Alan’s Blog

My Ikelite DS-125 strobes come in two pieces, the expensive head bit with all the extremely expensive electronics and a relatively inexpensive (relatively is the key word) battery compartment. Now what I didn't know is that the expensive electronics are sealed from the batteries. It says this in the manual and if I had known this when my strobe showed signs of flooding I would have got straight out of the water and would have had a chance to rescue the electronics.

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Progress has been slow in my quest to take a decent underwater cave photo. A lot of travelling and othe distractions have kept my cave diving gear dry for longer than I would like.I took one of the strobes into the ocean and had a nasty flood where I learned a valuable lesson.

Back to the cave

With one strobe and a far more solid tripod mount I headed back to Cenote Taj Majal. I decided that around 10 am would be a good time in August to catch a few nice rays and around 11ish I would get some of the nice vertical beams coming down into the dome rooms.

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After strobe nightmares this trip is all about ambient light in the cavern zone. The idea being to take some of the pics i took earlier with a lower iso and longer shutter speed by using a tripod.

First things first I had to some how get the camera housing without a tripod mount onto the tripod. After some deliberation I decided epoxy would do the trip. If it doesnt work I will get one of the local metalworkers to tap out a thread in the aluminum tray. So here's some pics of how it looked.

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Following on from my first serious attempt at underwater cave photography. I decided to play with a remote slave.

I have two Ikelite DS-125 strobes. I left one on the camera housing and set up another one with a slave sensor. My plan was to revisit Cenote Taj Mahal and check out how the slave would light up a small formation. The slave sensor I used is triggered by a flash. You can change the sensitivity of this trigger. I thought hmmmm.. caves dark so daylight wont trigger this. Surely if its set to max sensitivity it will be easier to hide maybe. Of course i was wrong. So here's what I learned about strobes in underwater caves.

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After endless problems with my Ikelite housing, I finally conceded and bought a new one. This seems to be OK and so far hasn't leaked. After a couple of dives in open water i headed off to Taj Mahal to catch the early morning light in the cenote. I have taken some interesting photos with my old Canon powershot and the Canon housing but never with a DLSR. I can say its tricky. Really really tricky.

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Though I publish photos on my main website. I wanted a way to quickly share pics with friends and family. As quite a few other people were sharing their photos with me using flickr, i decided to go the same way.

As it turns out free flickr is far too restrictive so its time to find something else.

There is a limit of 3 sets (groups) that is far too small and also on the number of photos that can be uploaded.

I will give zooomr a go and report back. It seems it has no limits and looks pretty decent.

If you know me and have a zooomr account let me know and I will add you to my contacts.

After spending close to $150 on shipping and related 'incentives' to the Mexican Postal Service and having Ikelite assure me that my housing works fine and has been pressure tested to whatever depths, its time to take it out again.

Hmmm I am not happy, not one little bit. So it was pressure tested was it Mr Ikelite? It works fine does it? So how is it that I have actually worked out whats going on here and you havent?

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