Olympus UFL-3 - does anyone actually use one?

Hi,

when I use my Olympus OM-D E-M5 topside with the small on-camera strobe in "fill" mode (=TTL), strobe exposure is 100% perfect.

But when I use it u/w with my two Inon Z240 (S-TTL), the results are... mixed, at least. With f/2.8 or f/4 the pics are always too bright, with f/16 or smaller they are too dark, even when the strobes are very close to the subject. That's not what "TTL" should be like.

So kinda out of frustration, I started using manual strobe settings with my new digicam. (I am talking about macro, of course. For wide angle I use manual strobe settings exclusively.) It does work, of course, but is sometimes a bit annoying.

In my "analog days" TTL exposure was something I never had to think about - it just worked, and it was sooo convenient.

I read about the Oly UFL-3 strobe. It is a Sea&Sea strobe which has RC integrated. From all what I have read about using RC strobes topside, they work perfect in terms of exposure.

So after all these words my question: Does anyone have first hand experience with the UFL-3? Does it give perfect TTL-macro-exposures underwater? This would be a perfect "starting point" for my attempts for more creative lightning

Jock

Not the UFL-3 but I had a UFL-2 that I gave up trying to use with my EM-5 under water. I know some people have had success but for me the RC mode just didn't work for TTL, and the strobe didn't sync at all in manual mode. I spent a lot of frustrating time trying every possible combination of settings even with the help of Olympus tech support and reading every forum post on the web. I concluded that they are buggy. YMMV

For what it's worth, I switched to a pair of Inon S2000 that perform absolutely perfectly on every shot in both S-TTL and manual modes. Using S-TTL only requires the on camera flash to be set to Fill (not fractional powers). I would have thought that you could get the same results with the Z-240.

I just got 2 UFL-3s the other day, from the results on land, they seem to work well with the RC mode enabled on the camera, I can adjust and set the different channels (RCA/RCB) on the camera and shooting into a mirror I do see the strobes gong off at different levels. Also played with actual subject shooting and was able to adjust the strobes to provide shadows.

I will be able to give you better real world results after my Curacao trip in January

I use the 2's. With my epl1 it was right on the money with to flash and manual exposure. Only time it would cause problems was if the scene was a bit wide angle and it was trying to light the whole thing with one strobe. It would hot spot one side and barely light the other. A second strobe should fix that.

Well, I had my first trip with the UFL-3s. Got some decent shots with them. Using both the RC as well as the manual setting. Less successful in manual, but I am sure that is user error :-)

Here are some untouched pics, straight from the camera from last week in Curacao