Julian D

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Hi Alex, Not a D800 or Nauticam housing but I used to use two of the older model (4401) with DS125's with no problems at all (D7000 & Aquatica housing). Manual strobe only and from memory I had flash power set at 1/128. I think the new ones are required only if you have an LED trigger within your housing. They auto configure on the first flash after you plug them in. It pays to remember this as it doesn't fire the strobes on this first flash and can stress you out a bit if you forget! I have since upgraded to Inons and don't need them any more if your other purchase option falls through. Three years old and immaculate. Julian

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Awesome! That was a great place to dive before it had a wreck on it and I had been in two minds about whether they should leave it there or make the company take it off, but seeing your video I can see it will be a great to dive on so I'm swing that way again! What was your depth? Thanks for posting.

Good stuff, great to see some NZ images on here.

Hi. Here's a couple few things you can try at home (with gear setup) (1) Try increasing your ISO and reducing your flash power and see if this reduces the number of shots with the shutter showing. Flash strength is proportional to duration so half strength will be roughly twice as fast and therefore allow a bit more latitude for the full flash while the shutter is open. Flash duration is very small but at full power on a small strobe I'm not sure it is as short as the conventional wisdom would lead us to believe. (2) I read on a post here that someone noticed that the frequency of shutter appearing was different between landscape and portrait shots. As the shutter is mechanical a bit of gravity (in the right direction) may possibly help. (3) I've also read that hard wiring with sync cords gives better sync speeds than FO but I haven't seen anything that really explains why. And that also doesn't explain the difference between your YS110 and D1. Hope that helps. Cheers

Not sure if this helps or not but there's a Subal flash housing for an SB800 on e-bay at the moment (nothing to do with me). Cheers

Hi Troutnut, sounds like you have an interesting project on your hands. I'm not an expert in video, and just a learner in still's I'm afraid but one thing that comes to mind reading your post is that if you are using a very wide lens and the fish is 10 feet away it will probably look tiny and you may not be able to see much detail in the footage. I'm a keen trout fisherman and tried mounting my housing on a pole and taking some photos of trout cruising in a backwater not long after I got my housing. I was using a tokina 10-17 lens and was surprised by how far away the fish looked even though they seemed very close. Below is a photo of a trout 3 or 4 feet from my camera taken with natural light only (just a screen grab sorry). The water had a slight bit of turbidity but you can see in this photo that already the colour and detail is dropping off significantly. Also I had a bike cable pulling the shutter lever and I noticed that when the trout were very close either the sound of the shutter or the slight movement of the lever spooked them a bit (not an issue with video I guess but worth considering). There is a guy on wetpixel who takes awesome photos of spawning salmon (the attached was a wild trout in a back country stream in summer). I think his name is Tom Kliene (sp?) and I think he is also a salmon researcher so suggest you look him up and pm him. Hope that is of some use and good luck with you project (make sure you post some footage). It's winter here and I'm hopefully going to try again on some spawning rainbows soon. Cheers

Thanks, that's good to know. Down in this part of the world I can't just rock into the local UW photo store and pick some of these up - it will be an international shipment with the freight likely costing as much as the floats. The float belt works well but I find it creates a twisting force with so much buoyancy low down (maybe the port is heavier than the nauticam equivalent?). It seems like a good idea to get the floatation up higher. I'll up the buoyancy on my arms but I may try out adding just a few floats on the port when I have the 105 setup on. Given there isn't really that many setups that we use, a table of housings with balanced buoyancy options would be a useful reference for putting together a new setup (without giving preference to any one brand). Same experience with the z240's although my Ikelites were good too. The size difference is useful - I can fit both 240's in the spot in my pelican case where I had just one Ikelite. I also tend to shoot in greenish water. Still interested to hear from anyone who has used a different setup eg mega float arms?

Thanks John, sounds good. I guess I must have regular size stix floats at the moment. Just to be clear - you don't need a float belt around the macro port with this setup? If so it seems like less than I have now as the port float belt has 7 or 8 floats on it. (I have the old 105mm and the manual focus port if that makes a difference?).

I've recently changed from DS125's to Z240's and need to adjust my rig buoyancy. It was ok previously but never really even close to neutral. My setups: AD7000, 2 x 3 inch arms with 1 stix float each, 2 x 5 inch arms with 3 stix floats each. Macro port (manual focus) with a stix float belt, 8 inch dome, zen minidome. sola focus light. In particular with the 105mm macro, the rig is still slightly negative but the port is light and wants to twist upwards. Similar with the 8 inch dome (no float belt). Not too bad with the 60mm macro or mini dome. I've seen a picture of a neutral nauticam d7000 rig and it was using inon mega float arms. Anyone using those with an AD7000? I would really like to hear what setup you are using if you feel you have achieved good buoyancy, whatever floats you use. Thanks

I'm in Hawkes Bay, I'll PM you cheers.

No advice on processing but just wanted to say that this is very cool. It's great to see work from someone else from NZ on here. Checked out your website too. Nice!

Hi. Here you go, the two metal strips hang down deflect the light from the flash and up through the port. They can rotate left/right which reduces the amount of light they send up through the port and into the cables. In my case one was bent at a different angle also. Bit of a long shot but worth checking. Cheers