Sea & Sea accesory bulkhead D-70

I recently purchased a Sea & sea Dx-70 housing but there were no pins for the Shutter activated focus light. Does anyone know if this is a mistake or does this camera not support the focus light?

Tom

That housing is not listed on the page for the focus light:

http://www.seaandsea.jp/products/accessory/acce/light.html

May require optional equipment to be installed. Contact your Sea&Sea rep to find out if you can do anything about it.

Mike

NEWS FLASH regarding Nikon D70 and D70S

I contacted my dealer, Gene Scott, regarding this issue and he talked to a factory representative who stated that the shutter activated focus light circuitry was not put in place because the light wouldn't work with the D70. Gene suggested we connect the D70S to his Sea & Sea N80 housing and it worked with no problems. Apparently the minor changes in the circuitry of the D70S allows for the Shutter activated focus light to work. The Sea & Sea representative admitted that they were unaware the light would work with the D70S.

Hopefully, Sea & Sea will make the necessary changes and make this feature available in future housing for D70S. Go figure! Thanks go to Gene to figurig this out.

Keep this in mind if you are on the bubble between the D70 or D70S

www.amarilloscuba.com/Photography/photography.asp

Tom

HI tom

too add

you might find that its the wiring on the NX80 housing more than the d70s

i know that there are only 2 pins wired on the dx-70 housing hotshoe, so it will not be connected properly in the circuit on this housing.

however the NX80 housing has more pins wired, that why it might just work.

not 100% but i'm sure that would have somthing to do with it

craig

forgive if i'm miles out with it

The Sea & Sea representative stated this was entirely a Nikon issue (circuitry of the D70) and not their housing. They explained that when they built the housing for the D70 that it simply wouldn't work with the shutter activated focus light due to the camera.

Tom

HI Tom

I'm not sure if Sea & Sea rep's are technical people but here is what i know about it

ok firstly only 2 wires are connected on the D70 housing hotshoe

that is X contact and ground.

when we press the shutter these short out and fire the strobe. (simply)

now then on the NX80 housing all 5 pins are connected on the hotshoe

now for a shutter activated focus light to work firstly is must have some wiring, and there is NONE in the DX70

we take the small current that flows on the SP line of the hotshoe (if you hold the hotshoe on the DX70 with the cable at the bottom its the top left hand one) we can use this signal voltage to make our focus light circuit

when we half depress the shutter button the signal is produced down this line

if you test the connection port of the focus light on the NX80 its wired as i say to this terminal on the NX80 bulkhead. so therefore it works

now then

on the DX70 housing we only have 2 pins, X and ground, if we connect SP up at all we cannot get the D70 or D70s to fire a manual strobe at all.

see ikelites testing on this , we usually have to cover the SP with tape or use only a 4 connector core cable.

so if the shutter activated focus light gets it signal down the SP line and its not connected up the DX70 housing then it simply will not work, even if it were connected it still would'nt work as we dont use SP on the hotshoe

the protocols have changed for signal transmitted down the SP line with the introduction of DTTL and ITTL, this is why we are having so much trouble shooting TTL. so i doubt it if nikon had change the signal as it would bugger up all the user of the SB600 & Sb800 flash guns and nikon would have to market a new gun for the D70s

so if you tested you camera on a NX housing you may well find that the shutter focus light functions , but you might well find that it will not fire a strobe..

i tested my NX80 and it was exactly this, only when i covered up the SP line did it fire a strobe.

thats my understanding of this , please read

http://www.camerasunderwater.co.uk/info/tech/nikttl.html

for more information i hope this helps you more

regards

craig

A diversion:

I was pleasantly surprised, along with Steve at Ocean Optics in London, to find that the hot-shoe connection (Anthis NCC V2) on a Nexus housing allows the focus light/laser guide on Inon Z-220 strobes to work with a D70.

I guess that the connection generates a bias potential to the appropriate pin.

It's not TTL, but with 5 stops of manual adjustment, I get by...

I have no idea if any other strobe/housing combination works, but I speculate that any Nikon 5-pin strobe cable should function in the same way.

Tim

Hi Craig,

Thanks for posting the information. I think that if you connect any more than the fire and ground wires from the D70 to an underwater strobe, the camera gets "mad" and won't take a shot or behaves in a very strange way. If there's a way to somehow wire that SP lead so that it just activates the focus light and the camera doesn't know it then you might get it to work.

Cheers

James

Hi James

yep i'm in total agreement on that, the camera just goes mad, i'm not 100% sure on the circuit for a focus light but whatever the voltage travelling down the SP can only be used as a trigger on a circuit as it extremely low voltage, As SP becomes live when we half depress the shutter or use to on our old systems

personally i think its just a matter of modding a circuit to cope with whatever nikon is throwing down the SP line at this time.

As for Sea & Sea they kindly provided the bulkhead in the Dx-70, its not wired but its there , so sometime in the future it may be of some use.

I'm already thinking of Modding this bulkhead into another 5 pin nikonos unit so that i can run 2x single cables from the dx-70.

The thread and socket size is as per normal 5 pin socket , it just has no internals.

but that would be very easy to sort out. and with only 2 pins connected which are x and ground , no worries on the front of strobes triggering.

regards

craig