Any Strobe with the Sony DSC P10

Has anyone found a strobe that works well with a SONY DSC P10 ????

I have the sony DSC P10 and have been looking for a strobe. I was originally considering the sea & sea YS 25 DX but i'm looking for sombeone who has some experience with this strobe or any other one ?

Is it easy to connect both equipment ? What kind of result , and so on...

Thanks

Hi F,

The sony cameras are a bit tricky to use with a strobe from what I understand. I believe your best bet would be a "slave" flash where the flash power is controlled either on the flash, or by a separate controller like Ikelite sells.

I think the camera has a preflash, so you'll need a strobe specially designed for that, such as the Ikelites, Inon, or Sea and Sea.

Cheers

James

Based on my prior experience with a P5 (and AFAIK the P10 is the same in this respect although I haven never used a P10 so I could be wrong) ...

The tricky part is that the camera doesn't know the slave strobe is there, and you don't have manual control of exposure. As a result the camera sets the aperture and shutter speed according to ambient light, perhaps (I don't know) with an allowance for the internal flash which must be set to "on" to trigger the slave strobe.

If the slave strobe adds enough additional light to produce good colours it will tend to overexpose the shot. Not sure, you might get best results when there is so little light that the camera has to rely entirely on flash. So night dives might be better.

You could probably get some decent results on macro, and for a fully automatic camera such as this (which will not choose a very small aperture in the lighting conditions of a typical dive) a low-powered strobe would probably do the job for macro.

Just my thoughts

-David

Hi Frank, glad to see you here.

David reply reminds me indeed that there is probably not much that you can do except adding a continuous lighting. And Sony thought about that too.

You can purchase a Sony HVL-ML20M flashlight and it requires VCT-MP1K Marine Pack Arm.

Sony sell this the light for $350 at Sony Style though you may find it around $250 on the net. I don't know about the arm.

Frankly I think it is overkill as you will never be able to use that when you will change the camera and it is doubtful you will be able to sell it easily as well.

Hi Stephane,

May be i made a wrong decision when buying the SONY DSC P10 !!! :angryfire:

In nov I met a guy working for plongeurs international magazine, and he adviced me not to use the continuous Sony light (only 20 Watt) but a strobe either from Ikelite DS 50 or Se & sea YS 25 DX.

Last saturday i visited Plongespace in Paris and they told me either to use either Ikelite DS 50, epoque strobe or Se & sea YS 25 DX.

It's hard to find real information from divers using the Sony + strobe.

Enjoy your trip....

Part of the problem is that there just aren't a lot of divers using Sony cameras out there, at least relative to some of the other brands like Nikon or Olympus. The cameras are great for topside use, but lack support for UW use. That being said, if the P10 is anything like the DSC-S85, you can use the DS-50 or DS-125 line of strobes with the wireless TTL controller from Ikelite. I had the S85 for a while before upgrading to a D60, and the DS-50 worked great with it.

Hope this helps.

Tom

Probably safer to use the Manual Controller choices on following URL:

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/opt10dlx.html

Last saturday i visited Plongespace in Paris and they told me either to use either Ikelite DS 50, epoque strobe or Se & sea YS 25 DX.

 

It's hard to find  real information from divers using the Sony + strobe.

I fail to see how this camera can work with a strobe if there is no manual control. It is clear that you can plug any flash triggered with fiber optic or sensor with this camera, but as everything about shutter speed and aperture in the camera is automatic, what are the results we can expect ? David pinpointed the problem that might occur more than often.

There is only one shop in Paris where they 'might' be knowledgeable about uw photo, it's Photo-DenfertPhoto Denfert. Be prepared to pay twice the US price if you buy there.

About Plongeurs International, it's time for them to write real articles and reviews about trip reports and equipment that are all but perfect and they should possibly try to change more than the location and the trip operator contact in each article. It's not even copy/paste, it's find/replace.

Simply shocking , but then again, the French market is so small that there is obviouslly no room for several magazines like we have right now: Oceans, Subaqua, Plongeurs International, Octopus, Plongee Mag.

About PlongeeSpace. Last time I went there before my trip, I was highly recommended by a pushy salesman and dive instructor to buy the Uwatec Smart-Com at 800EUR otherwise I was at risk of DCS diving with my computer. :angryfire:

FWIW I might sell all my equipment when I'm back in Paris in January though... nothing decided yet, but...

I used a YS25DX with my P5 and I initially had some problems; turned out my 25DX was defective and it worked fine once all of the pieces inside the case had been replaced.

Also you may find it won't work with batteries (such as GP NiMH) which are slightly shorter than Alkaline batteries due to zero tolerance in the contacts.

This is a very low power flash but it was still enough to overexpose macro shots with the P5. And not powerful enough to make any difference for other shots!

Since then I have used Ikelite & Inon flashes but not with the P5.

-David