when you say you had the f stop set to the highest setting do you mean the highest number like F22 ? (or however high it goes) or do you mean you had it open as possible at F2.8

I don’t know what you know so I am sorry if this sounds patronising if you know this:

Low Number F Stop = big hole = lets more light in
High Number F Stop = small hole = lets less light in

from your original description that would be my best guess of what went wrong.

and contrary to scubadude advice i would not suggest using a strobe at a concert, unless you are up on stage with the band, the flash will not do hardly as much as you hope. But I could be wrong Scubadude is a professional Photography Instructor and so may well be right.

ok

let us see an example .. the most extreme you have

it sounds wrong .. the light emiited by the flash should way overpower the spotting beamd from the 125.

if you have something noticeable you should share it and then we can let you know if something is wrong somewhere.

share the image and the settings the camera chose to use for the photo.

It is entirely possible it is a strobe problem .. or the settings the camera is choosing are just plain wrong.

scubadude is very wrong in saying getting a spotting light ... they are normally much more concentrated and powerfull than the light emitted by the strobes .. so you will just get more problems then. But he is a Pro UW photography instructor so you never know ... I may be wrong.

As Giles mentioned the flash should be overpowering the modeling light.  Have you tried placing the diffuser on the strobe?

If the full automatic mode reading the spotting light?  Sounds like it could be reading the exposure of the light itself and setting exposure/color balance perhaps (if you have the picture as Giles suggessted it may help.) (Though if this was the case the hotspot would be lower and the rest of the picture darker along with potential color shifts if the spotting light is in the lighter part of the picture is this what is happening?)

What settings does automatic default to - are your overriding anything (f/stop, shutter speed?) Can you grab the information on the bad pix from the EXIF data?

and on this very point ...

doesn’ty a 125 turn the spotters off as it fires the strobes anyways ?

As Giles said, a flash is not going to do much unless you are close, and can be used for fill on the foreground while still capturing the lights. Also despite was said, you do not need to use a flash for a concert - there are many variables that go into determining how and when to use a flash at a concert - lighting conditions and the effect you are trying to achieve in the photo.

ALot depends on where you are shotting - clubs or major venues.  The major venue shows usuallly have extensive lighting and comes down to two situations practically - (a) you are close enough where the flash will make a difference (and it will not be a great distance at all depending on your strobe talking maybe 10-15 feet, practically at most) or (b) it is just to far for the strobe.

That being said, IMHO, in the former case (the flash making a difference) the strobe should be used as little as possible, enough to use as fill.  Too often (more so in club shots) the strobe is too powerful and brings out too much detail of the stage - basiclly you lose the ambience off the live setting and it looks like it could have been shot in a rehearsel in someones basement. (More so in slightly wider shots as oppossed to a close up of a performer) In the later case you will have to shoot ambient light, which is fine.

For ambient/available light (even if you are close enough to the stage to uwith the ISO and the shutter speed.  Anything less than 1/100-1/125 and there is a good chance of blurring - not much with keyboard players, but singers running around the stage.

Of course with higher ISOs you will get some noise also, but it is a tradeoff.  In general a good starting place is f/3.5 and shutter of 1/100 if you have the ISO for it (FWIW a 400 ISO is higher than a 200 ISO)

As to the best way to use the setup, practice practice and more practice to see how it handles

You made me go back and dig something up that I had started working on MANY moons ago, but you may want to give a quick look here to get a handle on some of the basics (and now I have the impetus to go back and work on it )

http://www.divefile.com/photointro/

Very good question, and I am not sure of the answer. Just looked at the manual and did not see an answer there (though they do mention that if you fire it more than 15 times in rapid succession you should shut it off for 10 minutes to cool down which I did not notice, annd is kind of interesting in light of prior discussions of recycling times of the Ikellite vs the Sea & Seas)

I have not noticed one way or the other when I have used it underwater.  During the day for the most part I keep the modeling light off due to battery drain and to avoid spooking my subjects.  The light is really not that powerful is most of the dayllight situations I have encountered (other than swim throughs and so forth) - if you want I can hook it up and see what happens, but just give me some time for for eyes to come back :wink: I probably did that when I first got it in fact, but do not remember.

that is truly weird .. i didnt think the spotting beam is that precise .. but i see what you mean.

I messed with the photo to show the spot off a little more and you see this

I have just been reading about it, and some people say that this is a problem with the strobes and in some cases I have seen people saying they dont think the modelling light is bright enough.

Have you contacted ikelite ? i’ll email them this thread there may be a simple fix for this.

Have you used the diffuser?

As GlassGoby mentioned the model light (at leaast for me) is more diffuse (and in bright light hard to see even through the viewfinder) - I just took a look at my 125 - and in the dark I cannot get the light to be that concentrated with the diffuser on.

if I take the diffuser off than I can get a concentrated area.  Are you using a colored diffuser and/or some other focus light (I had a similar result that you have in your photos with another light I used that was not diffuse enough/ had to small/concentrated beam)

As Giles pointed out this is a modeling light (to make sure of strobe positioning) and not a focus light (which has more light to help with focusing)

Take a look to see if the AF light is on and shut it off if it is [before diving try it out in a darker room to see what happens] and then also contact Ikelite if that does not cure the issue. 

As Giles mentioned also the strobe should wash out the modeling light - so double check your settings on your camera and strobe, not quite sure how far you were off the sand there - with ISO 400 with 1/80 of a second shooting into the ground with white sand I would think it there would be blown out more if the flash fired it almost looks like the flash/metering may have stopped the flash.

In other words there may have been too much light so the strobe did not fire/take out the modeling light.  (One of the things i have seen, and done (doh) when not setting the camera to force flash, not on the Canon but other cameras)

do the ikelite ds125’s have a red beam for aiming them ? a so called focus beam or something .. I have read some stuff that brings this up and yet didnt see it in the specs for them .. is this the possible problem ?

They revised the 125s for longer battery life recently, but did not see any other changes in the specs, but my 125 does not have a red beam on it.  Just the modeling light

(I think oif it more of a aiming light as described here http://www.backscatter.com/learn/article/article.php?ID=5)

I kept it off alot of the time to try to save battery time - off the top of my head I do not recall it making a difference in focusing time but I will be diving in a few weeks and will double check to see how it works.  I was doing day diving the last trip out and the water was very clear and bright, so for the most part the modeling light was very subtle the few times I tried it unless I was very close.  I believe if a was a few feet off the subject but within strobe range (to the 3-5ft range) did not use it because of that. 

Will try to check some more the next trip to see how it goes. 

I am wondering if there is a color shift also in the light when the battery starts running down.  On some lights people are using for video rigs, there can be a color shift even though the light still works when the battery runs down.

EDIT TO ADD:

There are red indicator lights on the side for the fuel gauge/ready light.  In a room with no lights on (ambient daylight), if you move your hand around a foot away the light is not really noticiable.  Maybe in close macro mode it could be seen, but it would seem that the strobe would have to be pointed out and away from the subject if on the left side and almost across the camera on the right side.  I guess in theory a relfection could come off the camera/housing if mounted on the left, but I really do not see that happening

i emailed ikelite .. maybe they will have something to say ..

In very low light levels underwater, the camera will set a wide open aperture which can leave the aiming light the predominant ligtht source.  This is why you do not want to use the simple auto everything camera settings.  See following URL:

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/qdigital.html

Get your aperture up several f/stops...............

You can often download manuals from the manufacturers website, then sstart playing with it alot above water also, see what happens when you change ISO, f/Stops and shutter speeds and try to adjust each one to get the same exposure as I mention in the above link - in general f/5-5.6, ISO 100 and Shutter of 1/100 will start getting you into the general area for many things as a start and tweak from there - too much movement in subjects, increase shutter speed (moving from 1/100 to 1/125 for example), too dark, open f/stop from 5 to 4.5 (or slow shutter speed down if not blurry or increase ISO) etc.

Let me know how you get on, at some point I am adding more things and information/things to try.

Just keep on pressing the shutter button, one big thing about digital, no film costs and processing fees so you can experiment alot more without buring the dollar$

Movie clips are usually accessed via a dial on some models or the menu on others, can get some good little things and it is fun to have

here you go

http://www.leica-camera.us/service/downloads/compact_cameras/digilux_2/index.html

Instructions PDF there, pg 151 movies

What type of computer do you have?

Often all computers come with some sort of software for imagaing, iPhoto on the Mac for instance, and other software for both Mac and PC which wil let you crop/edit photos and reduce the size of the file