Olympus PT-059 cold shoe lighting

Is the Cold shoe going to break?

  • Yes you are going to mess it up

  • No, the housing can take the weight.


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Thomas Witt

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Messages
14
Reaction score
3
Location
Tennessee
# of dives
50 - 99
Hi, I've been trying to up my photography game and have an Olympus TG-6 and PT-059 Housing. I did recently buy those, but I need more things to up my game for my next dive trip. I want to buy a Backscatter M52 Air lens and I will need strobes and a tray for this set up. Buying a quality tray costs a good bit of money, but buying good strobes costs even more. As I try to piece together my set up slowly, I'll be shooting single strobe, but to be even cheaper (i'm a high school student athlete taking AP classes with no time to work) I was wondering if I could mount a strobe, to the cold shoe, and have two 8" arms with ball joint clamps to avoid backscatter.

Essentially I'm asking if I put a bunch of weight/ load on the cold shoe, will I break it and possible ruin my housing and camera because the set up is too heavy.
 
The weight underwater will not be an issue with most strobes, the weight before you splash might be, what I was told is dont tighten the clamps until your descending and you wont stress the mount.

I dove that way for 5-10 years and never had an issue

It means having somebody pass the camera to you as jumping with it while the arms are floppy is a bit challenging, On my setup I fold the arms over each other so they form a handle as the locline is not strong enough to support my inon S-2000 strobes out of the water, once underwater they are pretty neutral.
 
The weight underwater will not be an issue with most strobes, the weight before you splash might be, what I was told is dont tighten the clamps until your descending and you wont stress the mount.

I dove that way for 5-10 years and never had an issue

It means having somebody pass the camera to you as jumping with it while the arms are floppy is a bit challenging, On my setup I fold the arms over each other so they form a handle as the locline is not strong enough to support my inon S-2000 strobes out of the water, once underwater they are pretty neutral.


Wow, I didn't think the cold shoe could take all that weight, thanks for the input!
 
Like I said just be very careful out of the water.
 
hold the rig close to your chest and do a backwards giant stride or a standing back roll.
 
_9024767.JPG _9024791.JPG _9024798.JPG DSC06321.JPG Thomas,
If you haven't already made your hotshoe purchase, here are a couple of examples of a DIY strobe tray/arm I made using 1.25" dia, polypropylene (PP) plastic drain pipes and stock aluminum from the hardware store. I embedded the hinge tabs in epoxy and used HDPE disks with stainless steel to make the hinges. The pipe fittings can be adjusted to rotate the strobe angle. I have made 6 or 7 arm/trays for a variety of cameras.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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