TG6 package advice

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White Chocolate

Registered
Messages
40
Reaction score
92
Location
Bellingham, WA
# of dives
200 - 499
I'm currently looking to upgrade from my starter camera, which is an old Canon S90 with one Sea Life 1500 video light (for shooting stills), and I'm looking at a TG6 for an affordable and simple macro setup with some wide angle flexibility for my one warm water vacation a year. 90% of my diving is around Washington State and British Columbia, so I shoot mostly closer up shots of critters using the camera's built in macro setting. Obviously this is pretty limiting, and the camera is starting to freeze up and not adjust in manual mode randomly. I've been looking at the packages on backscatter and bluewater, and I'm currently thinking that the Ikelite package on Backscatter with the DS51 strobe is the closest to ticking most of the boxes (Ikelite Underwater Housing, Olympus Tough TG-6 Camera and Strobe Deluxe Kit) .However I have pretty limited knowledge of strobes and their use. I'm not sure if its worth the single DS51 route right now, or if I should just get the camera/housing and do more research and save up for a better strobe setup that I won't outgrow too soon. The Ikelight package is at the far upper end of my price range so adding more light isn't currently an option. Also, I'd like to still use my video light occasionally, and I'm not sure if it's possible to integrate that in with the Ikelight tray that comes in the package. If anyone has any sage advice I would love to hear it!
 
Sea Life makes an adapter so that you can use your Sea Dragon light with a ball mount/clamp/arm setup. You can use your light and strobe at the same time by either getting a triple clamp and mounting both on the same clamp (not ideal but no added expense to the kit), or add on a second arm and put your light on the other side (better, extra expense). You can also try mounting it at the top of your cold shoe if you have one (Sea Life also makes an adapter for that, I believe). Strobes will be stronger than your light in general, but you could also use it as your light for night dives or if you want to keep it more compact. Do you already have a tray that you are using? You might be able to save some money by re-purposing that. I would also look at the Olympus housing - it is quite good. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the Ikelite has a cold shoe but he Olympus one does....I would want one. It's an extra attachment point for a gopro, a ilght, etc.

Based on where and how you use it, as well as how often you go to warm water, I think a 1 strobe setup would be great for now. If you will get 2 eventually, I would think about whether you like Ikelite, Sea and Sea, or Inon, etc., and think long term what brand you like better as for as ergonomics, design, pricing, etc. Additionally, I don't know if it is a factor, but if you ever plan to sell to upgrade or get a different set of strobes if you were to have 2, that is something to keep in mind as well - how popular that strobe is in general might help with its success on the 2nd hand market.

Here is the adapter for your Sea Life light below. The first is the ball mount one, the second is for the cold shoe.

https://www.adorama.com/slfcbja.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3saRve794wIVvSCtBh3WnQyYEAQYAyABEgLuWvD_BwE

Amazon.com: SeaLife SL991 Flex-Connect Cold Shoe for UW Lighting System: SEALIFE: Sports & Outdoors
 
DS-51 is kind of an odd choice to use with a TG. It's a wired triggering strobe, so to use it with a camera that doesn't have a hot shoe you need a fiber optic to wired converter (the Ikelite RC1) which adds additional failure points and cost. For the price of a single DS-51 ($450) and an RC1 ($125) you can almost get a pair of Inon S2000 strobes ($365 each). S2000 is also considerably smaller than DS-51 - an important consideration when shooting macro at very close distances - and weighs half as much.
 
I have the TG-6 and PT-059, and just bought an Inon S2000. However, if you want a DS51, I have one for sale. I'm on Vancouver Island so photograph in much the same type of water.
 
I wouldn't do a DS-51 in your case, the coverage from the strobe is limited for wide angle work , r/c times are quite long. I would look at an INON S-2000 (or even two of them), Backscatter has an S2000 package with locline arm, tray & fibre optic cable for 499, add the Oly housing and TG-6 and it's $1249. The oly housing has a cold shoe and you could place your existing light there with a cold shoe mount if you wanted. A friend of mine had the DS-51 and arm package and the arm was not easiest thing in the world to use.
 
Another less expensive choice for a strobe package is the Sea & Sea YS-03 strobe package. It has similar power to the s2000. It's TTL only, so it's easy to use. They have recently upgraded the tray and handle over last year's model and it's much improved.

We have a complete TG-6 YS-03 package for $1049.

TG6_YS03.jpg
 
Thanks for all the advice everyone! I decided to start smaller in order to slowly build to a nice setup later. I got the camera/oly housing and a Kraken light canon (ie video light with burst) from optical ocean sales. I'm going to save up for a double inon strobe setup down the road, and then I will already have a nice focus/video light to put in the hot shoe. Looking forward to getting it wet soon!
 
Just so you know the burst mode is a problem with the TG-6 as there is no manual mode, there have been other threads with people complaining about this issue. Because the camera is in an auto exposure mode it will meter with the low power light but has no way of knowing how to compensate for the suddenly brighter light coming with the burst mode, the change form low power to burst mode is outside of what you fix with exposure compensation. You can fiddle with the minimum shutter speed with flash setting to get it right but it is not all that straight forward and changing that setting mid dive is an issue as it's buried in the menus. What you might be able to do is get it close in on land and then adjust exposure compensation to fine tune in the water. If you are in Av mode for example and on f2.8 and wanted to go to f2, you would have to change aperture and exposure compensation. If you zoom the minimum aperture changes and you would also need to change compensation.

It's do-able but a a pain. Really the retailers should not be selling you a burst mode video light with a TG-6 or at least warning you about the issues.
 
Just so you know the burst mode is a problem with the TG-6 as there is no manual mode, there have been other threads with people complaining about this issue. Because the camera is in an auto exposure mode it will meter with the low power light but has no way of knowing how to compensate for the suddenly brighter light coming with the burst mode, the change form low power to burst mode is outside of what you fix with exposure compensation. You can fiddle with the minimum shutter speed with flash setting to get it right but it is not all that straight forward and changing that setting mid dive is an issue as it's buried in the menus. What you might be able to do is get it close in on land and then adjust exposure compensation to fine tune in the water. If you are in Av mode for example and on f2.8 and wanted to go to f2, you would have to change aperture and exposure compensation. If you zoom the minimum aperture changes and you would also need to change compensation.

It's do-able but a a pain. Really the retailers should not be selling you a burst mode video light with a TG-6 or at least warning you about the issues.

Thanks for the heads up, I hadn’t heard that before. Honestly 95% of the time where I’m diving the 2000 lumens is more than enough for macro, so the burst is unnecessary. I’m going to use it mostly as a video/focus light since I’m hoping to get strobes in the next few months. I’ll play around though in the meantime and see if there is a way to still utilize the function.
 
As far as using the Kraken Hydra Lights in burst mode, we don't see the problem with the TG-6. Since the user can adjust the position of the light, overexposure seems to be not that hard an issue to deal with, because of the flexibility to move the light around. More of a light positioning issue in our opinion.

The only time pictures were really overexposed is if we pointed the light straight at the subject, which one would never do cause of the inherent issues with backscatter. Angling the light slightly solved any issues with over exposure. In some cases, you'd even need to adjust the exposure compensation closer to 0. As the OP stated, 2500 or so lumens is more than enough light for macro shots, and UW modes shouldn't be used then anyway, as you have no real cyan cast to compensate for. As with all UW pjhotography Auto modes should be avoided.

As far as using the Kraken Ringlight 3000 in burst mode, yes, you can have difficulty with some modes, however excellent results are easily obtained. We written a new blog article to give users some help with settings.

Please see the following FREE blog articles:
Setting up the Olympus TG-6 Camera and Kraken Ringlight 3000
Shoot Video & Stills with the Olympus TG-5 & Kraken Hydra Lights
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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