D80 vs D90

[AussieByron]

Hi Rainer,

It would be nice to have more light of course. But I wanted my setup to shoot stills first and then video second. Hence the reason why I went with the Ds161 as they are a great strobe but a poor video light.

I have been playing around with the Tokina 10-17mm more with video and using the Sola600. I find that it works well with the Tokina at 15mm with just the single Sola600 and often or not finding I had to turn the brightness of the sola600 down as it was blowing out alot of subjects especially reflective fish. I bought the Ikelite DS161 as they were a little bit more than the Ds160's but I could use the LED light as a backup/fill light to the primary Sola600.

I tried using my DR 15w HID (1000lumens) on wide spread but found a halo effect in the middle. The LED light the Sola has a nice flood with no halo or hotspots. This of course might be different with video reflector for the HID.

The down side to bright lights is that they scare everything off and lights up all the partical in the water, especially in green water with bits and pieces floating in it. The Grey Nurse Shark can handle a little bit of light but you can see when people are using their video rigs that the sharks turn away alot earlier than what they do with still strobe action.

Honestly you could get away with your HID with something like a 17-70 Sigma lens but if you wanted to go wider than say 15mm you need maybe two 21w HID with video reflectors.

Regards Mark

 

[Chuck Tribolet]

Your right Chuck, I meant the D7000, we are working on both design at the same time and I got my number crossed , mind you the D3100 housing/camera kit will be a knock out also

I am sure that, as with all of us, you will find it much better looking through a "normal" viewfinder than looking at a LCD, mind you, in some down to the ground level macro situation, the LCD does come in handy.

I sure hope you put an on/off switch on those housings. Adm.
Linda's got an Aquatica housing for her D40, and that switch
is conspicuous by its absence.

 

[Viz'art]

The D40 was a entry level housing made from a casting, due to fluctuation in shape of this method, it would have been very expensive to get a solution that would have worked consistently and this would have reflected on the pricing, this is the major reason we moved away from casting and are now machining every housing on 5 axis CNC machine, we can now have shape repeatability and a level of precision we could only dream about a few years ago.