D70 Cozumel pictures

Hey Rand -

there is NO setting you need to change on the d70.. just plug into hot shoe and connect your dual synch cord and you are off and running. As a 5050 owner and a d70 you will find the d70 effortless for underwater photography.. it almost took some of the old fun out of using the 5050! You know, set shot up, wait for fish, wait for focus, wait for camera to write, see if you got shot and start all over.. I didn't really realize how much the shutter lag was hurting me until this past trip to Cozy. My wife is now learing how to use my 5050 (moving up from Nikonos). It'll be my backup camera for most trips since it is so easy to carry..

I left all other settings on camera to 0 or normal.. Leave the LCD at 0..you may want to change topside but underwater the result on screen is pretty close to actual exposure.

Also, shooting in AF-S mode. ISO 200. White balance auto.

M.

Sounds easy enough. I was curious how the strobe fired at 1/2000. So it sounds like the shoe fires every shot.

Yes, I'm looking forward to my first foray in a few weeks. New camera and housing doesn't sound too inviting but really, the learning curve topside hasn't been bad at all. If anything I would say it's easier than it was moving from the 4040 to the involved programming options of the 5050.

Your high speed sync shot really made my day though. I'm sure 1/500 would get what I need but the magic number seemed to be 1/1000 on the 5050 so we'll see.

Rand

I'm not sure what could cause your trouble with setting shutter speeds higher than 1/500 on some occasions, although I have one idea.

The D70 will only truly sync in TTL at 1/500. Since the Ike hotshoe doesn't use the TTL pins, the D70 will allow you to choose whatever shutter speed you want. Perhaps if you accidentally changed modes to the "dumb" full auto green mode and took a picture the pop-up flash would be engaged (because the TTL pin is not connected--this won't happen on the SB-800). The pop-up flash won't pop-up all the way and won't fire because a little nub on the hotshoe connector holds it down. But this might be enough to make the camera think that the flash is engaged and restrict your shutter speed.

Glad to see that you are getting good results with 1/2000s. The D70 will let you shoot at whatever shutter speed you want up to 1/8000s--weather you get all or enough of the strobe flash is another matter dependant only on the strobe. Ike reports that his long tube strobes take 1/250 for a full dump. I'm not sure what fraction is required for 1/4 as you were shooting.

I gather that front curtian/rear-curtian is only academic at such high shutter speeds. All large strobes--not just the DS125 are likely to take much more time than 1/2000s to fire anyway. Plus, I doubt that you will find an object moving fast enough to get motion blur at these high speeds.

Hello !

I'll test your theory about the pop up flash.. I think you may be correct. I was also wondering about the manual controller.. there is a black cover that hides a photo diode.. this black cover had fallen off and im wondering if the sensor picked up something and fed info back to camera... Can it do this?!? Your supposed to have strobe set to TTL with the manual controller.. not sure if the black plastic cover NEEDS to be on as well...that would be a question for Ike....Has anyone seen Ike lately?!?!

M.

This would be a good question for Ike, but I would say no.

I don't see how the manual controller has any communication with the strobe. The way I think it works is there are three connectors fire ground and quench. The camera tells the strobe when to fire and stop firing and the manual controller tells the strobe how long to stay on based on the setting.

If the cover is off and the photodiode senses a strobe it fires the strobe. I don't think it sends any signal back to the camera or that the camera knows that the strobe went off at all.

The only reason the cover needs to be on is to prevent other photographers from setting off your strobes. This could ruin their shot and reduce your battery power/recycle time or spook fish.

I used the setup with the covers off some of the time and didn't notice anything different. I run one ds125 with a single sync cord to a manual controller and the other as a slave with a second manual controller with the cover off. I had my brother take several shots of me with both covers off with his 5050 using his internal flast to trip mine. The shots came out great. With both of my strobes lighting up it looks really cool. Some people duct tape the covers on to prevent them from getting lost.

Good luck! I loved your blue backgrounds and the nudibranch in particular! Were you metering on the background or the subject? Were you using spot or matrix metering? Was the blue like this out of the camera?

Thanks for the tips!

All this equipment, accessories and 17inch G4 notebook fits into a Tamrac backpack and in the overhead compartment of an Airbus 319.

Starbuck, which Tamrac was this?

Hi Larth -

I bought from BHphoto.com.. It is the larger backpack designed for 2 slr bodies and the G4 17inch computer. BH has all the specs on their website. I added wheels to lug the thing around.. pretty heavy loaded up with all the camera gear and computer.

M.

Starbuck, think I stumbled onto why the camera won't go past 1/500 and other times it will.

It's something to do with hot shoe mating with the connector. When I first hooked my camera up to the Subal, I was getting only 1/500 sync and the very annoying AF assist light coming on and slowing down the overall speed of taking a picture. My first issue was trying to get that light off. You can turn it off in the menu, but once the connector is hooked to the hot shoe, it seemed to be overridden and still coming on.

So I kept trying this and that un-hooking things and hooking them back up until finally, out of the blue, the AF assist light didn't come on and Ta Da! I could move the shutter to 1/2000 and the strobes fired. At first I thought I'd made some magic adjustment in the menu and was trying to figure out what it was. I pulled the camera out and re-inserted it in the housing attached the strobe connector and to my dismay, the AF light came back on and the sync went back to 1/500.

After more fooling around, it came down to how far in on the hot shoe I pushed the connector. All the way in, 1/500, back it off just a bit 1/2000 and no AF assist light. I'm sure this has to do with the contacts and I'm planning on isolating which ones to cover. I'll work on it in Little Cayman this week.

Rand

Hey Rand -

That is interesting.. I turned off my AF assis light before shooting any U/W photos. My problem was the Ike lever arm will accidently push on the flash button (causing the pop up flash to pop up) Once the flash is up you can not go beyond 1/500th..

I'm about to post some pictures from Galapogos.. Should be up by tonight!

M.

Can you tell us about the Ike viewfinder? With the D70 viewfinder being so small, I am concerned about being able to see the entire frame. Thanks.

Mark

Mark, this is my first DSLR, so I don't know any better I wish it was bigger, but I can see everything alright

Karl

Hi Mark -

I cant see the entire frame with the Ike housing for d70.. Maybe it is my mask but you will miss the upper or lower corners (just a little).. This is the biggest drawback as well as bulkhead synch cord connector...

I dont know if Nexus housing will support 12-24 lens. My friends d100 nexus housing will not even support 18-70...

M.

Mark, Re "Can you tell us about the Ike viewfinder? With the D70 viewfinder being so small, I am concerned about being able to see the entire frame."

I just switched from a C-5050 to a D70, both in Ikelite housings. Like you I was concerned about being able to frame subjects with the viewfinder.

Turns out I like the viewfinder better than the LCD. I can easily see the whole frame and looking through the eyepiece really focuses my mind for the shot ... it's like looking through a scope on a rifle. So with no shutter lag it's aim-shoot, aim-shoot. And my compositions are spot on with marine life action shots I never could get before.

BTW I wear glasses for reading and have gage reader lenses in my mask with magnification for seeing my watch, gages, etc. But I have no magnification in the top part of my lenses and it's this part of the lens that I use for looking thru the viewfinder. The reason this works is that if you adjust the focus of the D70 viewfinder on land without glasses, the same amount of magnification will work underwater without special optics. What doesn't work is trying to look through the lower part of my gage readers. Not only is the magnification wrong but the angle of my face to the camera is also wrong.

As for the sync cord out the back, I would prefer it elsewhere. But it's there to simplify setting up the camera on the back plate. And it's easy to route it around the housing on the bottom left so that it is not in the way and stays out of the way.

I dont know if Nexus housing will support 12-24 lens.  My friends d100 nexus housing will not even support 18-70...

M.

Yes, the Nexus D70 supports the 12-24 lens. They recommend their 6" dome with it, which surprised me. However, the kit lens is not supported at this time. I don't know of anyone but Ike supporting the kit lens at this time.

Dave

Dave-

Does Nexus give a reason why they will not support 18-70? If the 12-24 will work they should be able to get the 18-70 to fit...I wonder why they have no support yet for this lens.. Im just wondering because the Nexus housing would shave some weight and size off my current Ike setup..

M.

I don't know if / when they will support it....I just know that they don't now. I tried once to adapt my 12-24 zoom gear to it but the gear is a tad too little. I feel pretty sure one of the other zoom gears they make will be adaptable....I just need to figure out which one. I will try the 12-24 again, but with 2 young kids, my spare time has been limited lately. I have not contacted Nexus directly but I may give that a try. I think I would use the kit lens quite often. I was surprised to see that you use it w/o a diopter. I was under the impression that it worked best with a +4 diopter.

Hey Mark -

typo on my part.. +4 on the 18-70 and no diopter with 60mm or 12-24.. I changed from previous post.. Thanks!

M.

Michael, you said you are using a +4 on the 18-70mm. I take that to mean you are shooting it under a dome? If so, what size dome are you using?

I have the 8" dome on the Aquatica, and that sounds like an extremely versatile lens for those "what to shoot" dives!

Also, since you are in effect "zooming" through a dome, do you notice any difficulties at the macro end, or vignetting at the corners?

btw, great shots all!

Hey Rich -

I use the dome port recommended by Ike for the 18-70 lens.. You can probably get dimensions at www.ikelite.com... The +4 diopter is needed at the 70 end for close focus ability.. The only thing I notice with this lens is that it is not as sharp at the 60mm.. and, you need to shoot around f8 for good DOF. If you look at the fine spotted moray from galapagos you will notice his eyes are in focus but nose is not.. I would not have had this problem with the 60mm. I took a few more pictures of this guy at small f-stops but DOF was very poor..

M.

What is the min. focus on that lens?

On the wide end (if we call 18 wide), I am assumimg you are focusing on a "virtual image" from the dome. Is this not the case as you soom to 70mm?

Forgive me if I am showing my ignorance of the optics in this case, but I am!