A Question

Hello:

I was wondering if any of you more experienced uw photographers can explain the following photo. I have several similar photos shot under similar circumstances, i.e. 200 ISO, 1/500, f16. Nikon D80, Sea and Sea DXD80 housing, twin YS-110 strobes. There seems to be a varying degree of "shading" when I shoot Manual with high shutter speed and f16 or higher aperture. I have no clue what is causing this and I hope it is something simple that I have overlooked.

Thanks for the help.

Bill

My first quess would be that you are using too high a shutter speed, as I believe the D80 cannot support flash sync above 250. Try shooting at 125th of a second.

jgunther is right, the shutter speed is too high.

you need to see what speed your camera flash syncs at and don't exceed that shutter speed on your photos.

should be either 1/200 or 1/250 for the D80

should be either 1/200 or 1/250 for the D80

It's 1/200 on the D80 - they went to a mechanical-only shutter, instead of the combined mech/CCD on the D70 (1/500). The good news - your camera's not wasting any CCD sensors on shutter speed. It's a vertical shutter - what you're seeing is the shutter only half open, blocking the bottom part of the pic. More good news is, Nikon gave you a stop back by dropping minimum ISO to 100 (200 on D70).

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate it. I couldn't figure out the straight line across and I missed the flash synch.

Thanks again,

Bill

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate it. I couldn't figure out the straight line across and I missed the flash synch.

Thanks again,

Bill

hey bill, I have a similar setup to yours. d80, s and s housing, dual ys-90dx, ttl controller

first of all, I'm very surprised the nikon d80 let you set a shutter speed that fast, when using strobes it cuts off the shutter speed at 1/200th, normally there is no way to use a strobe and force the shutter speed to be faster than that.

second of all, do you have the ttl converter? I was wondering how it was working for you, mine only works close up, and it good lighting, otherwise the photo is black. this is underwater only by the way. I think the d80/d200 might be incompatable with s&s strobes because of sync speed and preflash issues (mathias's site lists them as incompatable), but I haven't verified this yet in other people's setup yet.

scott

Hey Scott,

I guess I didn't remember reading about the flash synch. 1 duh for me. The S+ S strobes work fine for me when I set up manual correctly, usually after a couple peeks at the histogram. I do not as yet have the TTL converter but by my next trip in June I will, I think it will decrease my throwaways dramatically. It is my understanding that TTL is only good for Macro underwater as it doesn't have enough time to process the returned info in Wide Angle.

Safe diving,

Bill

Hey Scott,

I guess I didn't remember reading about the flash synch. 1 duh for me. The S+ S strobes work fine for me when I set up manual correctly, usually after a couple peeks at the histogram. I do not as yet have the TTL converter but by my next trip in June I will, I think it will decrease my throwaways dramatically. It is my understanding that TTL is only good for Macro underwater as it doesn't have enough time to process the returned info in Wide Angle.

Safe diving,

Bill

my understanding is the TTL works well in macro and wide-angle. it seems like the issues with wide-angle may be coming from the fact that S&S strobes may be incompatible with the sync speeds of the d80 and d200 when they do 2 pre-flashes. from what I read, the ttl works well for all shots with the INON z240's.

scott