D70 in Ikelte hs lockup

Hi..am hoping someone else has experienced and solved this problem before. Just put my D70 into an Ikelite housing. When I connect the housing hot shoe with no strobe attached, with a 125 turned off or with a nikonos strobe set up, the camera will lock up after a minute or two. It works at first, but after it sits for a minute, it goes 'dark.' I can hit the (bkt) button to bring it back to life, but I'd rather not. Do I have some sort of mysterious setting wrong or ...???

thx, Melissa

Hello Melissa

Make sure there is no other button pushing in abit on some other function of the camera.

My D70 in the Sea & Sea housing has locked up a few times underwater and it was one of the buttons that touch the two little ones each side of the camera power switch.

Hope that helps..

Welcome to the forum Melissa. I don't have much experience with the D70/Ikelite combo but I am sure lots of people do. I will move your topic to the dSLR area where I think it will get more attention.

Luiz

Make sure there is no other button pushing in abit on some other function of the camera.

 

My D70 in the Sea & Sea housing has locked up a few times underwater and it was one of the buttons that touch the two little ones each side of the camera power switch.

Yes, originally I thought that had to be it because that's happened to me before but I checked all the levers. Also, when I don't move anything but simply turn on the DS125 (attached thru the ttl cord) then it ceases to freeze up.

This note from Ryan Canon at Reef Photo Video may explain your problem

As you may have already discovered, there appears to be a bit of a bug

in the TTL Conversion Circuitry from Ikelite that causes the camera to

"hang up" when going to sleep, and lock up. This is an annoying

inconvenience, and luckily there is a solution.

The easiest way to correct it is to set the D200's Custom Function C3 to

"no limit", which will cause the meter to never go to sleep, and prevent

the issue. This adds only slightly more battery drain than the camera

in sleep mode.

The problem can also be fixed by sending the housing to Ikelite for an

update to the TTL conversion circuitry, which will be performed at no

charge.

I understood the note from Ryan to apply specifically to the D200. I wasn't aware of the same issue occuring with the D70...

Yep, you're right. I was wondering if it might happen to the D70, to as there may be similar conversion circuitry.

SD

You might be right SD. I guess I was just assuming that because the D70 iTTL housing has been out for ages and we haven't heard of any issues like this with the conversion circuitry, the issue might be isolated to the D200 alone.

wow, that's exactly what is happening. I'll have to call Ikelite to see if it occurs in the d70 housings in addition to the d200..thanks.

See strobe requirements at bottom of the following URLs:

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

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

We suspect you may be trying to use an older pre-digital strobe model. Other possibilities are covered on following URLs:

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

See strobe requirements at bottom of the following URLs:

 

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

 

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

 

We suspect you may be trying to use an older pre-digital strobe model. Other possibilities are covered on following URLs:

 

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

I tried it with my 200 and my 105s and it did happen but even it has occured when I'm using the DS125 & blue-banded cord ... when the strobe is on, it doesn't appear to happen... but when I turn the strobe off, it locks up again.

The camera can lock-up if it senses an incorrect TTL strobe. You didn't answer the question of age/serial number of the DS-125. The SB28 Nikon surface strobe does not operate TTL with the new digital cameras, yet divers expect to use pre-digital strobes and 35mm film. http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/rexdshoe.html has the answer if the DS-125 is current TTL compatible.

Hi..just thought I'd wrap this in case anyone else needed the info. My strobe's serial number is in the 7000s so it should be compatible. It does work simply to tell the meter not to turn off..but on my d70 I don't have an infinity option, the longest is 30 minutes. Ikelite said they could make a quick adjustment to make it work at no charge. I'll send it in when I return from my upcoming trip. Thanks all for comments & help.

I forgot we have had four housings where the customer had to reset the system by turning the primary strobe off and back on. We could not duplicate the problem with any of our cameras, so customer sent his camera in. After a few days of testing, Roger duplicated the problem and modified the circuit to deal with a rare, and unexpected, data interruption from the camera just before the meter turns off. He made the modification standard so anything currently built already has that.

The freeze-up can also be eliminated by going to custom function C3 on the D200 menu and setting the meter off time to its longest setting.