Jack, I have a Fuji E900 and Ikelite housing. What strobe would you suggest for this set-up and what price range am I looking at? I would appreciate your help. Thanks, Laurel The E900 is a great little camera, I shot mine for 1.5 years with good results. I get asked this same question by many underwater photographers looking for an external strobe to use with various cameras. The below information is derived from my experience and pertains to most point & shoot cameras and housings. An external strobe is a way for photographers to add more light to bring out colors and detail that would otherwise be lost and creatively light their subjects, to emphasize, or de-emphasize subject matter. Also by angling the light away from the subject directly, you can you can reduce backscatter; particles in the water that reflect light directly into the camera lens. When buying a strobe, you pretty much get what you pay for in terms of features, power, coverage and speed. It’s important to consider what subject matter and shooting conditions you will be diving in. Wide angle photography requires much more powerful strobes, really 2 strobes, for success. You have to light a wide swath of reef or larger subjects. For macro and fish portraits, you can get by with much less. In turbid conditions the same applies. I’m making some generalizations; it is quite possible to do close-focus wide angle photography and use only one strobe. It’s good to also consider your long-range photography goals as well, do you eventually want to upgrade to a DSLR for instance. There’s lots of manufactures and options for strobes. Remember that you will also need a tray, handles, arms and sync cord to use it. Here’s a few that I’m familiar with. I’ve used a variety of Inon strobes, they are very good, physically small, but sort of expensive. They also tend to be a bit negatively weighted in the water. The Inon z240 & 2000 has S-TTL and an external auto mode (works ok for close-up stuff), as well as 13 steps of manual control. The S-TTL mode will work with most any camera, measuring the light output automatically, but as it makes the camera do a full dump of light (instead of what’s necessary for exposure), it can be slow to use, around 11 secs between shots on the E900! I’ve used an Ikelite DS-50 with an external manual controller as well (the auto TTL controller is not compatible with the E900). Again, its very slow to work with that camera, due to making it do a full dump. It was better with the Fuji F810. I had problems with the manual controller flooding and it’s another piece of gear to mount and swim with, although a fairly powerful little strobe. I think overall the setup is bulky and not as full featured, when compared to other strobes on the market at a similar price point. I now sell the Fantasea NanoFlash ($99), the best-selling Sea & Sea YS-27 ($350) and the Sea & Sea YS-110a ($634). If you want a huge reef-lighter the Sea & Sea YS-250Pro is also available at $1069. New to the line up – and a great starter strobe – is the Ultramax UltraPower UDXL strobe that comes with a sync cord for only $148. It is a significant step up from the Na…
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