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.

 

[Wobbegong_th]

I'd never use the DS51 but I'd use Ikelite big strobe for years. First one was DS-125, then I sent it to upgrade to DS 161. I'd been using single strobe until just last month I bought another DS162 to get a dual strobe setup. I'll have a change to get them in water toward the end of this month.

My prefer type of photo are Wide Angle, or Close-focus wide angle. the DS161, or even when it was DS125 gave me plenty of light for the shot. Their TTL work great so that I almost don't have to do manual adjustment to the strobe at all. However, when I use the DS161 with my previous camera, Canon G16, in camera manual mode, the camera won't give out TTL signal. I can adjust 'flash exposure compensation' from the camera to control flash power though.

When taking Macro, or Supermacro photo, it's a bit of a challenge for the big strobe as they tend to give too much light, even at lowest setting.

For handling, the DS161 was almost neutral bouyancy in water. I'd did some rough calculation based on info from Ikelite website regarding size & weight, it only about 100grams negative in freshwater.