OM SYSTEM Tough TG-7: Two compact underwater strobes with NO housing

How can I trigger two underwater strobes with an OM SYSTEM TG-7 without using a housing?

The TG-7’s built-in flash must either:

• not fire at all,

• be easily physically covered/blocked from illuminating the subject, or

• otherwise contribute essentially nothing to the image.

I’m looking for the two smallest/most compact strobes that can work with this setup.

What specific strobes and triggering method would you recommend?

Hi Deemoo, I would first say that a TG-7 without a housing will be OK for a couple of years then the seals will fail and the camera will die. The seals under the top panel controls are a membrane seal that the buttons work through and eventually the membrane fails. I always recommend a housing even if it's the OM housing which works fine. Once you add a tray to allow you to add arms to hold your strobe the compactness advantage of the TG-7 without a housing is lost. In the manual the fine print says you should have the seals changed once a year.

The housing has the facility to plug in fibre optic cables to trigger your strobes. then you just attach them to your strobes and you are ready to go. As for choice of strobe it's hard to go past the little INON S-220, it's small and compact and has a good beam as well as being quite powerful.

If you still want to use the bare camera you can get little stick on ports for fibre optic cables you can place over the flash. If you use manual strobes you can set the flash to low power manual on the camera and any light leakage will be minor and unlikely to cause problems.