rx100 ike housing

http://www.ikelite.com/web_two/sony_rx100.html

ike has announced their new rx100 and would love to hear everyones inital thoughts, esp who has owned ike equipment and housings before. below are my questions and thoughts.

1. how good is the auto flash kit? wouldnt you get backscatter with the interal flash firing in a clear housing?

2 are you able to use non ike strobes with the auto flash?

3 seem you can get to all the major controls with one hand?

my concerns are around external strobes. looks like the ike housing would be great for a newbie without any prior equiomqnt or someone with ike strobes. i have two non ike strobes so it might be more costly to get into a ike setup rather than the other two rx100 housings.

Have shot this camera the last two Fridays in the Nauticam housing.

Good camera UW.

Flash is a weakness. Low powered and recharges slowly. Your going to need an external flash .

Had some trouble with fast moving seal ions. I think it was mostly the settings and waiting for te internal flash to recycle.

Yes, you will get backscatter, from the internal flash. The solution is to use black duct tape all over the front of the housing, in the area around the flash, to block direct illumination.

The autoflash is dedicated and cannot be used with other strobes.

You can use a heinrichs optical TTL slave which connects to other strobes vie synch cords - either s&s or nikonos connectors are available.

Or us can use an inon or s&s strobe with fiber optic triggers, and jury rig something to feed them light. Should not be that hard, surely!

Does this housing not take the standard fibre optic flash connector and mask that fits around the port and supplied as standard by Ikelite?

It doesn't seem to be part of the package, right? My initial thoughts was to just cut a piece of metal, stick in front of the flash and drill holes in it for the fibres in front of the flash.

How long does the internal flash take to recycle? I would have bought this came straight away if it just had a hotshoe. I've made a "microflash" to trigger my external strobes, and it would have been great on this camera, alas.

Does Ikelite have an own stands for 67mm UWA wet lenses or would any OEM 67mm wet lens work with the housing? I'm thinking about the distance from threads to port glass.

Does this housing not take the standard fibre optic flash connector and mask that fits around the port and supplied as standard by Ikelite?

Many vendors including ourselves sell a plastic velcro attached sync cord. Stick one piece of tape on the outside of the housing over the flash, and black out the inside with electrical tape as the poster above suggested. we also now have a vecro on female plug connector as well that can accept the S&S style plug. This could even be super-glued on.

Jack

The strobe recycle Tim is only slow if you are in the middle of a furball of zooming sea lions, or maybe a baitball of sailfish.

I have to find a way to turn down the fill flash power and it should solve much of this problem.

In blue water I would switch to manual power on the camera and strobe. By turning the flash power or EV all the way down to just use it as a trigger, the camera will cycle very fast. TTL doesn't usually work well then anyways, as there's not enough light bouncing back to the camera.

Jack

Yes, you will get backscatter, from the internal flash. The solution is to use black duct tape all over the front of the housing, in the area around the flash, to block direct illumination.

 

The autoflash is dedicated and cannot be used with other strobes.

If you black out the insdie of the case then how will Ike's autoflash pick up the light to trigger the strobes?

It doesn't seem to be part of the package, right? My initial thoughts was to just cut a piece of metal, stick in front of the flash and drill holes in it for the fibres in front of the flash.

I'm not sure why Ike did not come up with something standard for the FO cables for other strobes. Seems they only considered the housing would be used with their autoflash system.

Can the inon WA-100 type 2 be used on the housing without any issues? If not then I think I'm set on the Nauticam.

If you black out the insdie of the case then how will Ike's autoflash pick up the light to trigger the strobes?

You don't need to do that. I use a small piece of underexposed slide film which I tape in front of the flash. Just enough light gets out for the fibertoptic trigger, but not enough to lightup the housing. This is basically what Inon does with their Clear Photo System flash trigger.

http://www.inon.jp/technicalguide/clearphoto.html