Fuji f810 Does it need strobes?

Well I took the advice of this forum and bought my wife a fuji f810 for mother's day, I also ordered myself the Iklite housing for me for father's day. I think you see how this is going to work I am now wondering if I have to get a strobe for this set up or will it work fine with out it, I do have an anniversary coming up

Any way I am realy looking forward to using this setup. I found it to be less expesive that ordering a housing for my Sony f828. If any one can give me some pointers I would appreciate it. Specially how to get heat in a dog house!

Good choice on camera and housing.

Re strobes, the answer is you need a strobe for more light and more importantly, you need a strobe to bring out the colors lost at depth if you are diving deeper than 10 or 20 feet. And while you can squeak by with the internal strobe for starters, you will be blown away when start shooting with an external strobe.

As to what strobe to get. My recommendation is the Ikelite DS 50 or DS 125. For details see "Recommended Strobe Configurations" at the bottom of the following page.

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/fuji810.html

And finally, learn to use the manual settings on your camera when using either the internal strobe or an external strobe. For reasons why, see the following page.

http://www.splashdowndivers.com/photo_gall...up_settings.htm

As Peter says, the internal strobe can get you by for subjects that are close to the camera. However, an external strobe does add a lot to the setup. The Ikelite strobes are nice (Peter's shop is an Ikelite dealer, by the way) and will work well with the camera if you use Ike's manual controller. I will also mention, though that INON strobes have also proven effective with the F810 and in some cases I've seen have even worked in TTL mode with the camera, though this is a bit dicey because the camera actually uses a sensor separate from the lens to meter flash exposure and if you block that sensor, TTL won't work.

Mike

I agree on the Inon strobe recommendation. There is a new 220F strobe due out any day that may be a winner with this camera. Should work with the camera's TTL.

Jack

Mike, re "Peter's shop is an Ikelite dealer, by the way."

For the record, I do not own a dive shop. I do however maintain the Splashdown Divers and American Dive Center web sites and they are both Ikelite dealers.

Thanks for all the info B) , I'm going to try to use the internal strobe for now while I learn the camera. I am excited about the set up , I like how the controls work on the housing. Can anyone tell me about the diffusers that came with the housing and what I would use them for? I am also wondering about the add on lenses that are available. I don't know much about the Inon strobes but will be checking them out. I was looking into the 125 Iklite, But thats a choice for later. Once again Thanks for the help

Tim

RTDM

Just got mine also. The opaque one with the octo on it is for an external lens. The translucent one is for using with the internal strobe.

Jack