Flash question

[Cannon ball]

Hi! I'm a beginner for underwater photography. As I check on strobes, their price are so high. So I wonder why people use strobe instead of make a housing for normal flash. My Pentax MZ-S camera has wireless P.TTL capability. It would be easy to make a housing for this flash since it is wireless (and should be cheaper than buying a strobe).

Thanks

 

[ssra30]

housing for strobe is not neccessarily cheap either. Subal housing for Nikon SB800 is well over $500. I am not sure how reliable wireless connection is underwater since it will have to go through 2 housing at least. If it is infrared then it definitely won't travel far underwater especially if it has to go through 2 aluminium housing or thick polycarbonate housing.

 

[MarkH]

Hi! I'm a beginner for underwater photography. As I check on strobes, their price are so high. So I wonder why people use strobe instead of make a housing for normal flash. My Pentax MZ-S camera has wireless P.TTL capability. It would be easy to make a housing for this flash since it is wireless (and should be cheaper than buying a strobe).

Thanks

I use a couple of home-made strobes that cost me about $20 to make out of ABS pipe, old second-hand surface camera flashes, and old Ikelite sync cords that I had lying around. Of course they're not TTL (but neither is my camera) and not very bright (they work fine within about 3-4 feet, which is about as far as I want to get). I also bought an old Honeywell Strobnar in an Ikelite housing for about $20 on E-bay. The batteries were pretty much disintegrated, but I replaced them with new ni-cads and now it works fine (except it blasts out so much light that it's almost too bright. I have to pile diffusers over it). These Ikelite housing/strobe combinations are pretty common and cheap on E-bay although as I experienced, most old "sitting around in a closet for years" strobes have batteries that will need to be replaced. I don't know the size of your surface strobe, but there are also lots of "generic" underwater housings (again, mostly by Ikelite and on E-bay) that you can put whatever you like in.

 

[f3nikon]

Hi! I'm a beginner for underwater photography. As I check on strobes, their price are so high. So I wonder why people use strobe instead of make a housing for normal flash. My Pentax MZ-S camera has wireless P.TTL capability. It would be easy to make a housing for this flash since it is wireless (and should be cheaper than buying a strobe).

Thanks

Finally...someone figured it out. You mean like this? All are from Ikelite, the flash housing (clear) about $20 on Ebay, the external flash (all black) $5 at a yard sale. Both working just fine even at 100+ depth. The Substrobe 150 (large) when new...$500, the two Sub 50s... $300+ new. I saw both types of strobes go for less than $100 on Ebay.

And the kicker is the housed $5 strobe is 1.5 times more powerful than the Sub 50s. The housed flash is retiring, too bulky. Ebay is the place for strobes, don't pay no more than $100. If you don't get one on the first round more will come along.

Good Luck