LindaB,
I was using the strobe and the wide angle lens for the most part independently. I have a lens caddy on my strobe arm so switching the lens out is no particular bother.
Should I want to use the strobe with my W/A lens, I can swing the strobe arm out pretty far away from the camera. This way I can get the lens close to the subject, but get the strobe far enough away for coverage. This strobe (YS 25 DX) is a little bit weak. Eventually it will be a good fill flash in a two strobe setup.
I had the W/A lens (20mm) from before, with my Sony setup. It is for a Motor Marine bayonet mount. The base of the mount fits within the diameter of the Oly PT-030 lens ring. It fits just as closely as the 46mm screw in mount for the Inon W/A lens. I machined a nylon sleeve mount with lugs to accept the lens. The mount is attached to the Oly lens ring with small screws run through holes I drilled in the lens ring. There is very slight vignetting at the extreme corners of the image frame if I shoot with the camera at its widest angle. A short zoom elimintes this.
I started out with the U/W Macro preset, but adjusted it to SHQ rather than HQ JPEG image capture format. The White Balance is biased towards red in this mode.
I gave up on using RAW for shooting. The 5-7 sec. wait between shots makes it impossible to capture a moving target like the turtle or a Squirrrel fish popping in and out of a crevice. For a static subject like a wreck and a posed diver or a sea fan it will still work.
I also used aperture priority; manually reddenned the white balance; and made several exposures while adjusting the flash output. Keeping adjustments to only one set of variables is the best practice.
I pretty much had the camera in macro mode for everything. I would use the zoom in macro mode to pick out subjects which would shy away if approached too closely. I also started keeping my camerea up and pointing with it as I trolled around looking for things to photograph. Fish seemed more accepting if you stayed in the configuration they first saw you in. If I swam toward something, then lifted and pointed the camera at it, after it saw me, subjects tended to move away.
On night dives, I prepositioned my strobe and modeling light to about two feet (70-100cm) in front of my lens. I moved in until I centered the modeling light in my LCD screen, then shot the picture. Exposure was adjusted with the strobe settings for the most part. Used zoom to get a bigger image of the subject.
On some of my close macro subjects I would move the strobe arm out ahead; mount the diffuser and shoot with a softer side lighting.
Battery life with the SP-350 and rechargeable CR3V batteries is really good. My poor old Sony would usually run out of steam long before I could fill the memory.
