strobe for snorkeling?

[jbilicska]

Hello all on this beautiful sunny Thursday.
My wife and I are avid snorkelers and generally swim in 15 to 30 foot of water. I've been taking pictures with my Olympus 7070 camera and ikelite housing. My housing has a tray with an arm for attaching a loc line and a sync connector on the back.
My pictures come out alright when I dive down but are filled with mainly blue hues.

Will a strobe like the ikelite ds 51 package improve my shots?
Being that we are snorkeling from the shore and at all times of day the water clarity is not usually crystal clear
Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Thanks
Joe

 

[Ran Mozaik]

A strobe can help a great deal with adding colors and getting rid of the blues.
The DS51 is great and quite powerful. The downside of it is longer recycle time, which may be a bit annoying for freediving since you want as many shots in one dive as possible. But as long as you're not using it on full, it should be fine.
If you're trying to decide whether or not to get a strobe at all, I would read this: Why are underwater strobes so damn important?

 

[danvolker]

On the other hand, if you are in 15 or 20 feet of water, there is a huge amount of ambient light, and most of the colors are there....Try to get within 2 feet of anything you want to pop with colors...and white balance and tweak it in Lightroom.
For this depth, I think lights would be more of a pain in the butt.... than something you need. Once you are diving to 45 or 60 feet deep or more--possible as a freediver, even though you can't stay long for a shot....the strobes will make a much bigger difference. Strobes and arms are a lot of drag for a freediver....I shoot a canon 5 D in an aquatica housing...a big refrigerator to push around underwater. It's bad enough with just the camera...when I have my big arms and big lights on it, the drag for freediving starts to limit my depth and duration.

One work around is the Watershot Stryker dive light.....it is a small canister light....the battery you wear on your weight belt, is the size of a small flashlight and near neutral in water. The light is worn on top of either wrist/hand, with a nice glove like holder....If you have heard of a Goodman handle for cave lights, I think you would find this nicer still.
See


It is easy to point this VIDEO light ( very wide and smooth beam) at your photo subject, and get all the yellows and reds you are worried about missing...the light has very little drag, and many more uses than a strobe.
You still need to get within 2 feet or so of your primary subject...whether with this, or with a $4000 set of pro level strobes.
You still need to use Lightroom or photoshop...whether with the Watershot or with the $4000 strobes

 

[jbilicska]

Thanks for all the help so far.
As stated by Dan I was also concerned about how easy it would be to drag a strobe around.
My camera is attached to my weight cord by a bungee and I hold it by the housings tray handle. A little hard to swim with but very manageable.
My wife and I usually stay out for at least an hour each time so I wouldn't want it to be hard to drag around with me.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

I think used DS50 and DS51's can be to be too expensive for what they offer, and older DS125s with nickel metal hydride batteries aren't usually much more, and offer more light. That said I own several of each (keep an eye out for the $100 used DS50's, those are a sweet deal)... and either way, you only get that light to something very close to you. Lightroom is key.

If I were freediving in the same spot for an hour, I'd get the camera set up neutrally bouyant and leave it clipped off on the end of my dive flag float, at the depth I wanted to swim to. Why bother lugging it up and down each time?

 

[jbilicska]

That's a good idea about the float but we swim about the reef diving down when we see something good. We both have a pair of Mares Quattro fins which help out a lot in our swimming and diving.
Another 6 inches of snow here . My nephew up in the Boston area says not to worry about it. They had a record snowfall this year over 100 inches

 

[JahJahwarrior]

Well, you've gotta drag the flag and float around anyway, so worst case you get a weird little pendulum effect and drag at the end of the line rather than drag in your hands... it's not necessarily ideal but it does solve one of the problems. I've used that trick a few times but never with my full slr rig.

 

[jbilicska]

Thanks
When we were in the keys I had to drag a dive flag around.
In the Caribbean we don't bring one with us. Tried it the first year but it kept getting hung up on the rocks and didn't like the damage it was doing along the way.