5D mark III housings... do they need fiber optic trigger ports?

I just noticed another manufacturer, Sea & Sea, has announced that the 5D3 housing will have fiber ports to trigger the strobes. Obviously the Canon top range have no built in strobe so it'll be a hot shoe activation. Has any manufacturer broken the Canon code for eTTL and 2nd curtain flash in the hot shoe triggers? I know Zillion has a manual trigger but it works well only in slow fps. With the new 5D3 and 1Dx firing 6-12fps, I doubt an optic trigger will be able to keep up.

Just wondering what the few Canon peeps left think? And also what the manufacturers are planning.

Anthis Nexus supply manual optical trigger as well. I use one but, did not test fast multiple trigger yet. Funin in Taiwan supply a model of optical trigger for retrofit market in reasonable price.

Sam

Hi Drew,

I stumbled upon your blog after having had troubles with my 5D MII in an Aquatica housing. The Sea and Sea 110 alpha strobes would not fire at all. I had it down in Cathy Church's photo shop in Grand Cayman for months. We thought perhaps it was the Sea and Sea TTL converter but we tested the circuits for continuity. We had to go pin by pin to and map out the circuitry to see what would fire the strobes. With a lot of communication with Aquatica and encouraging words to the staff down there they finally figured out the electronic wiring that came with the housing had its circuit board wired wrong. We received a new wiring harness and installed it. It appears to be working fine now. Even in full TTL mode.

I was ready to look into the Custom fitted internal TTL converters with HeinrichsWeikamp Circuitry due to the above issues and was wondering if you looked into that setup? I would love to get away from the electronics if possible due to the possibility of flooding.

Looking forward to your response.

Here is the link for the Triggerfish optical converter for Canon and Nikon only. I don't know if it will fit inside an Aquatica housing for a 5D MII. It will only support manual strobe functions according to the owner's manual.

http://www.fun-in.com.tw/oc/index.php?route=product/category&path=95_17_182

http://www.owfotograaf.be/beelden-pagina/MiniLedStrobeV2.pdf

I very much suspect that Edward Lai is developing a S-TTL LED flash unit for the NA-5D3 which would of course will work just fine in manual too and with the added advantage of pumping out syncs at 6-12 fps. I'm wetting myself at the thought of those sort of capture rates, coupled with high ISO capability, fast wide angle glass and x4 strobe units dialled down for minimum recycling time...

Sea & Sea 5D Mk III photos are on the home page, and I don't see any optical triggering provisions.

Triggerfish and several homemade triggers we have here all work fine with continuous shooting up to 11fps. Theoretically faster, but nothing to test with. All of these are manual exposure only at the present time...

Ryan, the optical ports are in the announcement sent out by TUSA:

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=47009#entry312361

Interesting about the triggers. I'm just wondering why manufacturers included ports for manual firing only as standard, instead of an option like S6, Ike connectors etc. Without eTTL and rear curtain., the big advantage is ease of set up and flood prevention.

I was ready to look into the Custom fitted internal TTL converters with HeinrichsWeikamp Circuitry due to the above issues and was wondering if you looked into that setup? I would love to get away from the electronics if possible due to the possibility of flooding.

 

Looking forward to your response.

Funnily enough, I've tried converters in most configurations except internal mounted ones in camera housings. My HW converter (now lost in limbo somewhere in UPS) was ok. The canon eTTL metering system does a good job when set to average. Evaluative mode tends to underexpose because of the highlight metering of canon. It worked well for especially for macro. Mine did not have 2nd curtain support.

The Ikelite and Seacam versions pretty much work the same way except only the Seacam has 2nd curtain support.

Ryan, if you could step in here and confirm that HW had firmware that supported 2nd curtain, and that it can be uploaded? This was a few years ago so I'm a little fuzzy on details.

I'm also interested if the optical firing can control 2nd curtain.

Personally I've had very little trouble with sync cables, once they are wired correctly and made properly. I cansee the ability to just remove the cables and go strobeless is a boon with optic ports. Obviously they are cheaper than sync cables.