Canon A640 and Ikelite SS50

[kerryw]

Moved over from SB2

I recently got a Canon A640 and an Ikelite housing, now since I am a Nikonos user from way back, I have several Ikelite Substrobe 50's and MV's around so since budget does not allow for a digital strobe for a few months I decided to try out one fo these withe A640.

Since the SS50 does not handle preflash I set the A640 to manual mode, with the following settings

ASA 80
F8.0
1/250th
and used the Ikelite supplied diffuser for the internal strobe (not the blocker) with the internal flash set to 1/3 power

Even with these setting above water things were VERY overexposed so I know I would need some kind of diffuser on the strobe. I made a couple of home made ones out of various pieces of white plastic with various levels of translucence.

I tried it out underwater the other day, unfortunately being summer in BC the vis was really bad 5 to MAYBE 10 feet but I did do some closeup shots. Deeper the light was so low I need a focus light which I don't have yet and I had issues with the camera focusing on the crud in the water. However all in all i was happy with the results. I ended up using the strongest defuser I had made (attached with velcro) and changed the aperature to f6.3 for most shots, the attached pics have had auto levels done in PS.

All in all I'm happy with this, I can see a "real' digital strobe being great if you are switching from Close-up to WA but for straight CU this works pretty good. I've got a trip on The Nautilus Explorer to the Port hardy area planned for the first week of August so that should give me some time to perfect this.

KLW

 

[alcina]

Time warp! Yup, I've used a trusty old orange Ikelite substrobe 50 with the remote sensor happily with various canon A series models without problems. No real manual controls on this strobe so subject to strobe distance had to be used. It worked just fine

Funky shapes in your photos

 

[kerryw]

Time warp! Yup, I've used a trusty old orange Ikelite substrobe 50 with the remote sensor happily with various canon A series models without problems. No real manual controls on this strobe so subject to strobe distance had to be used. It worked just fine

Funky shapes in your photos

Yeah I tried a combination of different opacity deffusers and strobe to subject distance. This worked OK but does get a bit complicated.

I am sure I will buy a digital strobe in the near future but for now this does give we the ability to play, especially since I have a trip coming up in a couple of weeks.

Hmm I'll take funky shapes as a compliment I'm not particularly happy with the compositions but that was not what I was concentrating on or at least they is my story, I will admit to liking things like patterns and textures in Macro as much as identifiable animals.

KLW