From: leigh@carson.u.washington.edu (Barbara Leigh)
Newsgroups: rec.scuba
Subject: Slave strobe for Ikelite Aquashot
Date: 26 Jan 1993 06:33:55 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu

I've recently purchased the slave strobe made by Ikelite for use with the
Aquashot housing for disposable cameras.  Here's my report for interested
Aquashot users:

The Ikelite Substrobe AQ/S is made especially for the Aquashot by Ikelite.
It's made out of the same kind of molded plastic as the housing itself
(thereby enhancing the overall "Fisher-Price" appearance of the equipment). 
Here are the specs from the instruction booklet:

Guide number (ISO 100):    46 surface, 12 underwater
Coverage angle:            65 deg.
Color Temperature:         5600 deg. K
Power source:              4 AA-cell alkaline (the instructions recommend
                             not using nicad batteries, but give no reason)
Flashes:                   550 (I don't know if this is the bulb life or
                            per battery set or what)
Recycle time:              3 seconds
Weight:                    1.3 lbs with batteries
Depth rating:              300 feet (90 m)

The strobe attaches to an that which attaches to the accessory 
shoe on the top of the Aquashot housing.  Everything seems pretty secure.
The alignment of the strobe is such that it will illuminate between 
2 and 6 feet, according to the instructions. This alignment is preset 
and can't be changed (it's molded into the plastic).

The strobe comes with two other little gizmos: a flash deflector and
a "water correcting lens."  The water correcting lens is a lens that fits 
over the camera lens.  It's not a water tight fit (it's not intended 
to be!); water fills the space between the housing and the
water correcting lens.  Maybe someone who was paying more attention in 
physics class when they covered optics can explain to me sometime why and
how this works.  The purpose of this lens is to allow you to focus as 
close as 2 feet underwater.  NOTE: take this OFF if you want to take
pictures on land!  (focus is way out of whack otherwise, which I proved
to myself with a test shot)  The water correcting lens screws into that
little hole by the lens window on the front of the camera housing.
The flash deflector is held in place by the water correcting lens.  It
fits over the flash window on the housing, and deflects the flash
up to the flash sensor on the strobe (when using, make sure you don't
block this pathway; easy to do with clumsy gloved hands).  This flash 
triggers the strobe to fire; ergo, you have to use the flash version 
of the disposable camera.

Cost: $150 at the local dive shop.  Also available is a padded case to
put housing and strobe in.  It's soft-sided (Cordura, I think) and costs
$30.  Yikes.  Or you can do like I did and get a plastic toolbox for $9 
from your local hardware store (the 15" size is perfect) and scrounge some 
foam rubber to pad it with.

So far I've taken the strobe on one dive.  It seemed to work fine.  By that
I mean the battery compartment didn't flood, and the slave was successfully
triggered (I can tell from a few of my pictures that it didn't fire; I 
didn't notice this at the time but it's obvious from the photos.
I think this is because I had part of my hand over the flash pathway).
It was easy to use; the only problem I had was that the on/off switch on
the strobe was a bit difficult to work with heavy gloves on cold fingers.
So I just kept the switch in the "on" position most of the time.  The
other mini-bummer is that the whole thing is very positively buoyant, 
as you Aquashot owners know.  I find that when I'm using the wrist loop 
(either on my wrist, or attached to a hook on my weight belt) the thing 
floats up and gets tangled up in my hoses.  This is still the case, 
and may be exacerbated by the fact that you've now got more stuff on the 
housing to get tangled.  What I ended up doing was just carrying the 
whole thing around by the attachment arm.

And now, after all this, the acid test: THE PICTURES.  Here in Puget Sound,
the water is so murky and dark that (1) the built-in flash of the 
disposable cameras is way too wimpy for many applications;  (2) the 
backscatter is bad.  I used the strobe on a shallow dive (15') with 
viz of 10-15'.  (Note that even though this is shallow, due to the weather
and the conditions it wasn't exactly sunlit) As I mentioned, the flash 
didn't fire on several of my shots, due I believe to my own ineptitude
(see above), but on those pictures, dark as they were, the absence of 
backscatter was downright refreshing.  It's really true that the range 
of the strobe is 2-6 feet -- the shots that I took of objects that were 
farther away look pretty lousy.  However, my shots of stuff that was 
3-5 feet away look great!  The water even looks CLEAR! 

To sum up: I like it.  It costs a fair chunk of change, but there was a
big difference in the quality of my pictures.  It is not a panacea for
murky waters like ours, however -- you're pretty limited in the distance
range of things you can successfully photograph.  (I'm sure that U/W
photographers know this quite well already, but I'm just learning  :-)  )
Also, the difference in the results might not be as striking for those
lucky folks who do their diving (and their photography) in clear water and 
sunshine.
Newsgroups: rec.scuba