When you say limiting yourself I do not follow. First, you are limited right off with the sorta chintzy Canon housings.
I would stay with the standard AD mount lenses and therefore go with the 570IS which has mch more opportunity to vary exposures for a variety of needs and effects.
I am pretty happy with the Canon 570IS and Inon AD lenses. I have only used them and it now a few times and do note some issues. One is that the AD mount sets the AD lenses on theis PARTICULAR rig (Canon DC-12) just a skosh to far out thus causing some vignetting with the 105 and the tendency to see drop off in the corners with the much more capable 165FE. I am however satisfied with the results. Enough that I bought a spare 570IS.
My solution to the Canon houings (my fears may be unfounded but it just feels and looks like a flood waiting to happen) is to purchase the Ike housing. I will then custom machine an entirely new port or port adapter or mount adapter--my choice once the housing is in hand to evaliuate---to allow direct mounting of the Inon AD lenses without vignetting. This is a much sturdier housing.
Strobe--I have to tell you here, I looked at severa and read a bunch and asked mostly unanswered questions here and there and everywhere. Nobody knows anything about this stuff. There is only one real choice---Inon. Get either the Inon D2000 which is all you need or the Z240 which has the ability to use a sync cord with cameras like the Nikon P5100 or G9 or dslrs as well as to optically sync with the Canon 570IS. The D2000 only has the otical sync--which--works very well.
What I have learned on these boards is that most of the people are into macro,close up and portrait type stuff and very few invest in wide angle lenses. So thye get kinda confused when trying to answer those questions.
The AD lenses are compact lenses and meant for smaller cameras with smaller lens diameters. Take a look at the Canon 570IS lens/barrel diameter--that is the optimum for these AD lenses. Any bigger and especially if compounded with high zoom ratios--you will find Inon supporting those houisngs with their other offerings--not the AD lenses, thus why you see your other choice camera not avaialble with an AD adapter. It uses the larger 28AD mount and lens---I would avoid this I think.
The Canon 570IS camera, a whole nuther story. To get best results from this inexpenisive and very capable little camera you have to work around shutter/flash/focus lag and it's power needs. I have found that by shutting off various features and by using the manual flash control in the camera menu function I can succesfully deal with these potential problems with good results.
The 570IS shoots colorful pics, good balance, decent noise control up to about ISO400 and all in all is a great little digi-snap. If your planning on a pro career this is not your rig. If you want to play around, get some good pics, then it will be fine. Grow?, grow into what?
cd
