Strobe Advice?

[adam f]

I'm off the the Red Sea next week and have a Sony T10 in a Sony housing.

It takes OK piccies, but they do tend to be a little 'green' compared to a F31 Fuji - down to not having white balance capability I think...

,...anyway - I wasnt going to bother as have spent enough, but I dont want to spend a fortune on a holiday only not to have any decent piccies to remember it by.

SO - do I get a basic strobe for my camera, will it make a big difference, and if so which one?

Cheers

Adam

[Cussy]

Adam,
A basic strobe in the Red Sea might be a waste of money. You should get pretty good photos in macro using the internal strobe, and the very cheap strobes wont be powerful enough to add much colour in wide angle. Use something decent like Adobe Lightroom to get the colour back, its the next best thing to having white balance setting ability.

If you dont want to waste money on a strobe, borrow/hire one and see how you get on. My strobe lead failed on my last trip to the Red Sea, and TBH I got better photos when I wasn't relying on the strobe to do all the work.
HTH
Rob

[adam f]

Thanks Rob, I'll give it a whirl without then.

Adam

[thermocad]

Ive got the same setup and you can alter the white balance its the lower right button (i think) when in the caseing, when i first started with it i never used a storbe and pics came out as you say green but that only takes one tweek in photoshop and alls fine again. Now ive added a Sea and Sea YS110 the pics are a lot better but i now take even longer to take the pics....

[adam f]

Thermocad,

Thanks - I've never tried that button.

How do you find the YS110 with syncronising?

[Cussy]

Adam,
I thought you were looking at the very cheap end of the market (the basic Epoque, Fuji etc), I wouldn't have considered the YS-110 as cheap. The basic ones are only useful for macro. If you can afford one then I would say the YS-110 is an excellent strobe. I was going to get one, but ended up with a pair of Ikelite's to get full TTL through a sync cord. For the money I think you get a lot and would definitely see a difference in your photos, both macro and wide-angle. Shouldn't be a sync problem, all modern strobes can handle pre-flash.
Rob

[thermocad]

The YS110 is very easy to set up and i never have any problems with it, all i had to do was remove the small bit of plasic in the case that cover the flash. this then allowed me to have the full power of the camera flash to set the strobe off i then cover this area with black tape so that no extra light form the internal flash enters the photo (this was a problem on the first few attemps). DON'T be fulled into nuying a small cheep strobe like i did because they are cr#p and i ended up putting it in the bin and spending more on the YS110. But it is about £250+ and then you will need the arms and base plate etc and your now onto the £400 mark

For the Red sea you should be fine with just the t10, i was in Cuba middle part of the year and 40% of the pics i took i turned the strobe off and came away with good pics. You just need to mess about the settings. the booklet will tell you to put it on auto for all the setting but you will get some very good results if you start messing about with them.
When i wanted to take big pics of wrecks i try and do them in black and white and with messing with the white levels i can gett better results than when they are in colour.... might be worth a try...

[jackdiver]

If you're looking at the YS-110, don't over look the YS-27.

It's almost as powerful, but (obviously) costs less.

Yes, I know it's a manual slave, so doesn't have the dTTL that the YS-110 has.

However, I have both the YS-110 and the YS-27, and with my sony p & s I prefer to use the YS-27, or actually the YS-110 in manual mode (I like the in-built modelling light).

With my sony N1 and dTTL I get inconsistant results in water (it's great on land), but that's the camera I think.