WS007
Contributor
Now we want a review of these places you visited with full contact information for the dive operations and accommodation you used in these places
In your experience, should one go for these Backscatter strobes or the Retra (newest version) assuming price isn't an issue?
Perhaps the HF-1 video lighting capabilities are OK for the casual videographer or the still photographer who takes occasional videos but they aren't top choice for the full time or professional videographer.
=> I will post some photos later, when I am so far...
Accomodation was a simple and inexpensive two-person apartment, acquired via Airbnb, a stone-throw away from the diving base. We go there by car, 5h driving in each direction. The diving base has long tradition in this region, the founder, who pioneered the exploration of diving spots there, retired this March at the age of 81 and sold it to two nice hungarians, who are running it at present. He and his wife (who is about 10 years younger) are still on the boat every second day for recreational diving, just for fun...
Home e
Diving in Croatia with Najada. We offer the finest, coral-covered steep walls, fascinating wrecks and an impressive biotope.
www.najada.com
The Kornati islands are known for steep drop-offs, beautifully covered with sessile invertebrates (sponges, gorgonians, corals; seldom we could see even red precious corals). Not so much fish, as Croatians like to go out a lot for fishing. They have also few shipwrecks and a well preserved wreck of a "STUKA" (special kind of bomber) that was shot down during WWII..
=> I am not able to compare to the Retras, I never used them (Alex, who used both and is a much better expert than me in judging quality of a strobe, says the light quality of HF-1 is good, but Retra is even better (softer)). What would hold me off from the Retras (except the high price) is this "booster" addition that takes additional four AA accus (=eight AA/strobe!), stands out at the back and looks to me prone to leaks. I like the two powerful, but simple, Li+ accus of the HF-1 much more...
I only can say the HF-1 is a clear improvement compared to Z330 and YS-D2, which I was using so far (mostly in color temperature (I was really excited about this), but also in intensity (the 4500K flat diffuser eats up some light, but still plenty of light remains). After using the HF-1s few times, I never looked back and would not change back...
I must say, however, that I did not even aproximately need the capacity of the two Li+ accus, at least this time: the boat leaves in the morning for two dives and the dive time is limited to 1 hour/dive (what we did +/- 5'). After two hours of taking photos (not video!), the accus were still 70% to 80% full (for comparison, the accu of my Sony A7R5 was still 45%-55% full). This may well change when we do shallow house-reef diving that do not have a time-limit, e.g. in Egypt, usually three a day and about 2h each (there I have to exchange the accu of the A7R5 at least every two dives, sometimes after every dive)...
=> I fully agree, for occasional videos the HF-1 is good enough. I personally, could life without the additional video feature...
Wolfgang
