Hi,
I just purchased an Ikelite AF-35 strobe as a gift for my girlfriend. We only used it once last month in cavern (cenotes) dive in Mexico. Worked great with her Canon G10and Canon housing, and I'm quite the novice UW photographer.
The AF-35 itself really is easy to use. Ikelite isn't lying when they say that everything you need is in the kit. It comes with the tray and handle that attach to the bottom of your Ikelite housing.
The AF-35 is triggered when the flash (really the pre-flash) of your Sony goes off (so it is an absolute must that you set your camera to FLASH every time you pull the trigger). There is no cable attached to your housing. The triggering is done optically. Also referred to as a "slave" since the AF-35 external strobe (the slave) can't even fire until a "master" (your Sony's flash) gives the command in the form of a burst of light.
You may have learned that that in UW photography there are limitations to the flash in your compact camera. It's generally weak in output, only giving you a few feet, at best, of illumination and positioned perfectly to light up every little reflective particle floating between your camera lens and your subject (lovingly referred to as 'backscatter').
Since the strobe is attached to a flexible arm you can position it off to the side a bit but still direct the light onto the subject. This will help minimize your camera "seeing" and recording the particles reflecting the light. The particles are still being lit up and reflecting light, but the difference is the light is bouncing off in a direction away from your lens.
I know you are asking yourself "if I need to set the Sony to FLASH in order to trigger the AF-35 slave, then won't the light coming from the Sony flash increase the risk of causing backscatter to still show up in my image?"
Yes.
Not the answer you were looking for huh?
But you correctly came up with the solution...didn't you? You decided you'll need to block the light from your internal flash from ever reaching the particles floating in front of your lens but still allow it to fire and trigger the AF-35. You figured out, even without reading the AF-35 manual, that you will take the supplied black material and velcro and attach it to the white flash diffuser that came with your Ikelite housing.
You then positioned the diffuser on your housing with the reflective black material facing the little Sony flash tube. Brilliant! This will block the light coming out of the "master" flash (Sony) and bounce it towards the sensor on the "slave" flash (AF-35) telling it to fire! Thus minimizing the chance that light from your internal flash will cause backscatter to show up.
External strobes are more powerful than your internal flash. the "35" in AF-35 refers to the power of the strobe in watts. By no means the most powerful out there but considerably more than the internal flash on your Sony. The AF-35 will toss light a distance of 16 feet, I believe when firing at full power, and at an ISO of 100. Increase the ISO on your camera and you can increase how far away your camera will be able to capture the light that the flash just put out.
However high ISO's add "noise" to your image, which may not be acceptable to you, so pay attention to your camera settings as you are learning. A great benefit of digital cameras is the ability to review what settings you had your camera set to when you took the picture. In this way you can decide for yourself at what point a higher ISO may produce too much grainy looking noise in your images.
Back to the AF-35. You can leave the AF-35 in full auto mode or go full manual with 6 different power level settings. Eventually you'll want to fine tune your lighting, which you can still do in auto mode by dialing in a little flash exposure compensation from the dial on the AF-35.
Should the spirit move you to try full manual control of the flash output then the AF-35allows for that also. So I think it is a great little flash to start with and grow into.
So while I was pleased with the way the strobe functioned for a total newbie, I do need to report that the battery compartment ended up getting water inside. Fortunately Ikelite designed the battery compartment to be separately sealed from the rest of the guts so the water damage was contained. The rechargeable AA's were toast though. Keep in mind the flash worked fine during the dive. I only noticed the moisture on the walls and bottom of the compartment (as well as on the batteries) after I rinsed the flash with fresh water, dried it and went to remove the batteries.
It's currently being repaired at Ikelite. I have no reason to believe that this was anything but bad luck and still have full confidence in their products (so much so that I'm purchasing a housing and strobes for my Canon 5D from them).
Sorry I couldn't compare and contrast the AF-35 with other strobes, hopefully others will contribute their experiences also.
Good luck and have fun!
Aloha,
Greg
