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Photography : Equipment Category
| Travel-ready Think Tank Airport Security carry-ons |
A while back I wrote an article about our carry-on luggage for two dSLR housings. Since the Storm Cases combined could only fit a single flat port and small dome port, all other ports (including some Aquatica 8" ports and port shades) had to be packed in our checked luggage. I assumed a bunch of ports would have little or no value to thieves. Well, a connecting flight through San Juan proved me wrong. They stole five ports, including two limited edition Ikelite-Aquatica dome ports with port shades. I later found one of the Ikelite-Aquatica ports bundled with a housing for sale on eBay. You can read part of the story in our Bonaire in October 2005 trip report. Hopefully the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and TSA will put an end to the thefts in San Juan, but I'm not holding my breath. So meanwhile, I went looking for larger carry-ons -- ones that could potentially accomodate our newly purchased, and redesigned, Ikelite 8 inch ports.
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 Ikelite released a new 8 inch dome port several months ago that accepts up to three different stalk lengths. I wrote a review of this new dome port -- although it remains a draft until I can finish sorting / post-processing a backlog of photos. :-) In August, Ikelite announced an upgrade to their medium and long stalk lengths for this port. The original stalks are rated to 150 ft, while the new stalks are rated to 200 ft. Ikelite is offering a free exchange for the old stalks, so if you have some, you may want to take advantage of this offer sooner than later.
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Please note: I started writing this article shortly after returning from Bonaire in June, but have not had a chance to complete it yet. Hopefully this draft version will be useful for those of you currently looking at buying Ike's new 8" dome port. I expect to have this article completed (with example photos) within the next few weeks.
A Little Background Info...
To truly appreciate the current 8" port design, it's necessary to talk about it's predecessor...
Over a year ago, Ikelite purchased four hundred 8" ports from Aquatica, and packaged them with custom delrin adapters. I bought two of these 8" dome ports #5510.80 for our Ikelite Canon 20D housings. I also bought some Aquatica WA port shades to minimize lens flare, and to protect the port from accidental contact with rocks / coral during entry.
I noticed that the delrin adapter sat a little looser in the port opening than Ikelite's regular ports. Brett from Ikelite explained that since the adapters were machined, they were truer than Ikelite's other molded ports, so this was in fact normal. Still, with the added weight of the WA port shade, I decided to be extra careful during entry not to bump the port -- just in case. A few months ago one of our housings flooded. The port seal failed completely as I put the housing in the water. The port and o-ring were installed properly, and the housing had already been on one dive that day. I expect several factors were at work to break the port seal, including strong surge, waves, the buoyant nature of the port, and the two port clips (that allow the port to wobble on a single axis within the port opening).
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 Housing buoyancy has been a problem for just about every photographer I've met, including myself. Compact strobes like the DS-125s pictured here are very compact, and thus very negative underwater. It takes air filled spaces to offset the negative weight of batteries, lenses, cameras, etc. When shooting wide-angle, the large diameter of a dome port will help offset some of the weight. ULCS and others also offer buoyant strobe arms of various lengths. The longer the arms, the more lift is achieved. This is all great for wide angle, and indeed, our wide-angle setup is close to neutral and a real pleasure to use. The opposite is true for a macro setup though - especially at night. You can see a typical night macro configuration in this picture -- swap the large wide-angle dome port for a compact flat port, long buoyant strobe arms for short ones, add a flashlight with batteries, and you can see how such a housing setup would be a real brick underwater.
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 Melanie and I have been going back to the Carib Inn in Bonaire twice a year for the past four years. We started taking pictures with a small P&S camera, then a prosumer camera, and finally dual-strobe dSLR setups. By the time we got up to our current housing configuration, we realized the rinse tank at the Carib Inn would not hold our cameras. We purchased some 48-can soft-sided coolers to use as rinse tanks, but these were a little short. It took some time to find our current rinse tanks - larger 48-can soft-sided coolers by Polar Bear. These coolers are excellent. They're large, well padded and constructed - a little expensive, but well worth it. Several UW photographers I know use them as carry-on and/or to lug around their setups. If you decide to pack them in your luggage, they can take up a bit of room. We've found that camping compression bags, often used for clothing and sleeping bags, compress the coolers to an acceptable size.
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 Before every trip I ask myself which lenses and ports I should bring along. And once at our destination, the question then becomes which lenses need diopters, extension tubes, and what ports are best with those lenses. The following article documents my experience with the lens and port combinations I've tried. In some cases, I also include notes on camera settings and substrobe arm lengths. These notes are as much for myself as anyone else, since I will use this article as a reference on future trips. You can expect this information to be updated once in a while as I try new lens / port combinations and fine-tune old ones.
If you have additional information and/or opinions on these or other lens and port combinations, please share them in the comment form at the end of this document.
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 Every underwater photographer I know struggles to carry-on as much equipment as he / she can. As we prepare for another trip to Bonaire (in October 2005), I took a few snapshots of our carry-ons to describe our setup. Hopefully you can use this information to improve your own setup, and if you have some suggestions / comments for us, please feel free to post a comment bellow.
Melanie and I both use complete dSLR setups with dual strobes and a variety of ports / lenses, which makes travelling a little equipment intensive. When packing, I try and carry-on as many essentials as I can, figuring our checked luggage might arrive late, or not at all. We use two Storm Case iM2500 hardsided carry-ons with dividers, a Crumpler Schrinkle backpack, and a large Stahlsac regulator bag. The iM2500s are just at the carry-on size limit. They fit in the overheads of all but the smallest planes -- where they "valet check" all wheeled carry-ons anyway. The backpack and regulator bag fit under the seat in front of us. We just have to make sure not to get the front row. :-)
The dive related stickers on the carry-ons are there for a purpose. When I slide the carry-ons in the X-ray machine, I usually get a comment from the agent similar to "diving equipment, ey?", which is just what I want. This way, they're ready for the picture they'll see on their screen. It's helped get us through a little faster on several occasions.
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In early 2005, Melanie and I upgraded our photo equipment to Canon 20Ds with Ikelite housings, ports, and substrobes. On a trip to Bonaire in May 2005, we had the occasion to try a variety of lenses and port combinations. Excluding all the various support and spare parts we brought along, our underwater photography equipment consisted of:
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My wife decided it was time to upgrade her underwater photography equipment. She's been using a Sony P&S with a Sony housing and Ikelite DS-50 for over 2 years, so this upgrade is long overdue. After looking over the features of different housings and cameras, she decided flash TTL was one of her requirements. This article explores the different options available, with flash TTL support, for underwater digital cameras in September 2004.
Underwater housing and substrobe (underwater flash) manufacturers have found several ways to offer TTL support:
- Flash Sensor
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This is the most popular technique. It consists of mounting a flash sensor in front of the camera's own flash, either inside or outside a transparent housing. The flash sensor detects the camera's pre-flash (used for metering purposes), triggers a pre-flash in the substrobes, detects the real flash from the camera, and then triggers the substrobes for the exposure. The power of the substrobe's output is based on the intensity measured by the sensor. The strength of the camera's flash may be limited, which may in turn limit the amount of light the substrobes will project. In clear housings, the camera's flash may also 'leak' into the surrounding water and create backscatter, ghosting and/or lens flares (especially with wide angle lenses). Since the camera has to use it's internal flash for every picture, you'll have to wait for it to re-charge every time. This will also drain your camera's battery much faster. Substrobes are usually faster to re-charge, so you may be waiting on your internal flash while your substrobe is ready for the next picture. If your flash sensor is exposed to light from the surrounding water, your substrobe will probably fire when other photographers are around you. Near the surface, reflections may also trigger your substrobe.
- Hot-Shoe
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This second method consists of connecting a wire to the camera's hot-shoe. If the hot-shoe is "intelligent" (most dSLRs and some prosumer cameras), the camera will communicate to the substrobe the amount of flash required. The alternative is to set the power level on the flash / substrobe manually, and use the camera in manual mode. The protocols used to communicate between the hot-shoe and flash are often proprietary to each camera manufacturer. If housing and/or substrobe manufacturers want to suport these protocols, they must decode the protocol and add an special electronics to their housing.
- Housed Flashes
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Another alternative to support flash TTL underwater is to house the original manufacturer's flashes. The down-sides are maintaining one or two additional housings (batteries and o-rings), lack of an integrated modeling light, and most flashes are less powerful then some substrobes. Subal offers flash housings for the Canon 550EX and Nikon SB80DX, and Sea&Sea offers a flash housing for the Canon 220EX. All of these flash housings require a special 6pin cable between the camera housing and flash housing.
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