Looking for strobe

[tadeotadeo]

I am considering buying a strobe for my Canon Powershot A630 and I'm on a tight budget but want to get the most for the money and not have to sell and buy another in the near future if not feasible or reliable. Most of my use for the strobe with be macro type shots.
About the cheapest I can find out there is the Fantasea Nano Flash.
I cant seem to find any power rating on this strobe to compare to others, does anyone know anything about it power rating.
Is this a reliable Strobe? Sometimes you get what you pay for.
Any other comments or recommendations would be appreciated.

 

[Adriaan557]

I was in the same position you are in and bought the Epoque ES-150DS Alfa Strobe for my Canon G9. Nice compact flash and reasonably priced. Just got back form a dive trip in Mozambique, and i got really good results with macro. It is a bit underpowered to take pictures more that a 3 feet away, but never less I got a few decent shots of coral formations.

I'll post some pictures later this week.

 

[RTRski]

I was shooting with a Canon A520. I found a used Ikelite DS50 (slightly older serial number - perfectly capable of working for faster digital vs older Nikonos systems, but not upgradable to the newer TTL synchronization standards) and EV controller (optical slave unit, fires the strobe on your in-camera flash) and put it on a one-arm tray handle. Total cost around $380 since I bought the handle new. Worked great, however it convinced me I needed to upgrade and am now using a DSLR (with two newer DS50's that were upgraded for full iTTL operation with the newer Ike DSLR housing).

If you don't want to wait out a similar used unit on ebay, and $300 or so is in your price range, PM me. I've been keeping it for backup in case my wife wants to house a point n shoot but on our last trip she was quite happy playing model and spotter and letting me keep my hands full. And since she's a good spotter (and model) I'm pretty happy with it too. So if you're interested, shoot me a PM.

If you're not interested, then my only real advice is to pay attention to your own 'you get what you pay for' concerns. I've found even with TWO DS50s, I wasn't satisfied with the amount of light I had available for wider angle shots with my DSLR in 50-60 foot sort of visibility. I'm already looking to upgrade to DS125s sometime. Not knowing what type of photography you're most interested in, I'd still have to say you don't want to skimp on whatever you pick by lowballing it too much. If UW photography is something you'll stick with, then any of the starting strobes from the bigger vendors like Epoque, Ikelite, or Sea and Sea would probably be a better choice than something really tiny. It hurts to consider paying more for a strobe than for a camera and housing, but those strobes can follow to newer and bigger cameras later. (Even if I do upgrade to DS125s, I'd keep the DS50s as quite sufficient for macro work)