New Nauticam housing for D500, flash will not fire

I leave for Socorro in a week. This is long and confusing. I am on day 5 trying to sort it out.

Had plenty of time to upgrade from a D300 Subal with 2 DS160s, to a Nauticam D500 housing with same strobes. On the Subal I mounted a GoPro top/ center where most people place focus lights.

For the D500 Nauticam I purchased a separate ball to mount the mount the GoPro. However, when the housing was sent to me, the Nikonos bulkhead was on the left, where I need to mount the GoPro. I tried multiple configurations before changing Nikonos connector to right side with GoPro on left.

After removing the strobes and cables and mounts multiple times ... I SCREWED UP! Mounted the cord in a DS off a bit and bent a pin. When straightening it out, it broke off. Grrrr (many other expletives!!!). I figured I'd need to buy a new strobe, but went through a barrage of test with a tech on the phone and the strobes are fine. But, Tech figured it was a circuit board issue. One is on the way.

This morning I hooked up my Subal D300 and the strobes do not fire using the camera, but will when I jump across the hot shoe connector, I tried the D500, and same thing. Will not fire with hotshoe connected to camera. So I called another dive shop and we went through the same procedures and more. On Nauticam, neither would fire, but would if I jumped the hotshoe connector.

Wait a minute, I had a backup D300, put in a battery and viola! It fires! So somehow when attempting to fire with pins crossed at Strobe, it must have sent feedback to the camera itself so neither the first D300, nor the D500 fires. But, the 2nd D300 and a D600 fires it fine.

This makes absolutely no sense to me, so think I have 2 cameras going back to Nikon and not taking a U/W rig to Socorro.

I did a factory reset on the 1st D300, which made no difference. Still does not fire.

I broke out a speedlight and a couple of other bodies. ALL cameras fire speedlight except the d500. Including the 1st D300 that would not fire strobes.

Any ideas?

I'm sure, after all this, it is something VERY simple. Or the camera settings, which would simple! Ha!

So, I did a factory reset on the D300 that would not trip the strobes. It made no difference. I did not want to rest the D500, as I have adjusted the settings for quite some time.

I finally did a reset. And, the flash now fires with the basic factory settings, with the speedlight. AND the Strobes thru housing.

1st D300 does not ... although it does fire using the SB500 and SB800 speedlights. I am still confused about this entire thing, but think I can go to Socorro with the NA-D500 working properly. However, it will take time to adjust the settings for U/W shooting.

Does anyone have a "Cheat Sheet" for settings on a D500 for shooting u/w in a Nauticam? Not sure if that would be different than any other housing. But, I am days away from my trip and hope to be ready to shoot once I get there.

Thanks in advance?

Bob

Hi, sorry no time to read the whole post, but when i got this housing my strobes wouldnt fire due to fiber optics quality: my fibers were find on nauticam D300s setup because lots of light came through the built-in flash.

The D500 flash trigger is low-energy, will send just a tiny light and unless you have a high quality fiber optic, your strobes just wont see it (happened with my Inons).

I ended up buying a pair of nauticam-branded fibers and worked just fine.

I am hearing that inon branded fibers are fine too, but havent tried myself.

Hope this helps.