Hi,
Yesterday I tested my new uw-photo gear for the very first time.
Unfortunately it wasn't such a great experience as I had expected as
almost every single picture ended up being pitch black! Yes, the external strobe did fire on each and every shot.
Anyway, I've sent a mail to Ikelite about it but I suspect they might not have the answer and therefore I'm posting my very first (I think) thread here at scubaboard to see if you fellow olympus friends could spread some light on the problem. Perhaps we all may learn something from it!? Perhaps it's a silly mistake?
Instead of rephrasing and possibly forgetting some important detail, I will post my mail to Ikelite in all.
- - - - - - - -
I have an Olypmus C-7070W, Ikelite Uw-housing, Ikelite DS-125 strobe.
I did my dives in the Swedish west coast. It was a sunny day and the visibility was good to be Sweden. Max depth was 20m. I tried taking pictures from about 3m deep and got the same problems (more of that a bit further below) no matter the depth or the object.
Distance to objects were approx 20cm <--> 40cm. I had my (small AAA) focus light and DS-125 flash pointer light setup to approximately these distances. I shot some of the picture with the pointer light ON (always with difuser) but most of them where shot with it OFF. That made no difference to the problem.
According to your recommendations, I had it set up like this:
- ISO 80
- White Balance set to Auto.
- Manual Exposure Mode
- Shutter Speed to 1/100s
- Aperture to f/11
- Macro mode
- External flash selected
- Slow 1
- No zooming
- DS-125 set to TTL
This part of your recommendation I don't understand:
"Depress the Flash Button, then select lightning Bolt and SLOW."
What I don't understand is that as far as I can see, this is forced by the camera when
selecting external flash!
The only choice is between Slow1 and Slow2. I had selected Slow1.
Hmm thinking about it now, perhaps Slow2 would have solved the problem... Ayway, please read on! ;-)
Problem:
9 out of 10 shots (at least) ended up pitch back! Not a single piece of information in the picture. The ds-125 strobe was fired on each shot. I took about 50 shots on different objects at different depth. Suddenly I was able to get about 5 shots in sync with the strobe but then just as suddenly as it worked it stopped working again and every single shot was pitch black.
More info:
On my second dive the same day I changed the camera to scene mode UW-Macro.
Now every single (well at least 9 out of 10) turned out well. But of course I had no control over the shutter speed and aperture as it was in an auto mode.
When I examine the pictures exif data I can see that the photos in the uw-macro scene mode where all shot with a shutter speed of 1/60. The aperture differed from 3 to 8. Even at f stop 8, there was plenty of light in the picture.
I can provide you with some of the photos if you like to examine those.
- - - - - - - - -
/Peter
Yesterday I tested my new uw-photo gear for the very first time.
Unfortunately it wasn't such a great experience as I had expected as
almost every single picture ended up being pitch black! Yes, the external strobe did fire on each and every shot.
Anyway, I've sent a mail to Ikelite about it but I suspect they might not have the answer and therefore I'm posting my very first (I think) thread here at scubaboard to see if you fellow olympus friends could spread some light on the problem. Perhaps we all may learn something from it!? Perhaps it's a silly mistake?
Instead of rephrasing and possibly forgetting some important detail, I will post my mail to Ikelite in all.
- - - - - - - -
I have an Olypmus C-7070W, Ikelite Uw-housing, Ikelite DS-125 strobe.
I did my dives in the Swedish west coast. It was a sunny day and the visibility was good to be Sweden. Max depth was 20m. I tried taking pictures from about 3m deep and got the same problems (more of that a bit further below) no matter the depth or the object.
Distance to objects were approx 20cm <--> 40cm. I had my (small AAA) focus light and DS-125 flash pointer light setup to approximately these distances. I shot some of the picture with the pointer light ON (always with difuser) but most of them where shot with it OFF. That made no difference to the problem.
According to your recommendations, I had it set up like this:
- ISO 80
- White Balance set to Auto.
- Manual Exposure Mode
- Shutter Speed to 1/100s
- Aperture to f/11
- Macro mode
- External flash selected
- Slow 1
- No zooming
- DS-125 set to TTL
This part of your recommendation I don't understand:
"Depress the Flash Button, then select lightning Bolt and SLOW."
What I don't understand is that as far as I can see, this is forced by the camera when
selecting external flash!
The only choice is between Slow1 and Slow2. I had selected Slow1.
Hmm thinking about it now, perhaps Slow2 would have solved the problem... Ayway, please read on! ;-)
Problem:
9 out of 10 shots (at least) ended up pitch back! Not a single piece of information in the picture. The ds-125 strobe was fired on each shot. I took about 50 shots on different objects at different depth. Suddenly I was able to get about 5 shots in sync with the strobe but then just as suddenly as it worked it stopped working again and every single shot was pitch black.
More info:
On my second dive the same day I changed the camera to scene mode UW-Macro.
Now every single (well at least 9 out of 10) turned out well. But of course I had no control over the shutter speed and aperture as it was in an auto mode.
When I examine the pictures exif data I can see that the photos in the uw-macro scene mode where all shot with a shutter speed of 1/60. The aperture differed from 3 to 8. Even at f stop 8, there was plenty of light in the picture.
I can provide you with some of the photos if you like to examine those.
- - - - - - - - -
/Peter
