Seacam too expensive, Inon Z240 and Ike DS160/1 looking good

I've got a bit of budget (ca. €2200/$2500) to get a double strobe set for my Canon 5D (mkI).

Seacam strobes are amazing but sadly unafordable so I've been eyeing the Ikelite DS161 (or the "old" 160, which saves a few bucks for a hardly different strobe) and the Inon Z240. Both look good: Inon is very lightweight but the Ikelite seems to have a bit better color temp. Set prices for both don't differ that much.

Ettl is not a must but would be nice (it's kind of relaxed for shooting macro).

Are there any strobes I'm missing out (Sea&Sea?) or does have anyone have some advice for me? It's highly appreciated.

At one time, I had both DS-125s and Inon Z240s and preferred the DS-125s due to their faster recharge time and the single battery. The Inons were light and easy to pack but I didn't enjoy fussing with the AA rechargeable batteries and found the performance to be inconsistent from charge to charge. The Ikelites were much more manageable, though in a larger and heavier package. I did prefer the Ikelite color temperature to the Ikelite.

e-TTL will work when you have the Ikelite Housing and a Ikelite Strobe, with your UK-Germany housing you may need a adapter to make it work with either strobe. The Ikelite is a big, heavy strobe with a propietary battery pack and customer support is uncool from outside the USA regarding shipping it there and the subsequent problems liek shipping, import/export, duties and fees. This may be a problem with Inon as well, but i never heard of issues with the Inon strobes.

I have different strobes, but they are very similar, basicly less powerful than the DS-160/Z-240

I like my DS-125 because :

it works in i-TTL with my Ikelite housing, fast recycle time, tons of flashes per charge, wide beam, good quality

I like my Inon D-2000 because:

powerful, lighttweight, uses common AA batteries, optical slave works perfect, excellent quality

I prefer AA batteries for one reason, they are world wide available while a forgotten/damaged/stolen charger for a battery pack may ruin your dive trip.

Chris

hmm, difficult. from the strobe comparisson I found pretty similar recharge times: 1.7 (Inon) or 1.5 (Ikelite).

decisions, decisions.... :-)

Rud,

it's not so difficult:

Does your housing will be able to fire the Ikelites i e-TTL natively without any adapter?

If so: get the Ikelite, they are excellent strobes and it's worth the hassle with the cable.

If not, using a cable to only tigger the strobe to fire makes no sense at all under water but

you may buy a Heinrichs Weikamp e-TTL adapter to make it work.

If the extra euros and the potential troubles are worth that is your choice.

If not: Get the Inon and consider using it as optical slave if your housing allow the internal flash to fire and there is a "window" for attaching the optical cable. You will be surprised how good optical triggered slave strobes work!

Try to verify if and who is able to handle warranty issues and general repair in Europe. Sending a broken strobe back to USA or Japan will cost you a bunch of money! Been there with Ikelite...

The Ikelite has a battery pack with 4 D-Cell size rechargable batteries inside, the Inon uses 4 AA size.

They may recycle in a similar time after a full dump, but the Ikelite is much faster reycling between several partial dumps.

Chris

Thanks Chris for taking the time to answer, this helps really a lot!

Alex Mustard also reccommended going for the Ikelites for their light quality and for being good strobes in the first place.

Warranty is well taken care of in the Netherlands so that is not a worry. It's now a matter of seeing if the ettl can get working...

Again, thanks!