Sea & Sea YS-250PRO vs Ikelite DS160 for a Point & Shoot with Ikelite housing

Hi all.

You may be thinking why I want to use those really big strobes with a point & shoot camera. Let me explain first what I want to do before asking specific questions about the strobes.

I live in Chile South America, here we have green cold waters with low light conditions.

I already have a Canon A590IS with an Ikelite housing, no strobes yet.

I want to buy one strobe now, get use to it, and then, maybe next year, buy the second strobe in order to have two identical strobes.

I want to use my current camera only for practice, I'm able to save my pictures in RAW format and use the camera in full manual mode so this little camera gives me a lot to play.

After completing the set of strobes I will upgrade to a SLR and definitely I will get an aquatica housing. And I don't want to buy a second pair of strobes for the SLR camera.

I don't mind dealing with a big equipment, but I want to go in steps. One strobe first, then a second strobe and finnaly a bigger camera. It will be safer for me and for my walet.

The types of pictures that I like are wide angle shots and wreck pictures. Again, with my current camera I know that I'm not going to get superb pictures but I will learn a few things from the equipment.

Because of the conditions of the waters in Chile, I need the most powerful strobe as possible and with a good angle of coverage.

For what I've seen underwater, lights with high Kelvins penetrate better in green water, this is why I'm interested in S&S YS-250PRO, with 5600K I think it will penetrate better than the 4800K of the DS160. Or am I wrong?

I also like the fact that the S&S is a little buoyant.

And here is my question.

Can I use the Sea & Sea YS-250PRO strobe in manual mode with my Ikelite Canon A590IS?

I understand that I will be able to use the Ikelite DS160 with my A590 using the EV Controller, but I don't know if there is anything similar for S&S.

Please any suggestions, corrections or ideas will be really appreciated.

Regards,

Andres.

Well, I've been doing some research.

What I understand now is that I can use a fiber optic cable to fire the S&S strobe.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, I only can see the specifications of the strobes on Internet, this is why I may have a wrong idea of how the S&S strobes works.

The YS-250Pro comes with a fiber optic cable, if I plug the cable to the strobe and I inject light into the other end, that will fire the strobe, right?

Maybe, I should have started for what I just did. I downloaded the user manual of the S&S and the Ikelite strobes.

To my question if I will be able to use the S&S strobe with a fiber optic cable with my Canon A590IS and the Ikelite housing, the answer is yes.

But there is something about the S&S that i don't like for what I need.

According to the user manual:

"In the case of Fiber-optic cable connection such as when using this strobe as a sub (slave) strobe, the target light does not turn off when the strobe fires and continues to be illuminated."

That is not a good thing for me and for that reason I'm discarding the S&S strobe.

According to the Ikelite user manual, the DS160 doesn't have that problem when a EV Controller is used.

It's a shame because I really wanted the color temperature of the S&S strobes, something that I don't have with the Ikelite.

I wonder if the Inon Z-240 type 4 has the same problem as the YS-250PRO.

I don't really think the color temp is a big discriminator - with green water you're going to want to do some WB correction of your RAW files either way. It will be a balancing act between correcting enough to make the near view look good without making the essentially 'naturally illuminated' far view color too dingy.

I also wouldn't worry too much about the modeling/target light not turning off - by comparison to the strobe power especially on a major dump for the type of water you describe, it's not going to be that significant and hotspot your pictures. It might be more of an issue for close-in work.

Basically, either should work for you. And I don't think you're "crazy" at all to want to get used to larger strobes now. Sounds like a good plan. I'm still shooting with way too small of strobes and having a harder time justifying replacing them both than you will be to just add one.

I don't really think the color temp is a big discriminator - with green water you're going to want to do some WB correction of your RAW files either way. It will be a balancing act between correcting enough to make the near view look good without making the essentially 'naturally illuminated' far view color too dingy.

 

I also wouldn't worry too much about the modeling/target light not turning off - by comparison to the strobe power especially on a major dump for the type of water you describe, it's not going to be that significant and hotspot your pictures. It might be more of an issue for close-in work.

 

Basically, either should work for you. And I don't think you're "crazy" at all to want to get used to larger strobes now. Sounds like a good plan. I'm still shooting with way too small of strobes and having a harder time justifying replacing them both than you will be to just add one.

You are going to make me look at the S&S strobes again.

I understand about the WB and how this may affect the color of the background too. I read the article of Alex Mustard, very good article BTW.

I'm more concerned in the penetration of the light in the water. I have a very yellow primary light and a secondary light with a higher K temperature. Above water my primary light illuminates with much power and deeper than my secondary light, but underwater is the complete opposite.

This is why I have the feeling that high Kelvin colors tend to penetrate better underwater.

BTW, now I only use that yellow light when I go camping.

But your are right that maybe the hotspot of the target light won't be a problem and the S&S YS-250PRO is in fact the most powerful strobe, no matter the temperature of the light.

Yeah, Alex's article is exactly what I was thinking about when I wrote that! After reading it, all my Dominica shots look like 'dirty water' to me, since I think I ended up adjusting my WB too warm in almost all cases. And that was with the Ike strobe color, so go figure.

It's certain that blue light penetrates further than yellow/red, but beyond the point where you can get the yellow/red colors BACK to the camera in the reflection...do you care? Maybe adds to the clarity of the shots for Black and White posprocessing, giving you more 'depth' into the water...but won't help the foreground color any either way. At least that's my understanding, hopefully a real pro will step in and correct any mucked up misinformation I'm giving ya.