Sync Problem Olympus C5050Z and Ikelite DS125

Having problems using DS125 and Olympus C5050Z in TTL mode with PT-015 housing. Have used it in Manual mode using slave flash etc and all is OK.

With camera set in manual (speed 100/sec, Aperture F1.8, Flash Slow 1) and DS125 set to TTL and with DS Sensor 4100.5 set to pre flash mode. and mounted on extended stem (Fitted in quick release handle). All pictures come out without the substrobe having synced. This is the same whether the DS sensor is set to min, max, or any position in between.

The flash deflector on the PT-015 has black tape on the front to prevent forward flash. If I hold the DS sensor immediately above the internal flash so it is only distance of case away from the internal flash the substrobe appears to fire correctly and picture is good.

Have tried the same setup as described but with the camera set to Program and the substrobe works every time.

I feel that the DS SEnsor is possibly not working correctly, if I hold a piece of white paper as a light channel between the sensor and the flash deflector, the substrobe appears to fire correctly

Why should the assembly work in manual mode using the sensor in non-preflash?? It used to work in TTL mode when I first purchased it as when testing in the pool everytime someone elses flash went off so did mine!!!

I accept that everyone says that full manual control is better than TTL, but having bought a substrobe capable of Full TTL I would like it to work. Whilst diving with family I would like to be able to take pictures without all the manual playing around.

Am I being stupid, doing soemthing wrong. Help.

Colin.

Re "The flash deflector on the PT-015 has black tape on the front to prevent forward flash. "

When I had a PT-015 I sandwiched a piece of aluminum foil between the two plastic diffuser plates i.e. between the clear one and the translucent one. This did a good job of blocking forward light and reflecting the strobe light back into the sensor.

Peter,

Will try that. The supplier is also going to send me a replacement sensor, as when I tried testing it this morning i1 picture came out rest failed. Think the sensor has lost its sensitivity and is working at random.

Colin.

The Ikelite housing I had for my Sony had reflective tape to block and redirect the flash to the sensor. I agree with Peter and would do this even with the new sensor if it were me.

Have tried replacement sensor and it has made no difference. Have also put aluminium foil between the two sheets of plastic which make up the deflector. No improvement. If the camera and sensor is all set for TTL usage and the substobe set to fire at full, 1/2 etc it appears to work OK. Beginning to think that a circuit board has failed within the substrobe for a second time.

My personal experience has not been good with the TTL Slave Sensor on the C-3040/5050 cameras. It seems to have a mind of it's own and sometimes marches to the beat of a different drum.

My recommendation is to use the camera in slave mode and then contol the strobe power with the strobes manual settings. For most shooting, 1/2 power works fine for me.

Also, shooting RAW helps if you use Photoshop CS. The converter can do a nice job of fixing over or under exposed pictures.

Peter,

Thanks for that. As you say it appears to have a mind of its own. Hopefully I will get replacement substrobe and sensor from the supplier in the next few days. But I must admit I am a bit disappointed that this may not be an isolated problem. Have not tried shooting in RAW, I'm not sure my knowledge of Photoshop would be good enough to recover poorly exposed pictures.

Colin,

Using the RAW converter is easy. I open the RAW file with Photoshop CS, which opens the file with the camera default settings e.g. white balance equals auto, and contrast, sharpness, saturation etc. equals 0. This way the picture is pretty good to start with and I can easily make adjustments from there. Then I save it as a tiff file and open that in Photoshop for final steps like removing backscatter. Actually, after adjusting it with the converter it's about as good as it's going to get.

My suggestion, shoot a few RAW pics around top side and see how easy it is to use the RAW converter. And to get the most out of the converter, read the help file in Adobe "Working with camera raw image files". Search on RAW to find it.