sync cord or wireless sensor

I think that I have made my decision on a housing and strobe for my cp5000. I believe I will go with the ikelite housing and a ds125. It is important for me to be able to use TTL.

I have seen conflicting things about whether to go wireless or not. I suppose I am looking for the definative answer here. I know that the sync cord for my Nikonos V and SB105 has always been the "achilles heal" of the rig.

Any help or comments or experiances will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Look at the thread titled consumer digital just doesn't cut it in housings forum and you'll find some comments James posted in reference to the fact that I have the exact setup you are considering with the TTL slave rather than the direct connection. His vote is for the sync cord, and he makes some good points. One thing I really like about the TTL slave though is the ease of separating the camera from the lighting for battery/card changes between dives.

There is also a thread there about the preflash on the cp5000 that I need to think about a little more.

Where are you located? If you decide to buy with the sync cord I'd be open to the idea of a temporary trade TTL-slave for sync cord so that we could both get a comparison of one vs the other. FYI I'm in Salt Lake.

BTW, I got a great price on the housing and strobe package from Bob@abnerscamera.com if you're still price shopping.

Bob.

Bob,

Thanks for the help. I am in South Florida, West Palm Beach. So then I see you have the TTL Slave. Does it work well for you?

The thread I refered to earlier mentions some of my experiences. I'm working on putting some shots together and figuring out how to upload them somewhere and then I'll let others judge. In the meantime...

I think the macro stuff I did is basically OK. It would probably be improved by dual strobes to overcome fairly significant side-to-side lighting effects and also by using better arms than were supplied with the strobe. Just looked into the ultralight stuff, but it looks like $200 plus for 8" plus 5" plus joints and connectors. Anyone have better recommendations (I'm sure there's a thread somewhere, haven't checked yet)?

For normal stuff I found that on fully auto camera and TTL strobe it screwed things up royally, overexposing even with -2 on the camera exposure compensation. With more manual intervention (see other post) it did better. However, the issues are the amount of light thrown at the subject, so unless there is an issue with pre-flash or the strobe-camera-TTL control loop I think the issues would likely be the same with sync cord or slave.

So much to learn and figure out. I thought this was going to be easy :-)

I think it would definately be an interesting experiment to do a side-by-side of cord vs TTL-slave. Florida is a long way from Utah - but the offer of a temporary trade of some kind still holds if you're interested at some point (if you go with the sync cord).

Bob.

I dont even have it yet. So it will be sometime before I can even consider any trades.

Thanks.