Question Advice on strobe lights

[Susan1234]

I am looking for an underwater strobe and/or light that does a decent job at BOTH macro & wide angle, and ideally 1 that would also have a light I could use for night diving (an ALL in 1 light/strobe for EVERY situation). I only want to add 1 light to my camera as to keep it as light & simple as possible. I have a TG6 with an Olympus PT-059 housing. I am an amateur who enjoys taking photos & occasional videos of anything I see. I mainly dive in the Caribbean. I know this is asking a LOT of one light & I don't expect professional results, just better than shots with no added light at all.

I am looking at 5 lights as of now. Any chance you can tell me if any of these would be appropriate for macro, wide, & anything in between & if you would recommend 1 over the other & why?
1) Backscatter HF-1 (hybrid)
2) AOI UIS P1 Ultra (hybrid)
3) Marelux Apollo S
4) Sea & Sea YS-D3 Duo
5) Ikelite Ecko Fiber

TIA! Any help will be greatly appreciated!

 

[The Chairman]

Moved to the appropriate forum...

 

[Nemrod]

I am not a YS/S&S fan at all and not particularly smitten with the TG either*. But, in this case, I think you would be happy with the YS-D3 with the RC mode enabled on your TG.

Or a focus light on the housing like the Kraken 1600 and two Inon S220 strobes. They will not couple with the RC mode but can shoot standard sTTL.

The HF-1 is a powerful and large strobe. It does have a video light. I keep reading about flooding incidents but, but I am considering them for myself. I cannot come to grips with the size and weight of a pair for me. But as a single strobe on an arm for a TG, might be okay. And they also couple with the RC mode.

Strobes are useful out to about three to five feet, beyond that, especially in clear, shallow tropical water, the ambient light will overpower even the strongest strobes resulting in mostly blue cast photos. You gotta get close.

For macro, the TG's forte, even a single HF-1 might be too much strobe. Maybe with a diffuser or filter on the strobe head.

(*) Meaning take my thoughts on the strobe selection as being non expert on the TG system and just general vs specific knowledge based.

 

[Susan1234]

I am not a YS/S&S fan at all and not particularly smitten with the TG either*. But, in this case, I think you would be happy with the YS-D3 with the RC mode enabled on your TG.

Or a focus light on the housing like the Kraken 1600 and two Inon S220 strobes. They will not couple with the RC mode but can shoot standard sTTL.

The HF-1 is a powerful and large strobe. It does have a video light. I keep reading about flooding incidents but, but I am considering them for myself. I cannot come to grips with the size and weight of a pair for me. But as a single strobe on an arm for a TG, might be okay. And they also couple with the RC mode.

Strobes are useful out to about three to five feet, beyond that, especially in clear, shallow tropical water, the ambient light will overpower even the strongest strobes resulting in mostly blue cast photos. You gotta get close.

For macro, the TG's forte, even a single HF-1 might be too much strobe. Maybe with a diffuser or filter on the strobe head.

(*) Meaning take my thoughts on the strobe selection as being non expert on the TG system and just general vs specific knowledge based.

I am not a YS/S&S fan at all and not particularly smitten with the TG either*. But, in this case, I think you would be happy with the YS-D3 with the RC mode enabled on your TG.

Or a focus light on the housing like the Kraken 1600 and two Inon S220 strobes. They will not couple with the RC mode but can shoot standard sTTL.

The HF-1 is a powerful and large strobe. It does have a video light. I keep reading about flooding incidents but, but I am considering them for myself. I cannot come to grips with the size and weight of a pair for me. But as a single strobe on an arm for a TG, might be okay. And they also couple with the RC mode.

Strobes are useful out to about three to five feet, beyond that, especially in clear, shallow tropical water, the ambient light will overpower even the strongest strobes resulting in mostly blue cast photos. You gotta get close.

For macro, the TG's forte, even a single HF-1 might be too much strobe. Maybe with a diffuser or filter on the strobe head.

(*) Meaning take my thoughts on the strobe selection as being non expert on the TG system and just general vs specific knowledge based.

Thank you very much for your helpful and detailed response. I greatly appreciate it.

 

[Chrisk919]

I own a pair of Backscatter HF-1's I use with a full-size housing, but I don't own a TG6/PT-059 - my only experience is having seen buddies with them for macro work.

As Nemrod mentioned above they're pretty big units - 227g (0.5lb) negative in-water so even with just one HF-1 your (otherwise neutral) PT-059 is now pretty negative, which makes it harder to hold, especially if you've got a muck-stick in the sand trying to take a macro photo one-handed, etc.

So that moves you away from flex-arms on a tray into full arms with a couple floats or float arms to make it neutral again.

Compare that to the negative 40g of the Sea & Sea YS-D3 Duo (which I have not used - to be clear) and it seems like it might be a bit of overkill for your "keep it as light & simple as possible" requirement.

So while it has a decent focus light for night shooting, and an "ok" video light for the occasional video, it wouldn't be what I'd choose for a TG6 if I were looking for a 'light' all-in-one strobe.

 

[Susan1234]

I own a pair of Backscatter HF-1's I use with a full-size housing, but I don't own a TG6/PT-059 - my only experience is having seen buddies with them for macro work.

As Nemrod mentioned above they're pretty big units - 227g (0.5lb) negative in-water so even with just one HF-1 your (otherwise neutral) PT-059 is now pretty negative, which makes it harder to hold, especially if you've got a muck-stick in the sand trying to take a macro photo one-handed, etc.

So that moves you away from flex-arms on a tray into full arms with a couple floats or float arms to make it neutral again.

Compare that to the negative 40g of the Sea & Sea YS-D3 Duo (which I have not used - to be clear) and it seems like it might be a bit of overkill for your "keep it as light & simple as possible" requirement.

So while it has a decent focus light for night shooting, and an "ok" video light for the occasional video, it wouldn't be what I'd choose for a TG6 if I were looking for a 'light' all-in-one strobe.

Thank you very much for your help and explanations. It is greatly appreciated!

Would you please tell me with if I could use the HF1 video light as a night dive light and still take photos with the strobe or will I be in the dark when I switch over to the strobe? Or would I use the 1500 L spotlight as a nightdive light & be able to take photos with the strobe? Sorry if these are stupid questions. I'm just trying to figure all this out.

 

[PatW]

I shoot with the Sea and Sea YS-D3,duo. I use two of them with a fiber optic trigger. I shoot manual. You can shoot auto with them. They have decent light. They can be used for macro or landscape. The light is small enough to move around easily. The intensity is easily adjusted. It has a focus light which is not great but does the job. It uses 4 aa batteries and works fine with rechargeable batteries.

A fair number of people use this strobe. I think it is in the sweet spot of high end strobe while being not budget busting.

I would suggest that you watch you tube videos of your options to get a better idea.

 

[Chrisk919]

tell me with if I could use the HF1 video light as a night dive light and still take photos with the strobe or will I be in the dark when I switch over to the strobe? Or would I use the 1500 L spotlight as a nightdive light & be able to take photos with the strobe?

In 'flash' modes of the HF-1 you would have a 'focus' light mode (the 1500 lumen light you mention, but three levels, low/med/high) you could use, but it's not the same (not as bright) as the 'video' mode - that's actually a good thing on a night dive: at night I typically leave it on 'low' or 'med' so as not to blind my buddies.

In video mode there is no flash, just the light. I tried video once, so far, on a night dive (with domed diffusers) and it was bright... like Mack-truck-on-a-highway underwater bright, lol.

 

[arew+4]

Light weight compact reasonable price decent video and still performance. I would suggest the backscatter MW-3400. These are from a TG 5, with just the MW 3400 was traveling light on a non diving trip to Plays del Carmen the green most is with light of and on. The primary drawback is on longer shots the edge roll off is pronounced. It has 3-5 levels in both the narrow and wide modes, very good battery life, and a red light mode to keep the swarmers away. I don't shoot much video mostly because I don't enjoy editing it and nobody wants to watch raw video.

 

[TostitoBandito]

Nothing wrong with just wanting a single strobe, as long as you realize you'll be somewhat limited in terms of wide angle especially larger subjects. For macro it's perfectly fine though, and actually more desirable than two strobes in certain cases. That said, I'd encourage you to decide whether video or stills are more important to you, and choose a video light or a strobe accordingly. The hybrids that purport to do both are typically expensive and heavily compromised in at least one of those areas compared to cheaper dedicated options.

The other factor to consider is that good strobes are typically much more expensive than good video lights since they're more complicated devices with more aspects of their performance beyond just power to consider like recycle time, flash duration, sync methods, flash tube shape, etc... A video light is just a glorified flashlight or dive light, with some extra bells and whistles. For that reason I'd prioritize the strobe purchase first.

If photos are your game I'd go for the best strobe in your budget, and then maybe plan on adding a relatively inexpensive (<$350) video light at some point in the future if necessary. You can shoot excellent video with natural light though if you setup correctly, especially wide angle, but you can't really take stills without a strobe. I shoot occasional video and that's what I do, since I don't care nearly enough about it to add more lights to my rig. Here's some clips shot with no lights on my R5:




As for your list, I have a lot of experience with Ikelite strobes and my advice there would be to get the RC165/DS165 instead of the Ecko if you can swing it. It has over 3x the power of the Ecko, and will serve you better should you decide to upgrade cameras or get a second strobe. I can't comment with anything first-hand on the other brands.