Seaflash 150 on location in Bonaire

That would be typical, wouldn't it? The kiss of death once you have to test it. Sorry to hear that and I hope you don't blame me for it . If you haven't had issues with your AF, why not downgrade the firmware to the older one to keep RCS? So what happens now with the new firmware? Does it not recognise the strobes and fires 1st curtain anyways?

Just to confirm, there is no preflash with the Seaflash 150 right? Thanks for taking the time to do this. I hope it's just an anomaly and you get RCS back.

Drew - I totally assume this to be your fault, of course. But, my latest is a TOTALLY INCONCLUSIVE TEST. My Canon Speedlight doesn't work in rear curtain synch on that particular 1DsMKIII body either, but it does on my 5DII.

My 1DMKIII is out to Canon Pro Service for AF upgrade, so I don't have another MKIII body to test the Seaflash 150 RCS & preflash. But, I'm assuming the issue is totally related to camera body at the moment. I will update this thread when my other MKIII body gets back to me, but meanwhile ignore previous post as it relates to RCS.

So Stephen, did you reapply for CPS yet? I just did it yesterday. They've bugged me to upgrade to Gold already.

That's important to know Stephen. Thanks for that. Although that news really sucks for 5D2 shooters. That means there's no rear curtain for other cameras other than the 1D MK III series.

I do have to ask if the rear curtain sync with the Seacam is anything like when the Heinrich converter is connected.

In this thread there is discussion of Canon RCS:

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=24346

It seems there is a preflash then a flash. My experience with the HW converter is that it'll fire the preflash followed by a flash for approx every 1 sec. This sort of gives the illusion of RCS but Matthias Heinrich himself told me his Canon external converters do not have rear curtain sync on any camera.

So Stephen, just to confirm since your blog and previous posts don't mention a preflash. Did your tests show only one flash or a preflash followed by a 2nd flash?

Drew - I just received this post from Harald Hordosch at Seacam, and they have come up with a rear curtain synch solution for both Canon 5DII and MKIII cameras with Seaflash 150.

Strobes already in the field, like mine, will have to go back to Austria for an upgrade. New strobes from now on will have upgrade integrated. In Harald's words:

"To operate the 2.curtain you have to get this new update and after this you are able to select this feature on one or twin strobes by switching to the SLAVE function – please note the pilot light is not working in this position. It will work on all CANON cameras – NIKON already has this feature!"

This is apparently a hardware update, not simply firmware. I'll let you know more when I have the conversion done and can do some in-water testing.

Thanks Stephen. Good news. Seems Seacam is the only option for rear curtain for Canon shooters.