Behind the scenes: Strobe testing in the Red Sea
On day 5 of the Wetpixel strobe testing trip, we travelled south by road for about an hour to the port/town of Marsa Alam. From here, we picked up a boat to take us out for a further hour or so to a dive site known as the Dolphin House.
From a photography perspective, it features numerous large coral pinnacles, one with a long coral swim through/cave.
I had chosen to use two Inon Z330 strobes for the day’s diving. In part because I had spent the past 4 days constantly switching between strobes in order to compare their performance. It was good to put a single set through their paces to try and concentrate more on producing images than testing strobes!
As the name suggests, there are frequent interactions here between visitors and dolphins. So much so that the Red Sea’s protection agency, HEPCA, has instituted some rules for interacting with them. The area in which you can snorkel with the animals is fairly restricted (within a surface buoyed ares) and all participants must wear a life jacket.
Emperor Divers had teamed me up with divemaster Lisa Pulzer. The coral pinnacles are pretty large and it helps to have model to provide a sense of scale.
The coral swim through is quite extensive and provided with opportunities to carefully control strobe light. The Inon’s output are very controllable in manual mode.
The coral pinnacles gave plenty of opportunities to crank up the Inon’s and test their power.
Without sufficiently powerful strobes, it is almost I’m possible to bring out the colors of the reef like this. Certainly the Inon’s preceding model, the Z240, would not have been able to light up areas like this.
The dolphins weren’t in evidence, so our second dive was back around the stunning corals.
