IKELITE OMD EM5 II housing review

[PHIL RUDIN]

If you have not checked out the new line of Ikelite housings for mirrorless cameras you are missing a great new player in the mirrorless game. These housings are very small and have an outstanding and quite simple port system. The housing and ports as a system are very well priced. You can read my full review at UWPMAG.com this is a FREE PDF download and also contains mt review on the Fantasea housing for Canon G7X and a review of Ikelite's new fluorescence equipment.

 

[Peter Guy]

Phil -- quick question -- does the Ike housing support fiber optic flash/Inon D2000s?

 

[PHIL RUDIN]

No, which is one of the reasons the housing can be so small. No need for the on-board flash bump. Ikelite has been a complete system company for over fifty years and they make some outstanding strobes which are triggered by wire not fiber. If you have read the review you will see that the wired strobes have advantages however fiber is great as well.

 

[Peter Guy]

Thanks Phil for the response. But with 4 Inon D2000s, how do I trigger them except with the flash?

 

[EskilJ]

I don't know the D2000s, but I assume you connect two electrically (as masters) and two as slaves of the first ones.

 

[PHIL RUDIN]

Hi Peter,

As I said above Ikelite takes a complete system or proprietary approach to their equipment. They have a manual converter which plugs into Ikelite strobes to convert them to work with a fiber optic cord but nothing to go the other way. If you search Wetpixel you can find small fiber optic triggers which might fit into the Ikelite housing but then you would need to direct the light to the fiber cables and find a way to attach them to the housing.

If someone were to invent an optical trigger that fit the Ikelite and Nikonos bulkheads on one end and used the electrical contact to power an optical trigger on the other end I would be an item that would sell. By the way several companies tried to do this during the film days without success.

The new Ikelite line of mirrorless housings is quite good and the shared port systems are excellent for inexpensive acrylic ports. The tradeoff in photography their is always a tradeoff is that the simplest solution is to upgrade to Ike strobes.

 

[EskilJ]

Hi Phil, I assume the device you request is basically a Ikelite/Nikonos strobe - with minimal output light, just enough to light the fiber. That is of course possible to make, as Ikelite do make strobes.