Question WWYD: On trip; busted strobe adapter; new Strobe time?

[David Haas]

The Inon D200 is a great strobe with larger controls than the previous S2000 and new S220.

BUT.......It's no more power than the little S2000 (Guide Number 20.) That said as you mention with gloves on or large hands many people like it. For your compact set up it would likely be fine.

The current discontinued Inon Z330 original and Z330 II are the exact same power with a guide number of 33. The only addition of the Z330 II is the dome is a "fly eye" frosted dome where the original Z330 comes with a diffuser that does the same thing (softens and spreads the beam a bit.)

If more power is what you want a clean used Z330 / Z330 II might be an option.

Good luck!

DH

Photos of fellow UW photographer Michele Bighouse and her "Battlestar Galactica" Nauticam Canon 7D II system!!! LOL......

I took these with my Canon G7X II, Fantasea housing, F Series BigEye Air Lens and one Inon S2000 at our local quarry 7/15/23

 

[ginkgo]

The S220 was an immediate no-go; the dials on the back are way too tiny for use with gloves.

That's disappointing. Did you try it with gloves on? It looks to me that perhaps the one dial could be turned with friction by rubbing a finger below the strobe. It sticks out below the strobe just a tiny bit. In practice, that might be really awkward, or it could be fine. ?

 

[Oskar@Retra UWT]

The rep was bearish on Retras as while they are great strobes on paper, in practice he was seeing more of them come back in for board replacements than he’d like.

As much as we rely on resellers for representation they are sometimes unintentionally spreading rumours like these just because they can't sell an item. In this case the new strobes are due for shipping in a couple months and the previous generation is no longer in stock.

We have a good relationship with Reefphoto and even though they misrepresented our product in this particular case I think they are not comparable to Bluewater who have our products on their website as bait to sell you other brands. Bluewater haven't purchased any of our strobes for more than 3 years because they demand a higher profit margin than everyone else and have blatantly wrote that they will misrepresent our product if we don't give them more profit. Since we couldn't do that they kept their promise unfortunately.

Full disclosure, Reefphoto had 1 (one) case where a strobe needed a board replacement which was very unfortunate but was also solved promptly under warranty.

We are not a brand that can afford to sell junk and with each new generation our strobes are defacto more durable and reliable. If an issue does occur we use DHL Express (shipping takes about 3 days from USA) to get our product in for service which is a small price to pay for getting a product looked after by the same people who develop and manufacture it.

I apologise for the long piece, just wanted to make sure to stop some of the rumours spreading.