My rig is too heavy underwater

[Fota]

Switch to Lithium batteries.

They're a bunch lighter than Lead-Acid or Ni-Cad.

Terry

Terry,

If you say so (never thought about it), but the main problem is that there is no lithium battery for the DS-125 (that uses Lead-acid) and I have never seen any type C litium batteries (that I use in my focus light). Have you?


/Fota

 

[Fota]

I use lengths of PVC water pipe that are capped off. The nice thing is that it is absolutely incompressible so it doesn't change buoyancy at depth. For my 5" arms, I use two; one on each side. It isn't as streamlined as the foam solutions, but it drys well. I worry that the foam would capture water next to the arms and cause premature corrosion. Here is an image of my rig with the 8" and 5" arms. The black paint isn't holding up too well, but that's okay. It gives my rig that "used" look. Total cost: ~$10.

Cool!
Well I'm not sure mine would look or work as nice though...

I hope you are wrong about the corrosion worry.


/Fota

 

[Web Monkey]

Terry,

If you say so (never thought about it), but the main problem is that there is no lithium battery for the DS-125 (that uses Lead-acid) and I have never seen any type C litium batteries (that I use in my focus light). Have you?


/Fota

I bought D cells, so I assume they also make C cells.

Terry

 

[pakman]

I emailed them and got a reply within a few hours. Wow, that's impressive and yes they would be happy to ship international and the shipping rate looks very reasonable.

Hmm when thinking about it, why not go for their complete system. I mean for my current macro setup I need the (jumbo) floats, but I as I haven't bought any WA arms as yet maybe I should skip on the planned twin 8" tube ULCS arms and get the 4th Generation system instead. It will be cheaper and lighter but perhaps it will be too weak?

Yeah, my Ikelite setup is really negative. I have a 5" ULCS arm on the right side and slightly longer Ikelite arm on the left side and a 5" ULCS arm for the focus light. But I think it's mainly the DS-125 and the 4 C cell type batteries focus light that makes it heavy. Well the D200 is a heavy camera and I also have a DS-51.


Thanks,
Fota

Yep, Walter is pretty good. He was very quick to respond to my inquiries and get it shipped out to HK for a reasonable price.

I debated getting the entire stix arms but since I already have a full set of arms, I thought I'd give his floats a try first.

If I recall Cor's review and other follow ups from other viewers (look for the link to the thread on wetpixel on the Stix arms), there is no problem in terms of those arms being strong enough. They did have a slight problem with some earlier balls that started to crack but I think they solved that.

Just quickly doing some bathtub tests, 3 sections of those floats on my Inon "M" arms 2x2 will keep the arms, clamps, strobe adapter, and base adapter afloat. So that's one arm on each side with 3 float sections. That should be just enough for my setup as my Inon strobes are close to neutral. Unfortunately, my housing is still at the shop so I can't test the entire setup.

spt29970 - they've cut a small channel inside the float arms for the ULCS arms so water will drain out and dry eventually.

I'll try to post some pics later this weekend.

 

[JTemple]

My plan is to add some lift by running an extra arm across the top of my handles, similar to what is shown in the picture below from Jack & Sue Drafahl's site, using triple clamps. What I haven't decided is if the "cross bar" will be a Stix 9' arm with 18 oz of lift, or if I will use an 8" ULCS arm and a few sections of 4th Gen. super floats. The advantage to the ULCS arm is I can mount an INON lens holder (as in the picture below), but I won't get as much lift as I would with the Stix arm. What I need to do is add up the total weight of my rig and send it to BobF to run some nifty calculations for me. I'm not necessarily aiming to make the rig buoyant as much as I am just trying to add some lift to make it less negative.

 

[pakman]

As promised, here are photos of the Stix floats for ULCS type arms (in this case Inon M size arms). Notice how the hole is off centered to allow the arms to fold better. In the 2nd pic, you can see the insert that holds the floats in place and the channel that allows water to drain out.