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British Society of Underwater Photographers

The impressive selection of images on BSOUP’s show stands are always a thrill to see and many evidence the terrific photo potential of temperate green water photography here in the UK. ‘JP’ Trenque was on-hand to tell me about the BSOUP annual prints competition which has four open categories. The overall winner will be decided by public voting and will be announced at the London International Dive Show (LIDS 2010)

JP Trenque at the British Society Of Underwater Photographers Stand

Fantasea Line and Fuji Cameras

The combined Fuji and Fantasea Line stand was showcasing the new Remora strobe and modeling / focus light combination. Taking power from on-board AA’s this guide number 20 strobe has a single and quite modest flash tube with a horizontal beam angle of about 80 degrees making it suitable for compact camera wide angle adapters. It’s a physically quite large and weighty though which may make a compact system feel a little top heavy. Fibre optic sync’d and rated to 55 meteres.

Fantasy have teamed the Fuji F200 with package comprising an OEM housing, a red filter, push fit big eye dome which restores the cameras topside field of view and a +4 macro diopter. A + 8 diopter is to be released soon.

The Fuji F200 package

Intova

With their entry level compacts, housings, arms and strobes, Intova’s products are unashamedly built down to a price. On the positive side, their products have very likely made underwater photography accessible to divers who would not have otherwise taken a camera underwater.

Horvarth and Partner

The German retailer H&P are regular exhibitors at DIVE 2009 and Stephan Horvarth was keen to show off his new strobe arms. Using a 1-ball system, with or without o-rings, H&P’s float arms are manufactured from 29mm OD carbon fibre tubes in a range of lengths (16, 20, 24, 28, 33 and 41 cms). What I can only describe as clones of the Ultralight Control Systems AC-CS two way clamps are also manufactured in Germany and seem to be well made and are offered by H&P at competitive prices to the American made original. A complete arm system comprising of 3 two-way clamps, a 20 cm and a 28 cm float arms and base adapter weighs 540 grams on the surface but in-water this weight drops to 50 grams. H&Ps carbon fibre float arm and Loc-Line hybrid offers another strobe positioning solution.

Stephan Horvarth shows his new carbon fibre and hybrid strobe arms

Sadly, the French accessory manufacturers Dyron did not feature on the H&P stand as expected. This was a pity as I was hoping to assess Dyron’s 185 degree fisheye for the Canon G9. But I was able to handle the PRO version of this glass designed for video housings. My impression was that the build quality was not what I would have expected from a lens priced at around 1,200 euros. Apparently the degree of zooming that is required to eliminate the circular image produced by any of the Dyron 185 degree fisheyes is such that they offer no practical advantage over INON’s UWL-165 or UWL-128 and dome unit.

The 1200 Euro 185 degree Dyron fisheye

Oonas Divers

The UK based travel agent Oonas Divers continue to host their popular photo workshops with Mark Webster. The next workshop is being held on the MY Blue Planet 1 and the itinerary is the Red Sea’s northern wrecks and reefs offering as subjects the wrecks of Abu Nuhas and the Thistlegorm and the spectacular reefs of Ras Mohammed and Tiran. Jeff Goodman is also running Video & Editing Workshops for Oonas at the Red Sea Diving Safari camp at Marsa Shagra.