E-PL3 best UW settings guide

[Scubanomad]

I upgraded from a G12 with Canon housing and Sea and Sea YS-01 strobe arm and tray to a Oly E-PL3, with the Oly housing and wide angle dome to accommodate the 9-18mm Oly lens. Took it to Aruba and got some nice shots. But shooting in either AV mode F6 or F8 ISO 200 or there is a setting for wide angle "fish setting" which automatically sets it to F5.6 and tends to shoot at 1/125 sec ISO 200.
The strobe I have to dial to manual output around half or 3/4 it does not seem to work in TTL mode like on my G12. I have to set the E-PL3 strobe to full fill strobe.
Oh and of course I shoot in RAW for editing later.
Any suggestions for better settings are appreciated from all you Oly M43 guys, should be the same for E-PL1 etc.
Thanks

 

[chile7236]

i have taken my EPL1 out a few times now and leave shutter speed @ 160 (which is the fastest it gives you with the on-board flash) and shoot F5+ depending on what i am shooting. I only shoot in M so i can get better at it.

 

[Scubanomad]

nice photos you got, thanks for the tip, I will try to set it next time to TV or M mode and just adjust the AV then accordingly. How do you operate the strobe?

 

[chile7236]

I leave my strobes in manual as well

 

[Dr. Stan]

P.I. Pixels: April 2012

could be a good place to start.....

 

[BluewaterPhoto]

hi Nomad, like Troy (Chile) said, shoot in M mode and you'll do better. Start at F8, 1/160th, ISO200 - and adjust shutter speed to change your background (ambient light) exposure. Good luck! - Scott

 

[RESCUEDIVER]

Will the E-PL3 support ttl strobe (as with a S&S DSTTL) in M?

 

[LeeParrish]

I just tried setting Manual mode, 1/160, and f11 on my E-PM1 (same as E-PL3 for this type of question; slightly smaller and less buttons but I'm told the capabilities and firmware are almost identical to the E-PL3). Using my YS-01 set to TTL it does seem to vary the output depending on the distance to the subject, or at least as far as I could tell it was. Exposures from a foot away as well as 12 feet away were correct. That was with flash set to always fire. But this also means that the flash on the camera is firing with quite a bit of power.

In manual if I set the camera flash to 1/64 power it's enough to trigger my YS-01 while set to manual with no preflash, and then I can vary the flash power on the YS-01. Benefit of this is the camera can't seem to recycle the flash when using TTL as fast as my YS-01 can, so by doing this if I'm shooting at half power or less on my YS-01, I can easily do almost 2 frames per second as the camera can keep up since it can recycle the built-in (okay, clip on) strobe really quickly at 1/64 power. And even at full power output my YS-01 recycles in about 2 seconds, still faster than the camera can do if it fires the clip-on flash at full power.