Nikon D2X strange behavior

FYI, It's the ready light pin that's causing these problems. I first started seeing erratic behavior with the Aquatica D70 housings and isolated the problem to the Ready light pin. I've since been removing this pin from D70 housings.

I am not taping over the pins I'm actually removing them from the shoe connector. Leaving only the center synch contact and the ground contact.

The Seacam I use has pins that you can pluck out of the hotshoe. It is my opinion that Canon cameras with 5-pin bulkheads should be shipped pre-stripped of extra pins. Canon E-TTL uses 6-pins, so if the housing has 5-pin bulkheads, the only way any strobe is going to work is if you only use ground and center (fire). Any manufacturer who ships a Canon housing with a full hotshoe and 5-pin bulkheads is asking for support issues.

But I suppose that it is a harder decision in the Nikon camp, with their 5-pin iTTL. Subal should probably print something and include it with their housings. Or, y'all could buy it from the people who support Wetpixel, since by now, everyone should know how to solve the problem.

The problem is one of letting cameras and flashes talk to each other too much. Personally I prefer to stop them chatting and make them do what I want.

I had this problem when I first got my Subal. When connected to my subtronic strobes it would sometimes write to card and occassionally not! I solved the problem very quickly by cutting the green wire from mty hotshoe. Sounds drastic - but I know that I will only ever use the manual strobes so no problem!

Interesting before cutting the wire I tried the D2X with Inon and Sea And Sea YS90DX strobes and never had the problem.

Anyway since then I have shot 7500 underwater pictures without a single problem.

Alex

Sorry for not contributing earlier - but I have been away.

7500 pictures with D2X already??? I gotta dive more...

Yeah, I have to say I am glad to be home for a couple of months now - that was the final trip for that project. Far too much running around of late.

D2X totals of downloaded pictures:

Red Sea (March) - 1436

Cayman (April) - 3225

Maldives (May) - 3508

Which actually comes to over 8000. Bloody hell! One or two have even come out!

Alex

p.s. Congrats to Luiz on taking the plunge with this camera

p.s. Congrats to Luiz on taking the plunge with this camera

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Thanks Alex, I am really excited about it. My decision was largely based on your reviews. I received the camera (well, it arrived at my house at least) but I won't use it for the next two weeks since I am travelling. The problem now is that there seems to be a shortage of Subal housings on the market. Amazing, I was kind of expecting the wait list for the D2x, but not for the housing.

You can expect many questions from me when I finally receive the housing!

Luiz

You can expect many questions from me when I finally receive the housing!

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No problem! Happy to help where i can.

Sorry to hear about the housing delays - but it is easy to be misled by the banter here on Wetpixel that there are loads about! At least the potential choice is good. I love my Subal. And the Nexus looks very nice too. While I'm sure the Seacam will be awesome and the Aquatica probably offers the best value for money. Finally, although they are not a common choice in the New World, I was very impressed with the Sealux range when I saw them in Antibes.

Alex

This is what my Subal dealer told me. When I first placed the order about 7 weeks ago, the first batch of ND2 was already gone. The second batch which went into production sometimes end of March early April was ready for shipment sometimes at the end of April/early May. Supposedly 40 were made. Mine arrived in Thailand last week, it was one of the second batch. I have no idea if all 40 are gone by now or if there are still some available from Subal and I have no idea when the third batch will be produced.

As far as Nexus goes, one of my divebuddy ordered an unpainted one which already arrived a couple of weeks ago. The other buddy ordered a regular one, supposedly, currently still under production but is expecting it in the next 10-14 days (according to our local Nexus dealer, they ordered a total of 8, all sold ).

I played with the Nexus a bit and it is very nice as well. Although I have to say that I still like Subal better (well, I am biased, at least about $us8500 biased anyhow )

Wow that is an amazing number of D2Xs out there. 8 pre-sold Nexus housings, impressive! I reckon I knew (not necessarily knew the people personally) where at least 8 of the original 10 Subal ND2s went.

I would be surprised if Subal have sold all 40 of the second batch. As far as I know we haven't had any more in the UK yet.

Alex

If it doesn't work you can always buy the digital sync cord from Ikelite (#4104.31), which only has two wires, ground and trigger. I think this is a better solution than messing with the wiring in the housing or taping up contacts, but it only works for those who have Ikelite strobes.

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Well, look like the Ikelite sync cord did the trick without having to tape or cut anything when I tried it with my DS-125 last night. This is a good thing as I have a severe mechanically challenge syndrome, took me a several days even to figure out how to get all the buttons on the Subal housing to work, let alone trying to do anything with tools

So far there seemed to be no odd problem with the camera/strobe combination.

Just a side note, I can push the shutterspeed upto 1/320s with just a hint of one tiny dark cornor but at 1/400s the dark bar becomes very noticeable. I guess one thing I will miss from my D70 is the ability to shoot at whatever shutterspeed I want (and lots of money in my wallet). oh well...

As far as I am aware the D2X still has a PC socket. I have a Caonon EOS1DS which is housed but for manual flash control I use a Nikonos socket wired into the camera's PC socket. This is very simple and solves problems as it leaves the other sockets wired up for 'ttl' use with housed land guns. I have an engineer producing an isolator circuit which will allow the PC socket to fire a flash whilst protecting it from a higher than acceptable voltage - possible if used for older or studio flashes (using a long lead in a swimming pool).

Paul,

The product already exists, it's called called the Wein Safe Synch and is available in Hot Shoe & PC types. It's available through many online photo retailers. Also as Ike mentioned earlier in this thread be careful of polarity even when wired directly to the PC socket, some strobes require the polarity to be reversed to fire properly.

Haven't come across this in the UK - I use a Nikonos Socket and (half of) a Nikon SC-11 cable so that the PC socket has the plug screwed into it and can't undo underwater. The engineer is producing a small in-line circuit easy to fit into the housing. No polarity problems so far!

Here's a Link to the B&H Web Site which shows the full line of Wein Safe Sync products. The inline PC version would be perfect for you and sells for only $49.95 US$. They also make a model that plugs directly into the AC type socket found in most studio strobes.

When I first had this problem I bought a spare PC socket connector and took it with me to the red sea (so I could make exactly the solution that Paul suggests). Thankfully never needed it - but it is certainly a good backup solution for these sorts of problems.

Considering many people now prefer non-TTL guns maybe housing manufacturers could starting using the PC socket for flash synch and do away with the hotshoe adaptor and save some space in housings?

Alex