or both for $700. Buyer pays shipping. Will only ship in the US (my apologies to non US divers but I have a limited time to get these mailed out after they are purchased).

I am so happy with the results using the strobes on manual. It is getting easier with each dive. Here are a few un-retouched photos (please disregard the composition on these - I just wanted to highlight the use of the strobes on manual). I honestly never thought it would be so easy to get good shots. I'm sure I can improve, but I figure these are a good starting point. I appreciate everyone who took the time to read my post and provided feedback. Kind regards - Leslie Howell

Thank you all for your help. I did find that one of the Pre Flash Cancellation circuit buttons was in and the other was out on my strobes - so I'm sure that was not helping. I checked the meta data in both photos and it did indicate the strobes fired. Since I received such great information I decided to bite the bullet and try shooting the strobes in manual mode. So again, thanks to all of you who provided such great tips about shooting in manual. I have the Nauticam TTL convertor for the D850, so I had to move the "rotary switch" to "0" to specify manual mode. I made sure both magnet circuit buttons were pushed in on the strobes, started using settings provided by Chris Ross and I am happy to say the color is back in my photos. I had a few stinkers (a couple way too dark and one completely blown out) but overall I was pleased and surprised it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It does require me to think a bit more when composing the shot, but this a good thing as I am not relying on TTL to compensate for poor camera settings (I didn't expect TTL to compensate - but very often it did and I got lazy). So thank you all again and Diggy - thank you taking the time to work your "LightRoom magic" on my turtle photo. I was also able to restore some color, but I think you did a better job!!! Kind regards - Leslie

Hoping I can get some help here. I'm in Aruba for the next few months, waiting out Covid 19. I've been doing some shore dives here which tend to be very shallow (8-15 feet at some sights). The problem is there is so much ambient light I'm not sure my strobes are working "as expected". The colors seem very muted even though I appear to be close enough to my subject and the strobes are positioned correctly (from what I can see). The photos look fine on the LCD, but when I get the photos in LR, they have a blue / green cast - not the bight colors that I am used to seeing. At first I thought the problem was caused by my strobe batteries. I've been using NiMH rechargeable batteries and I thought the batteries were no longer putting out the charge that they used to (they are a couple years old, but I only use them on dive trips). I bought brand new batteries, but I am still having the same output issues. Next I started thinking the ambient light was so bright (combined with poor camera settings) resulting in the low light from the strobe. I am shooting with a D850 with TTL converter and 2 Inon Z240 strobes. I shoot in TTL because I'm a bit gun shy about going manual on the strobes. I've read the Inon manual regarding the manual settings but not fully comprehended how to shoot in manual. So my questions are: 1. Doe the bright ambient light make a difference regarding the strobe output? If so, can you recommend some settings to use in TTL mode to boost the strobe power? I typically use diffusers which I can remove in the future. 2. Would shooting the strobes in manual help to resolve the issues I'm having? If so can anyone recommend a good tutorial on how use the Inon strobes in manual mode. Any thoughts / recommendations are greatly appreciated. Below are some of my typical photos on the shore dives.

No longer available.