Auto exposure pre-flash and strobe

[MikeS]

Does anyone have experience with a Substrobe and auto exposure with a digital camera that uses a pre-flash? I have a Sony DSC-F717 with an Ikelite housing and Substrobe DS-125. I went with the DS-125 strobe because I thought it would work with the camera pre-flash for auto exposure. But, the system seems a bit of a kludge. The sensor built into the housing detects the built in flash, and causes the strobe to fire.

Has anyone tried this, and if so how did it work?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[ssra30]

The Ikelite strobe is certainly quite popular and I do own one as well. The Ikelite solution to TTL is kind of a work around the real TTL strobe. On paper, I think the idea is sound.
Basically in digital camera, the preflash will give the camera some idea of the lighting condition, it will then fire the flash, once the camera decides that the flash lights up the scene adequately, it then quenches the flash. The Ikelite sensor will trigger the strobe and mimick the internal flash ie it is synchronized with the internal flash. I think the sensor works quite well as long as it is aimed properly and it does not receive any other source of light beside the internal flash.
All in all, I think it works pretty well, especially in macro mode or when the scene that you shoot have pretty even lighting.
One problem it has is when you do a wide angle shot with dark background and close foreground. The TTL function will force to strobe to stay on longer to attempt to light up the background and ending up overexposing the foreground.
I think this is pretty much a weakness for any strobe with any kind of TTL.

 

[bandit_TX]

Mike, I use a DS-125 with a Olympus C-5050 and the PT-015 housing. Apparently Ikelite made special provision in this housing for a flash sensor. I use the external TTL sensor on my setup and it works very well. I imagine this setup is similar. I can tell you also that Ike Bigham stands behind his products better than anyone I have dealt with.