Which pin connections do I cover with tape?

Hi,

Help Please!

I'm headed on a dive trip tomorrow and would like advice on which pin connectors I need to cover to fire my strobes properly.

My setup is:

Nikon D700

Aquatica housing, dual Nikonos bulkhead connectors

Sea & Sea strobe connectors, inserts into one bulkhead and forks to each of two Sea & Sea YSD90DX Duo

Manual shutter and aperture settings 1/125 sec F16, 200 ISO

It won't fire if all five pin connectors are open in the hotshoe connection.

I remember reading somewhere that I need to cover some of the connections, but my searches yield different results -- some advice is to cover all but the center connector. Haven't tried that yet, but the strobes did fire when I covered the bottom two connectors. Should I just go with covering all but the center pin, or is it OK if I cover just the bottom two connections?

Anyone have a handy diagram???

Thanks much in advance.

Cover all except the middle one and the outside metal. Or remove them completely from the connector, it's really easy to do.

I think Cor is right, although I have also used them with only the bottom two connectors covered but not with Aquatica. I thought though that there is a switch inside the housing hot-shoe connector that is supposed to allow use either way. From Aquatica

"Nikonos bulkhead can be switched from a 2-pin connector for manual strobe control to a 5-pin connector for a TTL adapter at the flip of a switch, when used in TTL mode, only 1 bulkhead is TTL compatible"

Bill

Thanks, Cor and Bill. I tried both ways and the work but will go for the center pin only.

Marlo

I got my D300 and dual YS-110 strobes to fire by slightly misaligning the hotshoe connector so that only the centre pin makes contact with the camera hot shoe. I had a look inside the housing but couldn't see anything resembling switches. Is that a standard thing for Aquatica housings?

The current housings now all have an internal switchboard that can isolate the circuit from 5 active pins for TTL with a converter to 2 pins for manual exposure, the D300 does not have the switchboard (we started with the D90 housing).

As long as your strobes and the camera are in manual, they should trigger

Did you check if the ALL micro-switches on your housing are in the Off position? I helped a customer set up his D90 housing and all the switches were in the ON (5 pin active) setting when they arrived from the factory.

stu

As above you only need trigger and ground. The link is for the Nikon pin outs..

http://www.camerasunderwater.info/engineer...ash/nikttl.html