I just got a Sony P93 with a housing. I had been thinking about getting the strobe that goes with it, but didn't want to spend the money. When I was playing around with it the first night, I looked at the little flash and a little strobe went off in my head. I got one of my 105's and set it on slave at 1/4 and 1/16 power and the digital flash set off the big guy. It worked great at 1/16, but the 1/4 overexposed things more that the automatics in the camera could handle. So, if you are thinking about a digital and have a Nikon strobe, this is one way to save some big pennies. I still plan on taking one of my IV's for full-on macro's and using the digital with a slaved strobe for the rest of the shots on scuba and the digital by itself for snorkeling.

You may wish to follow this link for more ideas on triggering your 105 with a fiber optic cable.

BTW, if your tests were conducted on land, the Nikon SB 105 strobe effectiveness will be much greater. Also, the ISO chosen ( and hopefully not selected by the "auto" feature you mentioned with reference to the digicam) will be a factor. Water, as you recall, has much greater filtering powers than air. Once underwater, that 1/4 power manual setting may not be enough, depending upon distance, aperture selected, and the compositional goal.

Also I'd like to point out most likely that the Nikon strobe will work only as long as the camera has a slave function ( I'm not sure if the forced flash mode of your camera sends out a series of flashes or just one). IOW, the digicam must be able to send out a single flash that is in sync with the shutter. The SB 105 is not capable of disregarding any preflashes that many of today's digicams rely upon to aid in determining exposure settings. What may happen in this case is the strobe will put out whatever you have manually set it to on the first flash it sees from the digicam. It may not have enough time to recycle to the appropriate power level on the subsequent flash that is in sync with the camera shutter.

hth,
b

I have been using the 105 at 1/4 power with my V set at 5.6 on manual for several years and have been happy with the results. Very little back scatter and never have bright objects overexposed. The flicker flash that the Sony uses to set exposure doesn't seem to set off the 105. I will get some fiber optic cable and try that if I have trouble getting the 105 to fire off underwater. I will be playing with the setup on my first dives on Bonaire. I posted this thread in case there are other people out there that have been reluctant to go digital due to the cost of purchasing a full strobe along with with the camera and housing.

Thanks for the link.