Rewire bulkhead of Aquatica housing

Hi!

I bought a second hand Aquatica housing for my Nikon D200, I have a Inon Z-240 to start with. The housing has 2 bulkhead connectors, and currently wired for external TTL on both bulkheads.

My question:

Since I want to experiment with the strobe in manual, how do I rewire the second bulkhead to get manual exposure? I attached a diagram of the current wiring, maybe someone can give me a link or a sketch of how I need to rewire the bulkhead!

OR: Can I just set the Inon Z-240 into manual mode and connect it to the external TTL bulkhead without "destroying" something?

Thanks for your help on this ... I need to get into the water with this stuff!

Cheers, Wolfgang

Hi Wolfgang,

Set the strobe to manual and use the controls as per 'manual'. . . hehehe.

Use a piece of electrical tape to cover the pins in the hotshoe of your camera.

The only pin that is left uncovered is the middle one; this is the trigger. The other

pins control the i-TTL of the camera flash. You will notice that the earth is on the

side of the hotshoe adapter and comes into contact with the hotshoe when the

adapter is in place inside the hotshoe...

You only need the trigger and earth to fire the strobe in manual.

If you DO NOT cover the other pins, the camera will NOT fire. . .

HTH,

Bruce...

Hi Wolfgang,

Set the strobe to manual and use the controls as per 'manual'. . . hehehe.

Use a piece of electrical tape to cover the pins in the hotshoe of your camera.

The only pin that is left uncovered is the middle one; this is the trigger. The other

pins control the i-TTL of the camera flash. You will notice that the earth is on the

side of the hotshoe adapter and comes into contact with the hotshoe when the

adapter is in place inside the hotshoe...

You only need the trigger and earth to fire the strobe in manual.

If you DO NOT cover the other pins, the camera will NOT fire. . .

HTH,

Bruce...

Hi Bruce!

This is a really good tip, thanks. No soldering necessary. I will triy this asap

Just to make sure, when you talk about the "middle pin" you mean the one I have numbered with 1 in the sketch I attached to my initial post.

Cheers, Wolfgang

Hi Bruce!

 

 

Just to make sure, when you talk about the "middle pin" you mean the one I have numbered with 1 in the sketch I attached to my initial post.

 

Cheers, Wolfgang

Yes mate,

That's the one...

Bruce

hold on, wait a sec, backup..... maybe i missed something but are you guys saying that a ttl-capable bulkhead is unable to work in manual flash mode???? that doesn't make any sense.

I have my aquatica wired only for manual, but considered updating to the TTL bulkhead. Is covering the TTL hotshoe contacts beforehand the only way to use manual flash power with TTL connecters? that's messed up.

Flash wiring is a mystical affair, even when used in manual the strobe cables is still sending signal to some of the wire (EI: ready light...), normally our TTL connector are set us as follow 5 pins main connector and 2 pins on the second, this way if you disregard the converter and plug directly in the housing, all you have to do is put both flash in manual, that is the case for the D200/D300 if you have 5 pins and 5 pins (yes we do have them on special request) then you have a "backup" connector for your TTL converter, but the price to pay is having to mask the hot shoe.

Nikon's protocol for TTL is main strobe hard wired / second (and +) to be wireless, when you hard wire two strobe to a recent Nikon it will freeze, not only when in a housing but using original Nikon cable as well, I use to run a SB80DX attache to a SC-17 hotshoe cord and attached the second SB80DX via a SC-19 cord that worked well with my D100, came the D200 and I tried the same approach with a pair of brand new SB800 and the same cord and... never got it to fire or trigger with two strobe hooked up in the traditional ways, now that I finally got to read the book on the SB800 I couldn't care less and am happy with wireless, Underwater, my converter has a manual overide switch so when required I just switch back and forth. if I need to plug straight in, the I just mask the hot shoe to block off all but the X (pin # 1 on your drawing) and ground (pin # GND in your drawing) contacts,

BTW Bruce the ground on the Aquatica hot shoe connector is not on the side of the hot shoe but is the most forward pin that make contact to the metal plate of the hot shoe.

I realise the various combination of connector available can be confusing, but as we strive to accomodate our customer first, it can get hrder to figure out lter when the housing change hand (and requirements).

Also Inon includes (at least use to include) a small black round mask with their strobes that could be dropped in the bulkhead connector, that basically converted any Nikonos type connector into a two pins.

If you need more info you can contact me at jean@aquatica.ca