Help please - asap - On liveaboard now.

HELP ASAP..CURRENTLY ON LIVEABOARD TRIP. Only have connectivity for a couple more hours.

I have my brand new Panasonic GX1, Nauticam Housing and Sea and Sea DX1s with me and am having ALL sorts of trouble. Any ideas HELP

When the strobes do fire something (? The camera??) will turn the strobes off intermittently. In other words, I have set the camera to forced flash on . I pop up the little camera flash to trigger the strobes and (when Im lucky) all is well for a picture or two then the camera (or housing?) shuts the strobes off (showing the flash symbol w/ a line through it to show the strobes are off). I have to wiggle the lever on the housing to turn the strobes back on each time they turn off. Sometimes the strobes come right back on, sometimes, not. I have to wiggle the lever on the housing just right or the strobe wont come back on. I didnt turn them off what is happening? I cant figure out how to get them to stop shutting off.

About every second or third shot they dont fire at all. Sometimes they wont fire for an entire dive (although I always test the strobes on the boat before I go in the water. Ive cleaned the cables, connections, read the manuals, etc.)

Strobe batteries - I can barely get a whole dive out of an entire set of fully charged enloope (sp) batteries.

What am I doing wrong??? Is it faulty equipment or faulty operator or both. Help.. Im mid trip and want the beast to work.

Im shooting in manual /TTL. Typically ISO = 160 (as low as it goes), f5.6-22, ss 60 - 125

please feel free to email me at hollowaysandra@cox.net (soon please :-)

im sorry youre having so much trouble. My first thought, if the camera keeps showing you the "flash-off" symbol would be that perhaps the housing control is out of tolerance and hitting the flash on/off button on the camera (granted I do not know this camera, but assume it has a lightning bolt button that cycles "flash on/off/auto"). Perhaps this button is getting pressed at depth by the housing control?

Also, what about TTL settings? Again, I don't know your strobes/camera, but if both camera & strobe are not set the same "TTL or Manual" then they will confuse each other and not fire correctly. I'd try setting the camera's flash to manual minimum power if tha'ts possible, then make sure the strobes are set to whatever optical synch mode and manual power and try that.

Try everything also without the housing closed (just setup so the camera flash can still trigger the strobes) but do it with the housing open, to see if its perhaps a control out of alignment and hitting buttons when it shouldn't. You should get way more battery life out of your eneloops unless you're firing away at full power hundreds of times. I don't know the strobes, but I believe most strobes should get in the range of 200 full power flashes per set of batteries.

Hope maybe that gives you some more troubleshooting ideas. Good luck. Cheers,

Chris

oh, just a bit to add - conceptually - turn all automatic modes off. Set the camera to manual mode (within the flash synch speed), camera flash to manual, strobes to manual etc. Get rid of any decision making the system is trying to do. That would be my first suggestion to try.

Thank you - I will try. One more hour of connectivity - then off again.

You've given me hope!