Any tips for using the S2/ike at depth?

Up until now i have been using my rig to do fairly shallow blue water macro work

however i have the opportunity to do some 45-50m dives on some nice wrecks off Pulau Weh.

Can anyone give me some tips onhow i should set up my rig? F stop settings, TTL or manual?

Does the ike housing perform well at these depths?

Up until now i have been using my rig to do fairly shallow blue water macro work

however i have the opportunity to do some 45-50m dives on some nice wrecks off Pulau Weh.

 

Can anyone give me some tips onhow i should set up my rig? F stop settings, TTL or manual?

Does the ike housing perform well at these depths?

If you are talking wideangle then it should always be manual for strobes. If macro, it doesn't matter how deep you are as light is going to be primarily strobe.

F-stops and shutterspeed will depend on how much ambient light you get, and will depend on time of day, water clarity and how deep you are. I can't really give you exact numbers because it will depend on the dive conditions. It also depends on what shade of blue you like your backgrounds (I find I like mine a little darker than most others, so I tend to shoot that way). You use your strobes to light up your subject if you want to (manual mode). Use your light meter in the viewfinder to set the background color (should be right around the middle of the meter reading and then you bracket one f-stop up and 1-down if you want and you'll get a nice exposure from one of the three)

As for the housing - it works wonderfully at depth. I took mine to 200fsw (so roughly 60m) in Cozumel with no issues. Everything worked exactly the same - no problem.

Let me know if you have additional questions. and I hope this helps,

M

Followup to some very good advice from Paul.

If you are very deep and find that you are not getting enough light (can't get a good fstop and shutterspeed), you can switch your camera to ISO200 or even ISO400 and still get good results.

For example, if you are metering f4 and 1/30th shutterspeed, you can switch to ISO200 and you will get f4 and 1/60th or f5.6 and 1/30th. If you switch to ISO400, you will get one stop more, so f4 and 1/125th or f8 and 1/30th.

Good luck, wideangle photography underwater is very challenging.

Cheers

James