Question Ikelite Strobes

[davehicks]

Thank you again for your detailed response. This is, indeed, such an expensive addiction

One big concern I have is the weight for traveling and for diving, are the 161s easy enough to handle them under water?

The power control knob is horrible. It can be difficult to turn without bracing the strobe itself with two hands. One of the reasons I moved to Inon 330s.

 

[TostitoBandito]

Thank you again for your detailed response. This is, indeed, such an expensive addiction

One big concern I have is the weight for traveling and for diving, are the 161s easy enough to handle them under water?

You'll want to trim up your rig in a pool or something with whatever configuration you'll be using. I prefer my rig slightly negative, so in the water you don't really notice the weight. I use some arm floats when shooting macro to add a bit of buoyancy, and I have adhesive wheel balancing weights on my dome port since I need to add weight for wide angle (it's a big dome). I have an R5 so my camera/lens/port/housing combo is way heavier than the two strobes (out of the water at least). I think your R10 uses the smaller main housing so you save some weight and bulk there.

For travelling I put the housing, ports, and strobes all in a pelican case with foam inserts and check it as one of my two checked bags. For lugging the beast around topside I have a boat bag (many people use cooler bags).

 

[TostitoBandito]

The power control knob is horrible. It can be difficult to turn without bracing the strobe itself with two hands. One of the reasons I moved to Inon 330s.

The DS230 (and I think the DS160II) addressed this, though as someone who mostly shoots TTL I feel like the knobs are actually too easy to turn now. I've had to get OCD about checking that I didn't knock one into manual mode getting in the water every dive. The old ones, yeah, two hands to change any of the dials. They weren't going anywhere.