Strobe Confusion - Nauticam D90

Hi,

I have gone from a coolpix with an Ikelite housing to a DX8000g and now I am finally on my 'big boy' camera. A D90 with a Nauticam housing, 60 mm Macro and Zen 100mm with dual YS110a strobes. All seems OK (in the pool - yes I am practising but I cannot find any decent explanations on the strobes.

I have fibre cables for each strobe which are fired from the pop up flash or I have a dual synch cable to 5 pin Nikonos bulkhead. I was advised on the synch cable to cover some of the electical contacts to run it in manual mode. So with either the fiber or the synch cable it appears I have to shoot entirely manual (No TTL).

If I leave the synch cable as is (i.e. do not cover contacts) it fires at full and is far to powerful. I seem to have no control - is manual my only option - are there decent guides / documents out there to read or does someone want to explain this in simple terms ?

Hi,

 

I have gone from a coolpix with an Ikelite housing to a DX8000g and now I am finally on my 'big boy' camera. A D90 with a Nauticam housing, 60 mm Macro and Zen 100mm with dual YS110a strobes. All seems OK (in the pool - yes I am practising but I cannot find any decent explanations on the strobes.

 

I have fibre cables for each strobe which are fired from the pop up flash or I have a dual synch cable to 5 pin Nikonos bulkhead. I was advised on the synch cable to cover some of the electical contacts to run it in manual mode. So with either the fiber or the synch cable it appears I have to shoot entirely manual (No TTL).

 

If I leave the synch cable as is (i.e. do not cover contacts) it fires at full and is far to powerful. I seem to have no control - is manual my only option - are there decent guides / documents out there to read or does someone want to explain this in simple terms ?

With the sync cables, you'll have to shoot manual unless you buy a TTL converter. Not a bad thing - I shoot in manual most of the time myself.

Using the fiber optic cables, you can take advantage of the TTL that is built into your YS-110a's (Sea&Sea calls it DS-TTL). To do that, remove the sync cables, put the caps back on both the strobes and the housing, and remove the hotshoe connector form the camera. Pop up the flash, make sure the camera is in TTL mode, set the slave switches to on, set the mode switch to TTL, and the power dial to full. You can dim the power with that dial if it is over exposing. That should give you DS-TTL. You can also shoot manual; let me know if you want help with that.

There is an instruction manual for your strobes here: www.seaandsea.jp/file_master/adownload/03111_1.pdf

Hope that helps,

Cheers,

Cp

Thanks, I will look at this tonight - I appreciate the response. It's quite a big step up from point and shoot..

Thanks very much!!!

I have tested this and it works perfectly, I can try this and manual shooting - the confusion was the annoying thing

By the way, I found an issue which was causing me to swear at Nauticam but turned out to be not Nauticams fault.

If you leave the viewfinder cover in place on the D90 (a plastic clip on) it pushes the camera off just enough to stop the mode selector on the housing working correctly. Once removed it seems to function as designed although I will test a bit more to be 100% happy.... Just in case anyone else runs into this issue I thought it worth mentioning.

u need to remove the camera LCD prodector also.....

Thanks very much!!!

 

I have tested this and it works perfectly, I can try this and manual shooting - the confusion was the annoying thing

 

By the way, I found an issue which was causing me to swear at Nauticam but turned out to be not Nauticams fault.

 

If you leave the viewfinder cover in place on the D90 (a plastic clip on) it pushes the camera off just enough to stop the mode selector on the housing working correctly. Once removed it seems to function as designed although I will test a bit more to be 100% happy.... Just in case anyone else runs into this issue I thought it worth mentioning.

Hi apache1048,

No worries... glad it worked.

Yes, you do have to remove the cover from the LCD. You should not have to remove the eyecup.

Cheers,

Chris