Strobe coverage underwater

[Mike W]

My strobes of choice are a pair of old non-digital Ikelites, an Ai and a 100A. They're powerful, have a good angle of coverage and have built-in modelling lamps that are more than good enough to use as the primary light on night dives. The only downside is that they're not very adjustable, with a choice of half of full power only.

I've also had problems over the last year with flooding and mysterious breakages of components on the circuit boards - Kevin at KMR has had one of the strobes more than I have. I think that putting the strobes in a box in the hold of aircraft isn't helping, but at 1.2kg per strobe, each of which is 8.5 x 6.5 x 4.5 inches there isn't an alternative given package flight restrictions.

I also own a little Epoque ES150 I bought to use with my first digital compact. It weighs less then 350g, and is much, much smaller than an Ikelite at 3 x 3.5 x 2.5 inches, and I could stuff a couple of these in my pockets for overseas trips...



Logic suggests the much smaller Epoque couldn't hope to match the larger Ikelites for either power or spread of light, but I thought it would be worth the effort of finding out. Each strobe was positioned directly above the camera housing and as close to the housing as possible and pointing directly forward, and a picture taken of the side of a small wooden boat sunk in Ellerton Park Lake using just one strobe at a time. Pics were taken about 3 feet from the boat using my Canon 350D and Tokina 10-17, set at 10mm. Vis was around 2m. Here's the comparison picture



The Epoque is actually a bit up on power, but a bit down on coverage, but not much in either case. In fact, I'd suggest a pair of Epoques would near enough cover the frame and the increased power would possibly allow a diffuser to be used to improve coverage further. Using them would be trickier than the Ikelites, they'd need more careful positioning, and without the modelling lamps that would be more difficult, and their colour temperature is also different, but I think it's worth buying a second to find out.

[TimIngmire]

Interesting as I have an irrational and unfounded dislike of the Epoques. It would be interesting to see how they line up against more modern strobes like the DS-125 / Inon 240's - if they can stand up to that and offer equivalent control over output then they maybe the best value for money around.

Tim

[Mike W]

Interesting to hear you've an irrational dislike of the Epoques, Tim - I flooded my first (My fault!) and yet I have an equally irrational liking for them...

In terms of power, my 'old' Ikelites are much the same as the DS125s on paper, and the Inons are supposedly much the same as the DS125s. If that's really the case, the little Epoque is kicking out a lot of light, albeit over a more resricted area, and has 5 stops of exposure control, with no click stops so very smooth alteration of power levels.

TBH, though, I still think my Ikelites are a better bet overall, and I'm sure the DS125s or the Inons would be even better still, with the Inons in particular being reasonably compact - but even so they're two and a half times the weight and a fair bit bigger (And much more expensive, though that wasn't the point).

For my purposes, and especially given that I shoot a lot of available light, I think a second Epoque is worth a try. I might revisit this post in a few months and say I was wrong, but then again I might not. The second will have to be the Epoque ES150DS alpha so I can synch it to the SLR, so you'll see a wanted add appear soon!