Minigear Snoot Diving Light Review

A GAME CHANGER FOR SNOOT FANATICS

Text and images by Patrick Neumann

“Should I use strobes or lights for my underwater photos?” I don’t know how often I’ve heard this question. Until a few years ago, I used to give advice on underwater photography equipment at trade fairs. My answer was always: “Strobes for photography, lights for video!” That changed for me over the last year in a revolutionary way when I was introduced to the Minigear MS-03 snoot diving torch.

TRADITIONAL SNOOTING IS HARD

With the advent of snoot photography – where a narrow beam is used to light a subject but not its surroundings – the equipment used had to change radically. Snoot attachments became available for all common underwater strobes. However, handling them was quite a challenge. The snoot attachment on the strobe was difficult to align simply because of its size and unwieldiness. The challenge increased when there was no dive guide or buddy to hold the snoot for you. On your own, you needed one finger on the shutter release, an eye looking through the viewfinder, and your other hand “blindly” trying to align the snoot correctly. In addition, of course, you can only see the results of your attempts after the flash has fired.

THE GAME CHANGER

When the Minigear snoot diving light arrived on the market, it became easier to snoot more precisely, even without the help of a guide or buddy. They were smaller and easier to handle than the conventional snoot-flash combinations. It was also easier to check the lighting effect immediately, not only after taking the picture.

This orange baby hairy frogfish on black sand is a classic macro shot as well. With an open aperture, the frogfish is differentiated from the black sand

For this image, two snoot diving lights were used: one to backlight the baby hairy frogfish with a red colour filter, and the other to snoot just its face

OTHER SPECIAL FEATURES

The Minigear MS-03 has another special feature – it has a very narrow beam of light, like a laser beam. If you place two of the snoot diving lights to the right and left of the animal and align them accordingly, you can light the animal so precisely that none of the surroundings, foreground and background, nor the substrate, can be seen in the picture. And because the lamps are placed on the sand, the photographer has both hands free to operate the camera and adjust the lighting with pinpoint precision. Another effect of this type of lighting is that the light makes the animals look as if they are glowing from within.

NO MORE LIMITS TO THE IMAGINATION

To make macro images more interesting, photographers have used strobes to illuminate materials like steel wool or foil behind the subject to create bokeh background “bubble effects”. But now, with snoot diving lights, there are no longer limits to the imagination when it comes to lighting artificial backgrounds, or even foregrounds. Anything that reflects light can be found at any DIY store.

This yellow seahorse was photographed in Lembeh, Indonesia with a common 100mm macro lens and two strobes

For this backlit image of a seahorse, one Minigear snoot diving light was placed behind the seahorse to illuminate only the head and part of the body

NEW ARTISTIC FREEDOM

This “new” type of snoot photography allows photographers to decide what should and should not be in the picture, and also gives them the artistic freedom to add props and special effects to their images. This has created a whole new category of underwater macro photography for me, and kept me captivated over the last year.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

Precise snooting takes practice, and you will spend exponentially more time with a single subject. The number of animals photographed per dive also plummets. Sometimes, I spend an entire dive with only one animal. But for me, it’s always going to be quality over quantity.

A black-background image of a Zanzibar shrimp on a whip coral is a good example of a traditional macro shot. The black background is achieved by photographing against the water column with a fast shutter speed

A Zanzibar shrimp on a whip coral is illuminated with two Minigear snoot diving lights. A third snoot diving light was used to light up the “bling” in the foreground

PRECISION AND CREATIVITY COMBINED

It should be said that this new creative type of underwater macro photography can theoretically also be done with conventional snooted strobes, particularly the Backscatter Mini Flash with its accompanying Optical Snoot. Still, you only see the results after the flash has fired, and most importantly, it is difficult or near-impossible to manage two, three, or even four strobes at the same time.

ADDITIONAL ACCESSORIES

There are additional accessories such as colour filters available for Minigear snoot diving lights. There’s even a revolver of different condensers that creates different light beams for even more options to expand your creativity. These days, it’s hard to find something that adds a new facet to underwater photography, and for me, the Minigear MS-03 snoot diving lights – I usually enter the water with four of them! – give me that same buzz I felt at the beginning of my underwater photography career.

Check out the rest of the magazine for more great stories!

Scuba Diver oceanplanet No.128

Scuba Diver oceanplanet No.128