Eye Candy (Sea & Sea D70)

Karl,

I think Ike developed a lighter tray/bracket for the Aluminum backed D100 and S2 housings.

Here's a pic:

Cheers

James

excellent........

Karl

No, no. The sweetheart shown on following URL is what will contain the D-70:

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/2dslr_d100.html

Whoops, I should have explained better Ike.

Karl is worried that you will use a 3 lb tray/handle on the D70 housing. I told him that perhaps you could use a lighter tray/handle ala the S2 aluminum housing.

So what is the tray/handle on the new housing made of? Is it polycarbonate? Al? Is it removable for travel?

I sure wish I had one of these housings so that I could try it out with the D100 and write a review...;-)

Cheers

James

And the 10D.  Eric and I saw the 10D housing at DEMA and it was sweet.  A LOT smaller.

 

Cheers

James

how can that be, when the 10D is a bigger camera?

I think James was saying that the 10D housing is a lot smaller than the D30/D60 housing .

D70 housing measures 9.5" wide including knobs; 13.25" wide with handle assembly attached. It measures 6.75" high including lid snap; 8" high with handle assembly attached. Front to back without a port is 6.5" including knobs and port locks.

i went to the london dive show on sunday, mainly to see if camerasunderwater had the d70 housing from Ikelite.

but while i was there i looked at the 300D housing which is same size, and it weighed a bloody ton!

Ike are you going to make the tray handle light weight?

The complete assembly weighs only a few ounces in salt water............

Looks like the same Ikelite housing they use for the DRebel, in which case it is almost perfect in water. Just slightly negative, like Ike said a few onces. I believe the D70 weighs just a little more than the Rebel (I checked one out yesterday at Schiller's) , which would make little difference overall.

And if you add a DS125 and arms, remove the lead weight in the base and it stays perfect. It's almost as if someone planned it that way!!

Dave

If I'm not mistaken, they all (D100, D70, DRebel) weigh about the same, and they feel lighter than my S&S dx3060. I got to take a quick look at the DRebel version at Beneath the Sea (at Ryan's booth), and it was a sweet little housing. I can see how you might think it feels heavy out of water, especially if you compare it to some of the P&S OEM housings from Canon or Sony, but these are in a different league IMHO. As has been discussed ad nauseum in other threads, there are definitely trade offs between P&S and SLR housings, weight and size being one of them. To Ike's pointt, weight only matters out of the water or if it's not balanced in the water. I'd rather have a righ that's perfectly weighted in the water and heavy out of it than an overly bouyant rig when it's in the water.

Tom

Advice............ since this is the place to be, I have been watching new developments on film, and I have not made the leap yet. Reason...... I love TTL still for shots which require speed ( i.e. that shark which zooms past your nose outta no where..... one time opportunity, no time for bracketing with strobe re-cycle times.......

Can some one advise me.... if you have slow or static subjects, sure u can take tons of pics with a DSLR and check exposure and bracket. If u are taking shots of fish which are skittish, i.e. Box fish, its 'bang' and u got or u aint as they are gone. Would like to hear your advice. Would like to migrate to DSLR, but I am still hooked on my TTL ( Nikon F80, sea&sea NX 80 housing )

And if you add a DS125 and arms, remove the lead weight in the base and it stays perfect. It's almost as if someone planned it that way!!  

 

Dave

thats one question i need answered, currently there is no TTL circuitry to convert the various digital variations of TTL (E, i and D plus what ever else they dream up), but are we getting bulkhead connectors just in case some one cracks these?

if not what controller do i use with my D70, the ikelite housing and my DS50?

also can we switch from the DS range to the normal range with the controlers?

cheers

Clive, bulkhead with sync cord is the only way to get strobe interaction.....optical sensors can't work because the onboard flash will not work in a housing.

You could use the sync cord connected directly to a DS 125 strobe and just use the 4 levels of power on the strobe or interconnect the manual controller and get 10 levels of power.

Since the DS 50 doesn't have onboard variable power settings, I think you can only use the DS 50 with the manual controller.

If Ike ever figures out iTTL, they will offer an upgrade to the housing and you can use TTL at that time. What would be nice is the ability to switch from 10 manual power settings to TTL while on a dive. I'm sure it's coming sometime in the future.

Karl

Caveman,

At this time, there are a few DSLR's that you can shoot in TTL with today's underwater strobes.

They are:

Fuji S2pro

And if you use Aquatica's ICU Circuit:

Canon Digital Rebel

Canon 10D

Canon 1Ds

No one has cracked D-TTL or iTTL yet.

Cheers

James Wiseman

And if you use Aquatica's ICU Circuit:

 

Canon Digital Rebel

Canon 10D

Canon 1Ds

And I have heard fairly reliable rumors that Ikelite is working on eTTL for the Rebel housing and would be offered as an upgrade.

Dave.

How reliable? Any idea what strobes the Ikelite circuit might work with? I presume theirs, of course.

I'm about to take the leap into a digital SLR and underwater housing, and I'd like to have a controlled strobe in the long run. Is there a bulkhead already in the Ikelite housing, or would that be part of the upgrade/retrofit?

Thanks,

-Chris

Head Lite may be unreliable and nuts, but the rest of the Ikelite people are very fine. They did very fine deciphering Olympus TTL and are working diligently on dTTL, eTTL and iTTL. Housings have bulkhead for sync cords. We have not made early claims, but it seems logical conversion circuitry will be forthcoming............

I hope fairly reliable... :wink:

My housing already has a bulkhead adapter, they come stock that way. I use a DS125 strobe + the manual exposure controller that gives more settings than the strobe alone allows, 10 vs 3.

The person I spoke with said that once available, it would likely be like the circuit in the Oly housing and that it may be possible to 'add' to the backplate somehow by sending the plate in to Ike, for a additional charge and all supposition, of course. I was not waiting on it because I was used to manual exposure UW anyway. I hope that it pans out and I would gladly pay for it, but I'm not letting it hold me back.

Edit:

We have not made early claims, but it seems logical conversion circuitry will be forthcoming............

Hey that sounds promising!!

Dave

Ike (and Dave), that's great to know. I wasn't looking for a ship date or anything, just a "it is both possible (bulkhead connector) and actively being worked on." This is awesome, thanks much!

How does manual strobe sync work, anyway, since there's no internal flash being fired? (I presume, since the internal flash doesn't look like it could flip up inside the housing, and you wouldn't want it causing backscatter anyway.)

Pardon all the basic questions, I'm really quite a newbie to SLR photography as well as underwater photography w/ strobes. (Other than discovering a while ago that getting a strobe that can sync properly with a Canon digital elph (S230) underwater is going to cost you about as much as the camera+housing did.)

-Chris