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Hi @johnvila ,
I concur, the included white diffusers are too cold for general use (6300K), but like you said, bit of post-processing can work around that (I shot all the preliminary review with these). You’ll love your warmer diffusers though.
Cool series on the devil scorpionfish, I like number 2 very much 🙂
Interesting observation on open-aperture shooting, I purposely went testing some of these scenarios and didn’t find the hybrid flash to be too powerful.
Here’s an extract of my review (to be published by end August), which deals with macro & close-ups:
Whenever I set myself to write a major review, I ask members of The Underwater Club if there’s anything they want to find out about the new product, to include it in my testing.
One request I received was to check how suitable the Hybrid Flash would be for macro. The truth is, for such a powerful strobe I had planned to focus my testing on wide-angle, but it’s actually a very good question: is the Hybrid Flash capable of producing very subtle faint flashes of light, or will it over-expose close-up macro shots?
Good news: with its 12 power settings, spanning over 6.5 f-stops, I had no problem in exposing macro, super macro and open-aperture subjects. In fact, I only went as low as “1/16”, whereas the minimum power setting is 0.5 stop below.
and I’ve got the attached 3 shots as illustrations, with these captions:
Shot 1 (nudi): The Hybrid Flash can be turned down to deliver just the necessary amount of light for open-aperture shots. Nikon Z9, Nikon 105mm AF-S VR Micro, Nauticam housing, 2x Hybrid Flash with 4500K flat diffusers. 1/100, F/4, ISO 100.
Shot 2 (nudi gills): Even in a super-macro scenario like this, keeping a relatively open aperture (F/13), the Hybrid Flash was set at power “1/16”, half a stop above its minimum setting. Nikon Z9, Nikon 105mm AF-S VR Micro and Nauticam SMC-1, Nauticam housing, 2x Hybrid Flash with 4500K flat diffusers. 1/200, F/13, ISO 64
Shot 3 (goatfish): For Close Focus Wide Angle photography, the best strobes have a wide beam and small form factor. The Hybrid Flash isn’t small, but easy enough to manoeuvre around. Nikon Z9, Nikon 105mm AF-S VR Micro and Nauticam EMWL-1, 100° objective lens, Nauticam housing, 2x Hybrid Flash with 6300K (white) flat diffusers. 1/200, F/22, ISO 640.
Can you post a couple of examples where you had over-exposures with your exifs?
I would assume you had more reflective scenes than what I shot, or you had your strobes closer. You can easily cut down 1-2 stops by pulling them back.
