Help ! Housing problem on Holiday

Hi all,

I am currently halfway through a week in Curacao and my D200 Sea & Sea Housing has started to play up.

Basically I have lost the ability to fire strobes which is putting a damper on my diving.

The symptoms are that if you connect the hotshoe of the camera to the housing a signal is being sent to the camera which continually turns on the camera meter. I cannot get the camera to fire the strobes. When the strobes are connected they randomly fire as well.

I have tried both sync sockets on the housing and different sync cords so think the problem is between the sync socket on the housing and the camera.

When I took everything apart it all looked dry to me, but that of course doesn't mean that a rogue droplet hasn't got in somewhere.

Anyway I am hoping someone has a suggestion how to get up and running again.

Cheers,

Mark

Try reseting the camera by pressing the two green doted button, then do a complete menu and a CSM reset, make sure that both the strobe and the camera are in full manual mode. try again.

You don't mention using a TTL adapter, if you do remove it and try without it,

If you don't have a TTL adapter make sure all but the ground and center contact of your hot shoe are masked and isolated, you can easely achieve this with tape or a thin sheet of plastic (packaging plastic for toys, food...) with a center hole for the sync contact an another one for the ground if its associated to a pin on the shoe base (some system use a side contact for ground, I'm not that familiar with your system)

Also its best to tackle one strobe first then the second one, then both together. get the simple thing to work first, at least it give you a direction.

Lastly if needed, open up the hot shoe connector and brush the contact and weld clean with a toothbrush and rubbing alcool, it may be some residual flux from the soldering screwing thing up.

If all of this fail go to the bar and order one of those umbrella drink and chill out , on the next trip get a magic filter, they don't run on batteries, don't use cords or connectors and deliver when needed, trust me its the most compact plan B I ever used

Mark,

Check to see if the hot shoe, which likely has some spring loaded pins hasn't got one stuck and not making contact.

Also, are your strobes on manual settings? Here's a link from Ikelite's web site you can use a paper clip to "trip" two contacts. Do it on the cord end you plug into your housing.

http://www.ikelite.com/faq/faq_syncwiring.html

This would at least verify your cord and strobes are firing correctly.

Also double check your synch socket on your housing to be sure pins aren't broken, bent or stuck in there, too.

Good luck!

dhaas

P.S. - That crazy French Canadian Jean has great solutions, too! Especially the one about those little umbrella drinks I've seen him with

Final solution could be to shoot B&W. It's fun sometimes!

Guys,

Thanks so much for taking the time to give me such great and helpful replies.

Jean - you get a beer or several if we ever meet because your trick of masking off the contacts on the camera hot shoe seems to have worked.

I am just off to dive and test it underwater but in my room all seems to be working now. I masked off the two small contacts under the central one.

It strikes me that the problem with the sea&sea housing is that two sync ports, one of which has all pins wired for ttl, are linked to one hotshoe and therefore if there is a problem with one then you can't isolate it very easily at all.

Thanks so much again,

Mark,

Fingers crossed it works in the water.

Your up for the beer , and enjoy the rest of the trip.

There is great info in this thread for what sounds like a problem that could happen to me.

I'm printing it and putting it in my repair kit when I travel.

Thanks!

John

It all works. Just back from a good dive with 70 odd strobe lit photos. Hurray.

Thanks again to both Jean and Dave for their great help. This is what makes Wetpixel such a great community.

I'll post what caused the problem when I get the housing back from service after I'm home.

Now off to sit by the pool until I offgas enough to dive again

Mark

Well that's cool that you can stop in and have your problem solved even while in another country

People on this board are a great resource!

I'm glad to hear you are back up and running. I shoot the D200 in a Sea & Sea housing.

My wife and I are going down to Curacao later this year. We have never been, so I would be very interested in hearing where you stayed, and how you liked it.

For future there is an adapter you can put in the ttl bulkhead to make it just like teh other bulkead if you do not intend on shooting with the ttl adapter. Mine is being installed for me today so that I have the capability of using the 2nd bulkhead if needed.

So now is the perfect time to the umbrella drink that Jean mentioned

Hi,

Sorry guys but I have a translation problem: what do you mean with "make sure the contact of your hot shoe are masked"... I know the word "masked" but can't understand the meaning here...

thanks for help

Claude

Hi,

Sorry guys but I have a translation problem: what do you mean with "make sure the contact of your hot shoe are masked"... I know the word "masked" but can't understand the meaning here...

thanks for help

Claude

claude, il faut t'assurer que les seuls contacts qui soient etablis sont la terre et le x/synch. il faut donc cacher/masquer les autres contacts de ta prises cynch provenant du caisson soit avec une bande adhesive non conductrice soit sur certains caissons tu peux enlever les contacts de la prise synch de ton caisson.

j'espere que ca aide:)

ps sorry for the french aside here ....

/paul

Pixel humide point com?!?

Merci Paul... but... my conclusion is that my translation was fine! The question now is how are you masking off the contacts ? or what's making it unmasked ?

Claude

Pixel humide point com?!?

Merci Paul... but... my conclusion is that my translation was fine! The question now is how are you masking off the contacts ? or what's making it unmasked ?

Claude

I use ordinary tape. From:

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/sync_cord_d1x.html

you should "mask" :

or

ok... thanks guys!

Mark... if you find it out, I'm curious to know what's the origin of the problem - as on the sea&sea housing one sync ports has only 2 pins wired, it should work fine!

thanks B)

Claude

I use ordinary tape. From:

 

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/sync_cord_d1x.html

 

you should "mask" :

 

 

or

 

That solution is good also to sync over 1/500 with D70 (thanks to Craig Nelson)