S.U.P.E.R. Part 14: INON Telescopic Arms
In our ongoing series S.U.P.E.R. (Scubaverse’s Underwater Photography Equipment Reviews), Scubaverse.com’s underwater photography editors Nick and Caroline Robertson Brown review new underwater photography equipment, general diving equipment, and some older favourites too.
For the fourteenth instalment of S.U.P.E.R., Nick and Caroline take a look at INON’s Telescopic Arms.
Inon have brought out a series of telescopic arms to add to their extensive range of accessories for underwater photographers. They are made from carbon fibre and so are lighter than you would expect. They come in 3 sizes and we tried out the medium arms with both compact and dSLR cameras whilst they were on test with us.
The telescopic arms have 3 sections that can be extended, or retracted, to the length you desire and then locked in place using a twist, lock dial for each section. The medium arm can extend from 370mm to 790mm (14.5in to 31.1in). As they are made out of hollow carbon fibre pipes, they are not too heavy when in the water, however INON have brought out Mega Float Tubes to go with these new arms for additional buoyancy. Personally, I found the weight to be good, but they could do with a float if you are going to use them in the fully forward position for stuff like backlighting.
What we loved about these arms is that you can shorten them in fully when the camera is out of the water and you are carrying it around, making it less cumbersome. But they really come into their own underwater when you want to change the length of your arms. As you get closer to a subject underwater, or your subject gets closer to you, ideally you want to change the position of your strobes to pull them closer to the camera. With these telescopic arms, you can easily change the length of your arms, even when wearing thick gloves in cold water. If you want long arms to reach past your subject to provide some backlighting – no problem! Then, as you move on to a new photographic subject, you can reduce the length back to make the system more manageable in the water.
We used them as the sole arm whilst diving with a compact camera and they worked very well. I think the short arm would work best with a compact system but the medium arms we used worked fine. With our dSLRs we added an additional short arm to give us further options for manoeuvrability. We liked this setup so much, we have kept them!
These telescopic arms can also be used with a GoPro or other action camera so that you can extend out when you want to video marine life out in front of you, or as a super selfie stick too!
