Ikelite Housing for SP-350

[Crawl79]

I'm going to wait and see what my preferences are for my UW shots before deciding what strobe to get. I think if I decide that I mainly like macro shots I will probably get the ds 51 if i get to like the wide angle shots I may go with the ds 125 to start and add another later. I come from a hunting and fishing background and I think I have allot of patience underwater so Im leaning towards more of a macro setup. I'm reading "The Essential Underwater Photography Manual" now and they recommend the ds51 for macro and the ds 125 for Wide Angle.

 

[sunkarm]

funny thing is that many divers recommend me not to use ds51 as is too small range for anyhting. well this is what they say.
Btw, this is what recommended by rjsimp on the mode set-up, he took great pictures:


Here are my mode settings that I have set our SP-350 cameras to. These settings are what we use with a SP-350 with TTL and a YS-90 Auto strobe. You should be able to adjust things from here to match your requirements with a little experimenting.

My Mode settings:

Wide Angle:
M
F 5.6
1/125
38mm
(Flash always on)
(I have played around with this one, but I use the 3rd option with TTL)
Off
(Single Shot)
100
Off
0.0
Sync 1
External Flash only
Off
Off
Spot
AF
Off
Off
Off
SHQ ( or RAW )
Cloudy
0
0
0
0
ON
Off
Off

Macro Settings:
M
F 8.0
1/500
38mm
(Flash always on)
(I have played around with this one, but I use the 3rd option with TTL)
Macro On
(Single Shot)
50
Off
-2.0 (this is because in Macro and TTL it seems a bit hot with the YS-90 Auto strobes)
Sync 1
External Flash only
Off
Off
Spot
AF
Off
Off
Off
SHQ ( or RAW )
Cloudy
0
0
0
0
ON
Off
Off
______________

Recommended to use Raw format!!!

 

[Crawl79]

I am practicing in Raw with the SHQ backup just so I can get used to the slow write times, I dont yet have photoshop but I think my company has a licence for the software so I will try to get it. I have used it in the past but its been a while.

 

[sunkarm]

but if u have shq back-up, wouldn't take more memory out of it?

 

[Crawl79]

yes, i have plenty of room and Im not diving so im taking high quality photos and just deleting what I dont like. looking at the quality of the pics I may be going overboard for just taking pics topside.

 

[RockyHeap]

I'm on Taveuni Island in Fiji as I type............Fiji Bitter Beer is dang good too when it's 90F outside...........

SP-350 and Ikelite housing has 4 dives on it.

I got the dual handle Ikelite tray and don't regret it........makes it very nice to still operate the shutter when getting battered by 4-6-8 knot currents. Makes it real easy to hand up to the boat crew too with the DS-125 strobe on one side. Whole rig is quite heavy and just slightly neg bouyancy in the water.

The INON wide angle lens is a must to capture the whole scene. You have to zoom in a bit otherwise the corners get cropped off, Tried a couple shots without it and slapped it right back on so you can still get close to throw light on your subject.

Shooting full manual, TTL works but isn't consistant. F8 gets the best colors, otherwise you get the drab washed out blue. I'm already wanting another DS125, or may go with a DS-51 just to fill in from both sides to eliminate shadows. Considering I just dropped over $2K USD on this rig, it'll have to wait for the next trip.

DS-125 shoots a double flash, pre-flash then the main strobe. I love the built in modeling light. and the Ni-MH batteries last and last and last. MUCH longer than the camera 2700 maH Ni-MH thats for sure.

Mixing it up with both RAW and SHQ, 10-11 meg RAW files, SHQ is about 3-4 meg in size.

Enough rambling, back to my fiji bitter............oh can you feel my pain.

GRINS! Off to Beqa Lagoon in 4 days, shark dive will be a rush, and we just saw THREE MANTA rays 8-10 foot wing span the other day.......one had a 12" shark bite out of one of it's wings...........WAYYYYYYYYY COOLLLLLL

BULA!

Diver Dave and Bubbles Barb.

 

[sunkarm]

love to c your results Rockyheap

 

[jjwdiver]

Cozumel in 20 days to try out the SP-350 w/Ikelite and a DS51. I think the 51 will be enough for now, as I only want pictures so I remember what I saw. Next trip I might have to upgrade to twin 125's. The 51 works good enough for quarry diving!

 

[tsreimer]

Caymans in 2 days with my first use of my sp-350, ike housing, and ds-125! It's supposed to be raining every day next week, but im sure it will still be a blast.

Rocky - Have a beer for me, and post some pics when you can. Can't wait to see them!

 

[RockyHeap]

2 more dives today in Taveuni with the SP350, ikelite housing and DS-125.

I had the camera in auto mode yesterday, hence the pre-flash then main flash off the DS-125.

Today, forced the manual flash, and the DS-125 would only fire once when you program the SP-350 to external flash only.

I average 100-125 photos per dive, in SHQ high quality, that's 450-500 meg per dive, and I swap out the batteries and memory chip between dives.

Played more with the DS-125 between TTL, full power, and 1/8th-1/4-1/2 power modes.

Depends on super macro or range to your target. For full control, only shoot in manual, as I switch between normal, macro, and super macro. When up close to a coral, I push the shutter speed up to 1/1000th - 2000th second, which also gives you a black background as you don't capture the warm blue background water, 1/60th-1/125th is the slowest I shoot and that gives the blue background.

I'll shrink down some photos to the 100K limit (I think) that scuba board allows. Not used to posting photos attached, but if you PM me an email I'll send some ~400K sized files.

You really have to dive this camera rig, and play with all the settings to get things right, every Dive I get better, but only have 8 dives on the big rig. Off to Beqa Lagoon and Kulu Bay resort on Christmas Morning (nice nice present to open on christmas day!!!!!) So more killer coral shots to come..........can't wait for the 12-14 foot bull sharks on the shark dive too.......oh the pain and boredom, Waitress, another Fiji Bitter please.........