OLY 5050 housing / strobes

[ReyeR]

See this link. Alfred built this simple circuit and recorded the flash pulses of the C4040 as a wave file. You'll notice the height of the pulses to be more or less the same. The duration changes.

Re: flash modes
From what I understand the C5050 fires it's flash in Slow1 by default. The difference between Slow1 and Slow2 is when the flash fires - just after the curtain opens and just before the curtain closes respectively. These are provided in P and A modes because you have no control over the shutter speed. It allows you to freeze the foreground and capture the foreground/background according to the ambient light at the same time. You'll notice that in this mode the camera chooses a shutter speed according to exposure reading of the ambient light. The Fill flash mode (thunderbolt sign) simply selects a faster shutter speed to freeze motion regardless of the ambient light. In S and M you can control the shutter speed so you don't really need the Fill flash mode. So, yes you are correct in saying that "flash-on" is just a "SLOW 1" subject to a faster shutter speed.

 

[lindner514]

I was led to believe by Olympus support that the actual brightness (ie wattage) of the main strobe was increase or decreased by the flash intensity compensation and specifially NOT the duration. He also said that the SLAVE settings[1-10] were an adjustment for the brightness and NOT duration. During this conversation I used the words duration and brightness repeatedly.

It would be nice if Mr Molon could point his pre-flash/main-flash detection rig at the C5050 and tell us what the durations would be for the various SLAVE settings and flash intesity compensation.

I asked Ikelite about brightness, duration and intensity. He defined it this way.

Ikelite:
Actual intensity of any strobe will not change without movement of the reflector or a lens in front of the flash tube. Referring to the amount of light as intensity is common, and this is changed by flash duration.

#1 With the TTL Sensor set to TTL-Preflash Mode is it true that the Substrobe will fire strictly for the duration of the C5050's main strobe and that the intensity of the C5050's main strobe is not relevant in any way.

Ikelite:

Preflash is predetermined. Following URL discusses the switch positions and how they affect exposure:

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/dsenswitx.html

By definition, the TTL Sensor will tell our strobe to stop flashing when the strobe in the camera stops.

#2 With the TTL Sensor set to Non-Preflash Mode is it true that the Substrobe will fire for the full charge its manually set intensity regardless of the duration of the C5050's main strobe and that the intensity of the C5050's main strobe is not relevant in any way.

Ikelite:

SubStrobe set to manual will fire its power setting with each camera flash regardless of what camera strobe does.

#3 In the C5050's SLAVE mode (preflash disabled), there are settings [1-10], which an Olympus Tech claims adjust the intensity of the main strobe. Do you know this to be this true or does the duration change as well.

Ikelite:

This is true as per definition at start of letter.

#4 The C5050 has a flash intensity compensation...do you think this would adjust the duration of the C5050's main strobe (thus useful to the TTL Sensor) or adjust the intensity of the C5050's main strobe (thus useless to the TTL Sensor).

Ikelite:

This is why I started with definition at start of letter. Flash compensation is useful and works by varying flash duration.