new housing - old strobes

Hi have finally taken the plunge and made my first move away from 35mm to digital with the purchase of a used ikelite housing for an eos10d from ebay yesterday (at an almost embarassingly low price).

I'm a student so cash is tight so I am hoping I can save myself a fairly big chunk of cash by keeping my old but still very much functioning 100a's

as I understand it, provided I upgrade my strobe cables to the newer digital compatible ones, this should be fine ( although I won't get eTTL - which at this stage I'm not too bothered about anyway)

However I have read that SOME Ike housings may need additional modification in order for this to work.

Has anyone here tried the ike eos10d / older ike strobe combination before and found it to work?

any other advice?

thanks in advance

Synthesizer Patel,

I'd email ikelite (address on their web site) and specifiy the housing you have (I can't remember if the Canon 10D housings had eTTL or not) and what exact strobe you have (Substrobe 100A, right?)

They wil advise if anything else needs to be done to your housing and what cord(s) (as in "old" style film TTL cords, or newest Blue banded Digital TTL capable ones) and what combination can be used in manual mode.....

Hope this help!

David Haas

Thanks David

I contacted ikelite a while back when I was looking at some other housings (350d & d70) - they were uncharacteristically unhelpful when asked that question and pretty much just quoted what it says on their website verbatim:

"(2) Old SubStrobe Ai, MV, 50, 100, 200, and 400 models can be used, but operate only as manual strobes. The housing back may still need to be returned to us for conversion circuitry modification to utilize these older pre-digital era strobes. "

my local ike dealer (and when I say local I mean over 300km away!) didnt seem to know either.

considering that at some point I will be upgrading to DS strobes, I'd really rather not have to have the housing modified twice.

I've found both Ikelite and camerasunderwater to be very knowledgeable and helpful in the past but on this question I have always drawn a blank from them - for this reason I'm hoping someone on this forum actually uses (or has tried to use) this or a very similar set-up and can be a little more definitive

Patel,

Yes, I read all the footnotes, too. The problem is they have no way of knowing how old a particular SS100, SS50, or whatever version people have for compatibility.

I'd bet since the Ikelite 10D housings have eTTL, hooking your SS100a to it will simply result in manual firing. Maybe you'd have to hold down the two eTTL buttons to switch the housing's circuitry into manual. Or tape certain contacts on your housing hot shoe (I think this is on hte Ikelite web site, too.)

But overall, I'd bet it will fire manually with either an old or new cord.....

Best thing would obviously be to just migrate to DS series digital Substrobes

Good luck!

dhaas