Fiber Optic or TTL connection for Olympus?

I have just put together an Olympus system- E620 with the Olympus housing and UFL2 flashes.

Should I use the Olympus TTL cable or the fiber optic. Since the system offers both types I am assuming there are distinct advantages/disadvantages to both.

I am leaning towards the TTL cable. Is there any good reason to use the fiber optic instead?

My only experience has been with a Sealife DC500, and one of my frustrations has been with a very limited control over the flash. It has been a great tool to begin learning how to take underwater photos, but I am eager to grow into my new system.

Fiber optic. Actually worse control using a hardwired cable. You can control your strobes from the camera using RC mode in TTL; it's all in the manual.

Jack

When exposed to seawater and marine air, metal contacts corrode, while optical fibers don't. If you don't rinse metal contacts, they corrode and need to be replaced. If you don't rinse fiber-optic contacts, you can get some salt crusted on them that can easily be removed months later with a quick rinse. You can get the same level of control over both fiber and electrical contacts (in general; I'm not familiar with the E-620 or UFL-2), but fiber tends to be more reliable.

There is a strong trend in new housings and new strobes towards fiber-optic sync cables. I'd go with fiber-optics in your position.

Thanks, I was forgetting to set the camera's RC mode. Once I did that I got everything working.

I just spent a few quality hours with the manual and figured out that I can set each strobe for different settings.

Good thing I have a month to play with this thing before I jump into the ocean with it!!

I can see this forum is going to be a big help.

Yeah, it takes some time to come to grips with it, but then it makes sense. The manuals are written in Japanlish as well...

Jack

Fiber optic. Actually worse control using a hardwired cable. You can control your strobes from the camera using RC mode in TTL; it's all in the manual.

 

Jack

is this still true? last night I was reading that optical s-ttl(ie: z240) has better performance than electric ttl, plus no flooding. I do not remember where I saw this. I thought it was the inon site, so it might be propergander.

is this still true? last night I was reading that optical s-ttl(ie: z240) has better performance than electric ttl, plus no flooding. I do not remember where I saw this. I thought it was the inon site, so it might be propergander.

I think you mis-understood; On the Olympus DSLRs E520 or greater, with the Olympus UFL-2 strobes, you can control them better using RC mode and optical cables.

Jack

opps, Yes i mis-understood,

After initial confusion, the way the manual is worded it makes it seem like you only get TTL with an electric connection, I found that you can set up the strobes for TTL with complete in camera controls. Initially I was looking for a setting on the flash to tell it to go ttl from the fiber optic, and only found a setting to tell it to look at the fiber optic and what array to set.

In the camera menu you then set RC mode of the flash. There you can tell it to do TTL , auto, manual or off. You can also set +- exposure settings for the flash. The camera can control 3 different flashes (A B & C) and each can be set up differently.

As I am understanding this I could set one strobe to fire based on TTL and set up the second to be fully manual, say to expose the background differently from the main subject, or perhaps to create shadowing from one side.

It looks like this will allow me as much creative control as I can handle and then some.

Aquashot:

It won't work underwater without some finagling I'm sure, but those remote-controlled A/B/C designations from the camera are GROUPS of strobes, not individuals. I believe each group can have up to 50 strobes, or up to a sum total of 100 on the channel. So above water, if you have a slew of FL-36R or FL-50R's, you can generate whatever bizarre amalgamated lighting you want.

I took an Oly class recently and we played around with this at the Dallas Arboretum; fortunately there were about 18 people in the class and almost everyone had a flash, plus the three or four demo units the Oly reps/teacher brought. It was kinda fun. For above-water use the flash bodies need to be turned so the sensor can 'see' the light from the camera's onboard flash that's providing the control pulses, underwater the UFL-2 gets that info fiber-optically.

http://support.olympus.co.jp/jp/support/dl...ve/man_ufl2.pdf

Pretty awesome, eh? Of course I just got to 'observe' as I was still shooting with an E-330 that predated the control at the camera end. But my E-30 arriving tomorrow I hope should let me start playing.