Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away (actually, Kona, Hawaii, 1974), I was trying to teach myself underwater photography with some pretty rudimentary equipment. I had a Nikonos I camera with a bulb flash. That meant, of course, I was swimming around the reef with a mesh bag of floating bulbs tied off, and for every shot I had to take a new bulb out, insert it into the flash head, and then maybe it would fire. This was essentially the same system Louis Boutan had used in 1893, and I figured there had to be a better way, both in terms of economy (those damn bulbs were expensive) and ergonomics.

Getting good-quality underwater images is often all about color, and color simply doesn't happen in the absence of artificial light. Here, a school of grunts is captured without flash (above) and with strobe from the built-in flash of a point-and-shoot housed digital camera (below).

So, I saved my money and ordered an Ikelite housing for my topside strobe, a Vivitar 283 in those days. I didn't have any strobe arms to go with it, and the beam was pretty narrow, but at least it was better than flashbulbs. About that time I began hearing about another kid on the island who was doing some really nice underwater photography. The guys at the dive shop said he had this special underwater strobe that you could recharge (so battery expense wasn't an issue), it recycled quickly (so those elusive fish behavior shots could happen), was powerful (no more blue, monochromatic pictures from an underpowered flash), and had a beam broad enough to cover even a wide-angle lens (which didn't matter to me because all I could afford was the Nikonos 35mm). The kid was Chris Newbert, the strobe was the Oceanic 2001, and I had my first case of serious equipment envy. Underwater photography is so much about color, and color simply doesn't happen in the absence of artificial light. Even then I knew a good strobe was as important as the right lens.

Actually, strobes got very good around that time. Ikelite introduced its first Substrobe 150 and Sea & Sea brought out its YS300 series. Strobes were only manual then, as the camera manufacturers had yet to invent TTL (through-the-lens) automatic exposure control, but a serious shooter now had several brands to choose from. As technology matured and the Nikonos V offered TTL exposure automation, the strobes evolved as well. Nikon's underwater speedlights, as well as those by virtually all other manufacturers, now had multiple powers and TTL, some had built-in slave, and others had model lights strong enough to serve as night lights. Life was pretty good for the analog shooter. There were plenty of excellent strobes in a variety of price ranges and feature sets. Then, along came digital and all that changed. TTL didn't work anymore because the digital chips reflected light differently than film material, so digital SLR shooters had lost the advantage of any automatic strobe exposure. Plus, entry-level digital cameras achieved automatic strobe exposure control by means of a preflash that was inconsistent from camera to camera. Trying to sync a cordless slave to the right flash (the one where the shutter is actually open) amid multiple flashes was very challenging for underwater strobe manufacturers.

Fast-forward to just last week as I was teaching an intro underwater photo course. The students had a variety of point-and-shoot digital cameras, but those who were using their camera's built-in flash had color only when they could get to within two feet of their subject, and if there was any particulate matter in the water at all, they had massive backscatter because the strobe was so close to the lens.

Obviously, they needed an external flash if they were going to take their photos to a higher level. That was complicated too because these little cameras and their housings didn't have a sync port for an external strobe. So while these cameras are technological marvels, I felt like I'd stepped back in time, to 1974, trying to bring proper strobe light to their cameras.

The Problems

1. Strobe triggered via slave. There is often too much ambient light and too little strobe light emitted by these small cameras to trigger a slave through water. Plus, the built-in flash will still generate backscatter, even if the secondary strobe does manage to go off.

2. Preflash. The secondary flash may or may not synchronize properly. It is easy to test, of course. Just take a picture of the strobe head, and if it is shown firing in the resulting digital photo, it's in sync. Recognizing the potential problem here, SeaLife's Digital Flash has a five-position switch that allows trial-and-error test of various preflash modes, and when it actually works once, the flash is left in that position for as long as that particular camera is used.

The Solutions

Fiber optic. Actually, this is a pretty elegant solution if it can be mounted properly to the housing. Sea & Sea offers a good solution to the fiber-optic mounting issue with its DX8000G housing. There are a pair of molded sockets (in case a shooter wants to use double strobes) and an internal light baffle that slides into place to simultaneously block the light from causing backscatter and channel the flash to the fiber optics, thereby triggering the external flash. When used with Sea & Sea's YS15 and SeaArm Lite it makes for a very compact and user-friendly system.

Hard wire. Ikelite and Light & Motion have built hard-wire sync ports into their housings, which I find the most reliable way to trigger an external strobe. Olympus also has them on its higher-end housings, but the connection is unique and requires the use of an Olympus housed digital flash.

D-SLR Frustrations

High-end digital photo systems aren't immune to these strobe conundrums either. The lack of TTL has been troubling for some, but of course the angst is buffered by the fact that we can immediately see the image on the camera's LCD and make necessary exposure adjustments.

Still, there are those who remain wedded to the convenience of TTL from the analog era, and they are celebrating the advances Ikelite has made in creating conversion circuitry for I-TTL (Nikon) and e-TTL/e-TTL2 (Canon). Even if lack of TTL were not an issue, there are other issues that come with strobes that, for the most part, were designed for analog photographers shooting 36 exposures on a single dive with considerable time between shots.

In these examples, the copper sweepers are lit by the built-in flash from a digital point-and-shoot (above), while backscatter is reduced by using a separate off-camera flash (below).

Capacity. With a four-gigabyte card, today's digital shooter might burn 400 shots on a single dive. Granted, not all 400 will be keepers, but we shoot a lot more images on a single dive than we ever used to. The good thing is that most are shot at half-power because digital is more sensitive to light than analog, but still, many strobes don't have sufficient battery life to keep up with the demands of digital shooters.

Recycle time. Because we have far greater capacity, we are more inclined to shoot quickly. We don't have to pace ourselves to make 36 shots last for a whole dive, and we are more inclined to try to capture behavioral series or action. Rapid sequence shooting requires a strobe that can recycle in two seconds or less. Most cannot.

Consistency. Just because a ready light or audible signal indicates the strobe is ready to fire, it does not mean it's ready to fire at optimal capacity consistently. I have seen significant variation in rapid sequential shots, all taken at the same manual strobe power of the same subject from the same strobe-to-subject distance. The only variable in this case is the strobe output. However, if I allow five to 10 seconds between shots, I find wonderful consistency. Unfortunately, for me, 10 seconds is sometimes an eternity when a shark is nipping at the bait or the "decisive moment" is before me.

Despite the limitations of current strobe systems for the digital photographer, I feel I'm well advanced from my bulb-flash era. I also think we’re on the threshold of some significant new revelations in underwater lighting as strobe manufacturers continue to develop solutions to these issues. The strobes will be getting smaller, more powerful and more reliable. And that’s just what we need.