bear35

I use the Eneloop pro as Retra recommended them for my strobe and i find they are fantastic. I have just come back from a weeks liveaboard they were partly charged before I went and I had to charge them once, nearly 600 pictures.

Most people probably go through this same dilemma as I did, and probably end up spending a lot of cash before they are happy with the set up they have. It is a learning curve and as you learn you realise you want better pictures so you add things then upgrade systems etc etc... The biggest difference is I was probably doing 100 dives a year and now closer to 200 so for me it is much easier to justify the cost. What you have to ask yourself is do you have the spare cash to spend on the difference between the Nauticam and Fantasea bearing in mind it will be used 6-8 times. Only you can answer that.

When you say you only dive 4-6 times a year, does that mean 4-6 trips or 4-6 dives?? In my opinion it all revolves how much use it will get to justify the cost. Just because you have a Nauticam housing instead of a Fantasea housing won't make any difference to the end result. If you are only doing 4-6 dives per year I would suggest the cheaper option would be ok. In my opinion as far as the strobe goes I would always recommend on spending as much of you budget as you can on the strobe. But that does depend to some degree on what you are wanting to photograph? If it is macro you are interested in then you can use small strobes. If you want to take wide angle pictures you will need more output from your strobes and you will need two. Unfortunately no one can probably give you a definitive answer to your question, it boils down to what you intend to do in the future and what your budget is.

Herb I can't but if you want to see it just go to facebook and look up Alex. The review is only an above water to look at the strobe with the new features, I believe he said in the post that the strobe had not been pressure tested and was not for diving. So there may be a wait before there are underwater reviews.

I have just seen a review by Alex Mustard for the new Retra strobe and it looks very impressive. Two models with one having a significantly stronger focus light and higher output... if your budget can stretch to it! The Retra web site has limited information about it on their website now.

Have you tried changing the battery? It was a while ago now on my old housing but I had a similar problem, changed the battery and it was fine.

I am in the south west, I sent you a PM. I have used it in Lembeh and the Maldives this year with no problem, but to be fair probably no shallower than 10m. But once you have it set up you have issues at shallow depths just leave it set as it is and look for subjects that will work as it's set up??

Hello sinetwo, I have both the Retra strobe and LSD. The LSD fits via the bayonet on the front of the strobe so there are no issues with alignment or movement. The focus light on the strobe has two brightness settings (I cant remember having to use the stronger setting) and shows a beam of light that is exactly the size and shape of the light that will be produced by the strobe. So for example if you have a nudi I taking a picture of, I switch on the focus light to align the light beam with the focus and take the picture. I cant say if the focus light is as strong as the Z330 because I haven't seen one, but all I can say is I have had no issues using the focus light. I guess if you are using it in shallow water in bright conditions you may struggle but to be honest I would say it is as good as it probably gets. Where in the UK are you? I can always let you have a look. PM me if you want.

Thanks Tim.

Thanks for all your replies. I am now looking into the histograms... Am I right in assuming that the only histogram on the review screen is the split one showing the four histograms for the different colours?

Hi guys Thanks for all your comments on this. I have just looked back over and compared some images since I have been using the D500 and diving in UK conditions the images do seem to be okay. That seems to me to indicate that it is in brighter conditions, at the surface in the UK and abroad in tropical waters etc. is where I am having the issue. I asked the question because I had an Olympus OMD Em1 before the D500 and never had any issues like this at all, what I saw on the screen when taking the picture was how it looked on the computer. Maybe I should just try taking the screen brightness up a touch if I am shooting in brighter conditions and see if I can use the histograms, although as I shoot in a wide range of conditions it sounds like it will still be hit and miss.

I looked earlier at the settings for the display and they were set to 0 if that's what you meant? I am finding it at all depths from the surface down. Maybe the answer is to learn to use the histogram and hope that does the trick.

Hi Dave I am shooting in raw, but I would rather get the exposure somewhere right in the first place rather than do too much on the computer! My problem isn't strobe power etc... The picture I am seeing on the screen underwater looks to be properly exposed then when it's transferred to the computer it's actually overexposed. This means taking a picture that looks underexposed and hoping it comes out right, so it seems to be more guess work at the moment.

Hi Tim Thanks for your reply. I was afraid someone was going to say that! I will start with adjusting the LCD a little and see what happens. I was hoping there may have been something set wrong.

Hi I seem to be having a problem. Nikon D500 I take a picture underwater, review it on the LCD screen and it looks correctly exposed. Above the water it seems to be overexposed (once on my laptop) and I am finding it difficult to judge how a picture will look while taking it. Anyone have any ideas?? Or is this just something I have to get used to? Thanks