Have question about the sp350

[Fire_medic_RescueDiver]

Hello all,
I have a few questions aboout the sp350. I Have been thinking about buying one and the OLY housing for it, but have hit a wall when it comes to under standing about stropes. How well does the strobe work with the fiber optic cable, of hot shoe, or TTL? What are the difference between of pro and cons. Also does the OEM oly houseing able to handle all 3 types?

Thanks

 

[Larry C]

I think this is more a strobe question than a camera question. I am not the best qualified person to talk about strobes, but I have the camera and housing so I'll give it a shot.
The SP-350 has a hot-shoe equipped for ttl use, and the PT-030 housing is designed to use it. I bought an Oly FL-20 flash and PFL-01 flash housing to use with mine. It is designed to do ttl with the camera/housing set-up and includes the cables with the PFL-01 housing. I haven't used it underwater yet, but it works great topside. The knock on the Oly ttl set-up is that it is proprietary. Nobody else uses it, so you can't just hook up a Nikonos type strobe and use ttl without having a translator. Ikelite has one for their housing, and there is a German fellow who sells a kit for Oly housings to use ttl that will work with other strobes.
Fiber optic cable for slave strobes will work with any housing. You just have to mask the built in flash and locate the cable. In addition, many slave strobes will fire off even the masked signal from the built in flash, or from the preflash signal.
A third category is something called "slave ttl". I don't know much about it, but I gather that it is actually a slave strobe that in addition to manual adjustment will function as a semi-automatic self adjusting unit by perhaps reading off the preflash or the camera's built in flash. I'm pretty clueless on this, so ask someone who knows better.

 

[Fire_medic_RescueDiver]

I was also looking at the Oly FL20 and PFL-01 flash housing but was not sure if it would give off the right amount light needed. I am just wanting the camera for the limted amount of diving that I do each year ( around 150 to 200 ) with most of it being in freah water with 10 to 15 foot vis. Like with most people I have a budget to stay with in. So I do not want to buy the ffkash and housing if a UW strobe is the better way to go.

 

[Larry C]

The FL-20 is not the most powerful strobe in the world. Guide number is 20 (meters). That means that it is effective in air to 60 feet. In water, considerably less. If you do most of your shooting up close, you don't need a real powerful strobe. If you want effectiveness over distance, you'll want more power. With 15 ft. vis, you won't get much distance anyway, so you might want to invest in a wide angle lens which will get more stuff in your picture closer up as well as allow more light into your lens.

 

[Fire_medic_RescueDiver]

Thank you for the info. I Got to thinking about it today and went out and bought a noob kit. I got the Sealife DC500 Elite kit with WA lens and Digital strobe, I got a good deal on it. So know I am looking at SD cards. I looked up the mfg spec and it say to stay 512 or less due to lag from one shot to the next. I would like to get a 1gb or 2gb but do not know if it will slow it down to much. If you have any info on this please post again.

Thanks

 

[rotipisang]

The Oly SP-350 is a pretty fine camera for a lot of photography type, even underwater. I've been using it for a while and quite like the features, the first time I used it underwater was in Sipadan and took some videos and pics. The only thing I'm a bit uncomfortable with is the focusing speed under low light condition, even on reasonably lighted condition it's slower than Canon S80/750. The video limited to 15seconds, so it was quite a frustration to film the grazely moving turtle just for 15 seconds

Just to share the pics taken with Oly SP-350 in Sipadan quite recently : http://leafbug.org/~yus/gallery/swv01/

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I just hooked up my new Oly SP-350 to a SeaLife SL960D stobe - http://www.scubatoys.com/store/detail.asp?product_id=SL960D - this morning.

It tested out great in my dining room ... I'll let you know how it works underwater after I take it diving tonight ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Peter Guy]

Bob, what system did you end up using to attach the fibre optic to the housing?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Bob, what system did you end up using to attach the fibre optic to the housing?

Yours ... sort of. Had to apply a piece of tape to keep the cable from pulling out of the velcro.

Thanks for the neat idea ... and the velcro ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Peter Guy]

Bob, I think the answer to that is to cut the "soft" velcro into 2 long strips about 1/2-3/4 inch wide and then make a "sandwich" of them with the cord in the middle.

In any event, as long as it works!