olympus c-5060 and sea&sea ys-25

[mbraszk]

i am a beginner in underwater photography. i took my c-5060 with s&s ys-25 for diving in wrecks in Baltic sea last week. i took some picture and ..... nothing but the darkness. Could anyone can write how can i prepare my oly to work with s&s. Do i need an optic fiber cord?
Here are some photos taken during this dive
http://www.braszkiewicz.pl/diving/

 

[CrateCookie]

Also, when you put on the mask to hold it, you will block the camera's built in flash. That is desirable in water w/ a lot of "floaties" in it a.k.a. backscatter. One last thing, get close since strobes lose most of their punch by the time the light travels 3 feet out and back again (I have a bunch of blue pics from before I learned this).

 

[dbh]

CrateCookie gave some good advice.

I don't believe the strobes that use 2 AA batteries have quite the output of the bigger ones. 2' may be your maximum range.

Also, when shooting wide angle, your strobe should be as far to one side as your arms allow. This reduces the backscatter (but reduces the distance you light up).

I believe the YS-25 is an "auto" strobe, so you can trick it a little by adjusting your cameras' EV.

HTH,
Dave

 

[f3nikon]

Does not even look like the YS-25 is firing or firing too soon. The lighting looks like its only coming from the internal strobe. Are you firing the YS-25 strobe via the slave sensor? If so, the Olympus preflash is firing the YS-25 too soon before the camera shutter even opens.

Check this on land by taking a sideview picture of the YS-25 strobe in slave mode, with the cameras internal flash. If the stobes are in sync you should see light coming from the YS-25, if not check for any preflash adjustments or get a sync cord.

Dive Safe

 

[calypsonick]

The instructions that came with my YS-25 asked me to point the strobe at the camera and take a picture to see which of the two settings - 1 or 2 matches with the settings in my camera's slave mode.

Try it out on land, you will be able to tell as all you see is a big ball of light in the playback.

As f3nikon pointed out, your internal strobe has to be in slave mode for it to work.

 

[gert7to3]

I have the YS25 DX. My camera is a Sony P-10.

The [OFF, 1, 2, 3] dial is the synch pattern adjustment control. Some digital cameras will trigger their flash briefly to provide focusing illumination or red eye reduction. This control tells the YS 25 strobe to ignore these extraneous flashes. The strobe will respond and properly synch when set to only one of these settings.

To test this for your particular camera: put your camera in the U/W housing; turn on your camera; set it to trigger the camera's strobe; point the camera at the YS-25 strobe; take a picture. If the strobe goes off and you record the light pulse, then you have the right synchronization. If you take a picture, the camera flash triggers and the strobe triggers, but you didn't record the flash pulse, then you don't have proper synch. Change the number and try again. This is the number you will use all the time. Write it down on your rig and constantly double check for missettings. Be careful here and test synch with each possible setting. With my camera there was one setting where I could see the flash, but it was very dim, only part of the pulse was recorded. Another setting there was no flash seen and on the correct setting, the flash blew out the image.

Are you using the fiber optic cable? If not and you are in dark or murky water the camera flash may not be kicking out enough power to trip the YS25. I know the fiber optic is expensive, but you could make your own. Fiber optic is available from consumer scientific stores like :

http://www.sciplus.com/about.cfm

or

http://scientificsonline.com

You can purchase plastic rod stock from hobby, craft or hardware stores to make the tapered plugs to hold the F/O in the strobe and camera ports.
To conserve battery life I set my camera's flash to low. After all it's only triggering the YS 25 strobe, not illuminating anything. I also turn off the red eye reduction and the focusing illuminator.

 

[AndyT]

Hi

A fibre optic cable is the way to go .It was mentioned above that the strobe was firing on the cameras pre flash . To prevent this you need to set your camera to slave mode (see page 85 of the manual).An emission value of 1 is good enough. If you are having difficulty with this I will try to help you further . One of the settings on the YS 25 (either 1 or 2) will ignore the pre flash as previously stated .

If you decide to buy the fibre optic kit you will need to make a mask with the velcro supplied to hold the cable in place and to hide the cameras internal flash .

S & S don't supply a mask template for the PT 020 housing with the fibre optic kit .
If you decide to buy one , PM me your e-mail address and I will gladly send one to you .

Safe Diving

Andrew

 

[mbraszk]

i took me one week to thank all of you. i read all your advices and now i know that i didn't synchronize oly with s&s. last week i dived again with camera making photo. i think there is too dark in Polish lakes an Baltic sea this time and i should use optic fibre cord. Andy, could you help me with this mask? Gert7to3, thank you very much for your valuable advices.
Marek
mbraszk@box43.pl

 

[f3nikon]

Try this connector to the camera's hotshoe.

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

By using the hotshoe you will save the battery life by not using the internal flash.

 

[f3nikon]

Some pictures on the installation of the bulkhead connector. The strobe connector hole on the PT-23 is the perfect size for a 1/2 20 thread screw tap (see picture).

Maybe Olympus planned this? Anyway by tapping a thread into the housing an Ikelite TTL connector bolts right in. All that is needed is to splice the camera's hotshoe plug to the TTL connector. This will open doors to the many Ikelite strobes on ebay at the $50 to $100 range. You will also need an Ikelite cable but the total cost is much less than an fiber optic setup. `

This may also work on the 5050 and 5060, I'll look in to it.

This is the most reliable, power saving connection in town. No heat from the internal strobe and more pictures out of a single charge, the main reason why I am a BIG fan of hotshoe/hardwired setups

Ask for more details.