Strobes?

[sparky30]

Thanks for all the info.. I played with my 5050 in manual mode and its probably more than I want to deal with underwater.. Maybe once I get more comfy with it....
SO in the meantime I'll have to get a digital strobe..
It will be the S&S YS90DX or even the newer 'Auto' model..
The thing is incredibly expensive here in Canada and I am having a hard enough time scraping together the C$900...
So for my trip in Feb, it will be the internal flash and an orange filter

 

[ReyeR]

I can tell you this much - from some of the results I've seen the Olympus Cx0x0 cameras do a bloody good job with the internal flash u/w! Esp. in clean water and good vis.

The orange filter - have you got one and tried it yet? My girlfriend bought one (on very strong recommendation from a few people and the supplier, and it was expensive too) for her Sony MPK/P5 and till date (ie before she flooded her camera) has never got a decent photo with it. We tested it from about 3m - 10m. The ones at 3m were just more 'orangey' and the deeper ones were disgusting and sometimes had the camera struggle with focusing. Might just be a Sony problem though

Money we thought would have been better spent on a WAL...

 

[sparky30]

I thought about the wide angle lens, but from what I've seen they are pretty expensive..
Does anybody know which WAL lenses work with the PT-015 housing and where to get one in Canada or the U.S.?

 

[Dee]

sparky30 once bubbled...
I thought about the wide angle lens, but from what I've seen they are pretty expensive..
Does anybody know which WAL lenses work with the PT-015 housing and where to get one in Canada or the U.S.?

I know ya'll get tired of seeing me type this but.....

Allan at Underwater Digital can help you with that!

 

[Juv]

Hi WR,

I am an Ikelite DS-50 user. Since I got the strobe to use with my C-4040Z and PT-010, I've experienced so many difficulties with the TTL mode. At the beginning, I thought the slave sensor worked inconsistently with Olympus housing (but last week I heard from a friend who's using this set with Canon G2 in Ikelite housing that he also got the same problem) both on dry land and underwater. Especially, when sensor was placed closed to a strobe, the flash then seemed not to sync with camera shutter speed. Therefore, I modified my housing by covering the front side with a black foam plate and tried to separate the sensor from the strobe as much as possible. It worked O.K. when testing on land but when I used it underwater during my new year trip, the results still "inconsistent."

What I can say now is... I should have read Dee's opinion on the YS-90 DX before I got my troublesome strobe

Dee,
Do you think Ike will understand my problems? I'm not good at explaining all kinds of technical stuff :upset:

 

[ReyeR]

Juv, see this post at digitaldiver.net:

Post name: Help with DS-125 and Olympus C3000 at

http://www.digitaldiver.net/yabbse/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=653

Especially gatorboy and jeff's comments.

Might help...

 

[Finesse]

Juv once bubbled...
Do you think Ike will understand my problems? I'm not good at explaining all kinds of technical stuff :upset:

Juv explain it just like you explained it here ..... They may want some details ....and better yet set up the housing and strobe just as you would if you were going to use it and take pictures of the orientation of the sensor to the housing ...... There are many things that need to be in order for this setup ....everything on TTL , pre-flash etc etc.....

I'm sure Ikelite will help you out ......

ReyeR ....do you understand gatorboy and what he is doing ? Like you said it sounds like he is pointing away from the front of the camera….. then Jeff mentions aiming the sensor at 90 degrees like this
to make matters more confusing I have seen the sensor mounted on the other side of the arm (in other word between the diver and the arm) pointing slightly forward and down at the housing

 

[Dee]

Problems such as this one with proper aiming of the sensor is just one more reason I chose to go with the S&SYS90DX.

 

[Juv]

ReyeR & Finesse,
Thanks so much for your good source. Yes, I did the same setting, on the camera ("M" mode which can give you use only Slow1 flash), on the strobe ("TTL" mode), the sensor ("Pre-flash" and "Min" side) with the position of the sensor aiming to the internal flash. Hmmm...I'm thinking about taking a pix of my weird setting to post it here just in case Ikelite would get in to read

Dee,
I haven't bought myself anything as a New Year present. Surely it would be the YS-90DX before my Myanmar-Richelieu trip this Feb!!!

 

[ReyeR]

Finesse... yeah agree with you - no consistency. I asked gatorboy to clarify but jeff answered with the 90 degree answer (unless jeff and gatorboy are the same person). Note that jeff is a S&S user. And the Ike user manual has pics of the sensor pointing front-ish and says:

"For proper aiming the DS Sensor should be pointed towards the camera's built-in strobe or fill strobe rather than towards the subject."

and immediately followed by:

"The sensor should be positioned at least 15 deg off center from the aiming of the connected Substrobe. This allows the sensor to detect the quenching of the camera's strobe and eliminates the possibility of the connected Substrobe firing at full power simply because the sensor detects only the light intensity from the Substrobe."

The way I understand it from that post is that what jeff suggests is exactly the way gatorboy had it and it was giving him problems. To fix the problem he (gatorboy) pointed the sensor 30 deg. further away from the subject and towards the back of the camera but still in range of the camera's internal strobe. The problem was that the sensor was getting 'confused' with the light bouncing back from the subject.

I haven't had any problems with it as such but as an exercise tried it last night with the sensor pointing as far away from the subject (i.e. back of camera) as possible and found both TTL/Manual worked flawlessly and consistently in all possible flash (slow1, force, slave) and camera (p, a, s, m) modes.