ChrisRoss

The problem with re-breathers is you need to be absolutely methodical in setup tear down, maintenance etc. You are relying on electronics to keep you alive, sure there is triple redundancy etc and bail out bottles etc. but how well do electronics and salt water usually mix? But you also absolutely need to be capable of paying enough attention to what the equipment is telling you while you are at the same time concentrating on trying to poke some optics in the face of a fish. This may be something you are capable of, but personally I'm not interested to find out if I am. (I'm pretty sure I'm not to be honest) . For myself I'm qualified to AOW and 30m depth, one day I might do the 40m deep qualification and that is enough for me, I'd rather go diving than do more courses.

Looks great Alex, out of curiosity do you know what the newer Sony bodies do? Do they stop down to focus or have they fixed the focus shift in software or some other solution?

I recall reading that for video the focus shift is not a problem - until then only certain lenses work with the system and we don't have a complete list as yet.

I'd be reluctant to take one on unless I had a proven lens solution to use with it without the focus shift issues and we wstill don't have a list of such lenses - I think the main one that works well is the Nikon F mount macro, SONY definitely shifts with the 90mm macro. I haven't seen tests for other lenses. I might be helping someone test it on a Olympus 60mm macro soon and may be able to report back??? watch this space.

I would think regardless of the viscosity it would escape through the path of least resistance there is obviously some gas made otherwise the expansion of liquid would be quite minimal and only a drop would need to escape to reduce pressure. Viscosity would only serve to slow down the leak rate. The only thing that might change that would be some solid material blocking the exit path - or if there is an internal pressure relief valve. INON strobes for example have a pressure relief vent. I am not all together clear, so you said the back of the super charger had popped off - that would seem to indicate the cap had deformed enough to allow this to happen, presumably it was still screwed down, so it's quiet some movement to actually have it pop off. You would want to have the caps checked thoroughly if that is the case.

There are a few odd things, first as you said both strobes failed, second it seems from your description that the leakage occurred through lifting of the top cap. If it was the bottom supercharger o-rings that caused the problem then you would expect if that o-ring had failed already then the leakage would be through the part that had already failed - the easiest path out. I get that the strobe seemed fine diving to 147 ft and yes the pressure doubled at 90 ft but It seems like its not enough additional pressure to cause failure at least for a correctly installed o-ring . Have you had a close look at the o-rings to see if there is any damage apparent? The only path forward I see is to send them into Retra unfortunately. I wouldn't be comfortable diving them again unless they were pressure tested. If Retra cleans them out they can check dimensions of all components to confirm if they are in spec or not and of course pressure test them. It seems unlikely that it's a design fault, surely yours is not the only set of Retras taken to 100m or so. You mention the supercharger is difficult to fit - do you have the same problems fitting the regular cap which I seem has the same o-ring layout? On the supercharger it shouldn't be difficult to install - perhaps a different technique should be used? Such as fitting the cap first and then using the screw to pull the supercharger component into place - it should be similar to fitting the normal cap.

Never say never, there are some ways this would be possible, for example excessive clearance in between the cap and the strobe or deformation of the end cap. In addition it would seem there is a non user serviced o-ring in the bolt that is used to tighten the cap on. The way to sort it out is to pressure test the full strobe after battery compartment repairs are carried out. The strange thing about it is that both strobes failed at more or less the same time.

Great video, the skill to shoot and edit it is every bit as important as the tech used.

More to the point Oscar has confirmed that the warranty extends to cover if the water manages to get inside the the strobe body which is where you will basically wipe out all of the internals. For S&S and similar strobes I have seen lots of posts on here where strobes have been sent in for warranty only to have it rejected as they said the strobe had flooded. The costs to replace the contacts in the strobe should be fairly minimal in comparison to what would happen if water got into the main compartment.

I doubt that was the actual cause, assuming the o-rings are installed correctly they are sitting in a groove and there is a very small clearance between the cap and the groove. The o-rings are pressed by the water pressure ever tighter in contact with the metal in the cap and the groove itself so they seal better as pressure increases. You have to get up to 1500 psi (100 bar) before extrusion starts being a potential issue, your tank -regulator joint is sealed by an o-ring against 200-300 bar of pressure. If this was indeed the cause you should be able to detect damage in the o-rings by visual examination. This might be a good first step to undertake, under normal circumstances the sealing duty on an o-ring sealed cap like this is not particularly arduous so examining you o-rings under magnification looking for flaws is a good first step in investigating the cause. O-ring failure troubleshooting guides can be found on the net such as this one: https://www.oringen.eu/media/documents/O-Ring-Failure-Analysis.pdf If your o-rings are in good shape you would be looking for other causes for failure, which could be mechanical or some form of contaminant providing a leak path among other reasons.

I won't get into the warranty discussion but I note it was mentioned that the strobes were rinsed, and no mention of soaking. The strobe caps will have a small gap between the edge of the cap and the o-ring where water is held by capillary forces. Even after a long soaking on my strobes this water remains quite salty as there are only diffusion forces that act to dilute the salt in the water and after several days this water slowly evaporates and leaves salt crystals behind. The problem with this is the salt concentration becomes very high and it gets quite corrosive when left in contact with metals. I'm not saying this is a factor in the current issue, but long term it will lead to corrosion damage of the aluminium. So I would suggest long term not leaving strobes sitting for long periods after a dive. I always give mine a good soak and work the controls a little to get some water movement. I have INON strobes so the plastic body is not impacted, but salt could build up on metal control shafts etc and eventually give problems.

Didn't say I use them, I still get away without correction UW, need reading glasses on and but can see well enough to get by UW.

A few people on local dive site are attaching them to a go-pro mount on their mask and they can flip them up and down - I'm told it works really well

There's more options to get to some areas in Indonesia now, and you can even do a 1 stop flight ex LAX to reach Manado on Sulawesi, two possibilities are LAX - Singapore - Manado and LAX - Narita (Tokyo) - Manado. From there you could go to Lembeh strait for macro and reef/wall diving at Bunaken. The NRT-Manado flight is on Garuda and looks like it flies once a week in on Tuesdays and out on Thursdays. Bali would be easier to get to with more flight options and there would be non-stop flight from Tokyo and other cities.