Strobe confusion

I bought my camera planning on just using the built in flash. This idea was shot down very fast the first time I tried to use it. There was so much backscatter that nothing even came in on the picture. I want to get a strobe, but am confused by a lot of it.

What exactly is a slave strobe?

Does it work off an internal flash on the camera?

Can any strobe be made into a slave strobe by adding a sensor or something?

Do all strobed have to plug into the camera?

Is all of the above stupid and not really making any sence?

Any info would be very helpfull.

Thank you

Jeremy

Before diving into all of this, it would help to have your camera and housing information. Then we can give you answers that fit YOUR system.

Slave strobe fires off of light it sees.

Yes (it can also fire off the light of another external flash.)

Depends on if the sensor exists, but mostly yes.

No (if the camera housing is clear, a slave strobe can fire from

the light of the internal flash, so you don't need a hole through

the housing and a mount on the camera (and there are a couple

of solutions for fiber opitc cables pushing the light just to the

strobe sensor and not generating a bunch of backscatter.)

Not really.

And like Richard says, if you mention the type of camera and housing

you have, people will give you more specific information.

Dan

I have an Olympus Stylus 300 with a PT-016 housing.

Thanx

Jeremy

Jeremy,

I know this isn't an answer to the question you asked, but I feel that it may be useful information ( or opinion, your choice):

An Oly Stylus 300 is an auto camera. It does not allow the user to set aperture, shutter, or ISO manually. The camera was designed to capture images on land, where light travels through air, not water. Water filters light much differently than air.

If you were to add an external substrobe to your rig, you would be able to replace some of the colors lost at depth to our eyesight as a result of water's filtering trait. And blocking the onboard strobe, relying on the external strobe to illuminate the composition at a more desirable angle, would potentially reduce the backscatter.

But the camera will still choose:

High ISO's, resulting in "grain"

Wide open apertures, resulting in bland, washed out light blue backgrounds

( background exposure is controlled by aperture and shutter speed). Also, relatively speaking from a digital perspective, little to no depth of field control.

Slow shutter speeds, resulting in motion blur (camera assumes you have two feet on the ground).

There are no ways to overcome or correct these improper underwater choices that I am aware of. While adding a substrobe to an underwater rig system could improve image quality, unfortunately, imho, the Stylus 300 is not the camera to build your hopes on.

I would recommend transferring the funds aimed at this project to the purchase of a camera that offers full manual control of Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO. The images received underwater from a camera with the previously mentioned user controlled functions would offer better results than your rig with the additional strobe.

my opinion,

hth,

b

BobF - This was one thing that I did have in mind. I wasnt sure if a strobe would correct some of the problems that I was having (some a witch you mentioned). I do know that this isnt that good of a setup, but is was all the funds would allow me to get. I will defiantly keep this in mind though.

thanx