G10 with canon enclosure question

Guys/Gals:

Considering buying a canon g10 and there are a few options for enclosures. I was wondering if I buy the canon standard enclosure (around $200) and somehow attach 2 fiber cables to the flash. Would I be able to use TTL through the fiber if I attach say a Sea and Sea 110Alpha or Inon S200/Z240? Add a lens adapter for 67mm macro wet lense and call it a day. Would that work or am I missing something with other enclosures that are $400 to $800 more? Keep in mind I do mostly macro and I have consider down the line getting a second strobe and upgrading the enclosure if I want to go wide angle. But for now would this suffice for my macro needs? I really want to utilize the ttl feature. Any input is welcomed. Thanks.

Nestor/Pershing

Sure - the housing is clear ... it will work fine!

Guys/Gals:

 

Considering buying a canon g10 and there are a few options for enclosures. I was wondering if I buy the canon standard enclosure (around $200) and somehow attach 2 fiber cables to the flash. Would I be able to use TTL through the fiber if I attach say a Sea and Sea 110Alpha or Inon S200/Z240? Add a lens adapter for 67mm macro wet lense and call it a day. Would that work or am I missing something with other enclosures that are $400 to $800 more? Keep in mind I do mostly macro and I have consider down the line getting a second strobe and upgrading the enclosure if I want to go wide angle. But for now would this suffice for my macro needs? I really want to utilize the ttl feature. Any input is welcomed. Thanks.

 

Nestor/Pershing

The Sea&Sea YS110alpha support DS-TTL (digital slave TTL), then, with a fiber optic and the Canon Housing, you get TTL.

The Sea&Sea YS110alpha support DS-TTL (digital slave TTL), then, with a fiber optic and the Canon Housing, you get TTL.

So with the Sea&Sea 110A would work, how about the Inon's?

So with the Sea&Sea 110A would work, how about the Inon's?

Any of them that work via fibre optics will work.

Any of them that work via fibre optics will work.

I know they will fire and I can control manually, question is can they do TTL through the fiber cable accurately.

According to Sea&Sea, the YS-110alpha will work in TTL through the fiber optic cable (DS-TTL).

Look at this chart from Sea&Sea:

Compatibility Chart

I know they will fire and I can control manually, question is can they do TTL through the fiber cable accurately.

Yes.

TTL will not work in manual mode.

As far as I know, the TTL on these optic flashes rely on the duration of the cameras own flash. It only works in the program modes, P, Tv, Av, etc where the inbuilt flash also autoexposes.

But those modes are useless in most situations because even in Av, the shutter defaults to 1/60 whenever the flash is on; so you'll have a hard time catching anything which moves faster than that.

So you'll have to use manual exposure controls along with manual control of the flash. This is what I use and what I'd probably use even if the TTL did work.

TTL will not work in manual mode.

 

As far as I know, the TTL on these optic flashes rely on the duration of the cameras own flash. It only works in the program modes, P, Tv, Av, etc where the inbuilt flash also autoexposes.

 

But those modes are useless in most situations because even in Av, the shutter defaults to 1/60 whenever the flash is on; so you'll have a hard time catching anything which moves faster than that.

 

So you'll have to use manual exposure controls along with manual control of the flash. This is what I use and what I'd probably use even if the TTL did work.

Thanks, I think that is a very important piece of information to have to consider this purchase. So in Av mode you can only control the aperture and everything else is calculated for you or preset? It sounds like the camera picks a shutter speed for you in that mode from your comment. The whole point of this upgrade was not to worry about over exposure and focus on composition and focus. Guess you can never get away from that.

It is true that TTL-flash will not work with G10 in manual mode ... only P, TV and AV modes ... but not because of some limitation of the strobe. It is possible to have TTL flash and manual control of the camera, but Canon has disabled TTL flash in manual mode on purpose ... annoying, but true.

TTL is really only useful for macro anyway IMO, and in those situations you can probably get away with 1/60th of a second if you must. You'll want to stop all the way down to f/8 most of the time and you'll get relatively strong contribution from ambient light under most conditions giving you pretty blue water. If you want black water macro or higher shutter speeds, you'll need to combine f/8 with 1/1000th or so ... and then you ARE in manual territory ... but I think to start, you should be able to get some pretty good macro shots using AV at f/8 and TTL flash.

For non-macro stuff, TTL becomes less useful as the system just wasn't designed for underwater use. You can either go manual, or start tweaking exposure compensation to get the right balance.

Manual isn't so bad with strobes and a digital camera ... I found that I could set-up my G9 with nice starting points on C1 and C2 and do 90+% of my shooting by either choosing C1 or C2 and tweaking the strobe power here or there. With the ability to preset two full setups, I rarely had to adjust the exposure at all - even though I was in manual mode the whole time.

It is true that TTL-flash will not work with G10 in manual mode ... only P, TV and AV modes ... but not because of some limitation of the strobe. It is possible to have TTL flash and manual control of the camera, but Canon has disabled TTL flash in manual mode on purpose ... annoying, but true.

 

TTL is really only useful for macro anyway IMO, and in those situations you can probably get away with 1/60th of a second if you must. You'll want to stop all the way down to f/8 most of the time and you'll get relatively strong contribution from ambient light under most conditions giving you pretty blue water. If you want black water macro or higher shutter speeds, you'll need to combine f/8 with 1/1000th or so ... and then you ARE in manual territory ... but I think to start, you should be able to get some pretty good macro shots using AV at f/8 and TTL flash.

 

For non-macro stuff, TTL becomes less useful as the system just wasn't designed for underwater use. You can either go manual, or start tweaking exposure compensation to get the right balance.

 

Manual isn't so bad with strobes and a digital camera ... I found that I could set-up my G9 with nice starting points on C1 and C2 and do 90+% of my shooting by either choosing C1 or C2 and tweaking the strobe power here or there. With the ability to preset two full setups, I rarely had to adjust the exposure at all - even though I was in manual mode the whole time.

Here it is almost 1 year since your post and I'm trying to figure out how to shoot sttl in M mode... guess there's no way to do it! So, what are your presets for C1 and C2? I'm most a macro shooter and really wanted to shoot f8 and 1/250... what's the best compromise or do you have suggestion as to where I should start dialing in my strobe. I use the inon s2000. I keep my iso at 80.... tropcial water diving. :-)