Just bought a Panasonic DMC-ZS8, looking for a strobe

[Javachip]

Greetings, I'm a newbie to digital photography but not to diving or u/w film photography. I just bought a Panasonic Lumix ZS-8 camera with the manufacturer's DMW-MCTZ20 housing. Does anyone have experience with this model? I'm considering getting a Fantasea Nano strobe and would welcome any comments. I started a similar thread in the "Introduction" and "Light/Strobe" forums -- I hope that isn't breaking etiquette.

 

[vimaldude]

Greetings, I'm a newbie to digital photography but not to diving or u/w film photography. I just bought a Panasonic Lumix ZS-8 camera with the manufacturer's DMW-MCTZ20 housing. Does anyone have experience with this model? I'm considering getting a Fantasea Nano strobe and would welcome any comments. I started a similar thread in the "Introduction" and "Light/Strobe" forums -- I hope that isn't breaking etiquette.

I have ZS6 and I am using Sea&Sea YS-01 strobe. I love this strobe. It is a TTL strobe that makes it very easy for a newbie (fire-n-forget). I have used this for over 30 dives now and the pictures are really good.

Since this is a long term investment, my advice is to not skimp on it and get a strobe that will last you. The Fantasea is a good entry level strobe but it doesn't have TTL and it is not as powerful. You will outgrow it in no time. YS-01 allows you manual/auto and TTL modes and has good power.

I bought mine from Diver Vision.

 

[Javachip]

Thanks for the recommendation. I ended up buying an Intova ISS 2000 non-TTL. For $110 brand new, including arm, tray, and shipping, I figured what the heck. Do you use the built-in flash on your ZS-6 to light the subject, or only to trigger the S&S?

 

[vimaldude]

Thanks for the recommendation. I ended up buying an Intova ISS 2000 non-TTL. For $110 brand new, including arm, tray, and shipping, I figured what the heck. Do you use the built-in flash on your ZS-6 to light the subject, or only to trigger the S&S?

Before I bought YS-01, I had bought the same ISS 2000 strobe. It was very disappointed with it. The main problem was that the fiber optic connection was very weak. I even designed my own connector but nothing really worked well. As a result the strobe would not fire half the time and I lost many potentially good pictures. Also, the recycles times were bad (over 5-8 seconds per flash).

So finally I bit the bullet and went for YS-01. It is a bit more expensive but it just works great. Fires everytime and with TTL the pictures are exposed just right.

I hope you have better luck with your strobe than I had with mine.

As to your question, I only use the strobe to light the subject. The zs-6's built in flash is only used to trigger the strobe and not to light the subject. You will get too much back-scatter if you use internal strobe also.