This is a beginner question, but I figure as popular as these cameras are, someone would know the answer. I have an Olympus C5050, Olympus PT015 housing & Sea & Sea YS 90DX strobe. The strobe seems to fire inconsistently - I believe less often on dives with more ambient light.

Does anyone know the configuration of camera & strobe settings that would allow me to shoot with the strobe on every shot?

Hi Mark,

Try this link setting up a oly5050, it may be of some help, or search the web.

Dave

The strobe may not fire at all if there is enough light anyway. That's by design. It also will not fire if you are taking pictures before it has recycled. You can also set up the camera in many different ways as the link provided by David will show.

A nice thing about the Olympus is that you can have a custom pre-set and switch to that for different situations.

How are the pictures? If they are not satisfactory to you, one of the photo techs on Bonaire can help you out.

The other option is "Cheat". Use one of the popular digital photo processing programs and tweak the picture.

Mark,
Another link is Digital Diver. There are some very useful articles on that site and you can also post questions.

Dave

Thanks so much for your input! I have looked before at the Splash Divers & Digital Divers websites. I am going to use some of the manual settings that Splash recommended, but I have done numerous searches on the Digital Divers website and haven't found a very direct answer to my questions.

I think, to your point, Geoffrey, I will play around with settings and do a dive at our house reef, Bari, and maybe solicit a photo tech's advice if I am still having problems. I'm praying that our room at Sand $ has TV's that have audio connections - we had that at Divi and it really helped with picture editing.

Thanks to all, Mark

Not sure if Dave's link to Peter's web site is working....

if not, try this one:

http://www.splashdowndivers.com/photo_gallery/underwater_photography/up_settings.htm

Thanks Kadushi,

I just cut and paste the address from my browser, I should have tested it first.

Dave

Question 1: So, what about manually shifting the WB? It seems that this amps up or down the blue, at least above water.

Will be shooting C5050 with internal lum. only.

Question 2: On the other hand, we have a UK Light Cannon, which is awesome bright and can be diffused. What are the chances of getting better shots using it in lieu of a slave strobe?

Mark,
I don't have my strobe with me, but there are at least two slave synchronizing modes on the YS90DX. I have an Olympus C-750 and it has a pre-flash, so I have to use the right synchronizing mode on the strobe. If I don't, the strobe can fire, but the picture is dark.

The way to be sure you have the right setting is to take a picture with the strobe above water and try both settings. I think you will be able to tell from the picture which is the right one. Thanks to Cathy Church on Grand Cayman for helping me with this after a dive in which I have several too-dark pictures of a turtle eating algae with a Queen Angel on one side and a Gray Angel on the other foraging for leftovers. She made me write down the setting and tape it to my strobe.

Of course, my other on-going problem is that I forget to turn on the C-750 flash before the fish swims away.

My setup uses a P-018 housing on which I covered the flash area in front and use a fibre optic cable to send the flash to the front of the strobe.

Hope this helps,
Bob

---

quote:

If I don't, the strobe can fire, but the picture is dark.

---

---

quote:

So, what about manually shifting the WB? It seems that this amps up or down the blue, at least above water.

---

Light Cannon is 450 lumens HID in the 5600K color range, so it's hella bright compared to any other dive light. Think of one headlight of a brand new luxury car... I have seen great pics from the 5050, some without strobe, so I'll experiment and report, deleting all the crummy images and only talking about the good ones (of course).

Leif,

Looking forward to seeing the results. Color range is similar to strobes designed for macro use. Still think though that you'll be limited to wide open apertures. If so, try to use as fast a shutter speed as possible to avoid washed out backgrounds....

pasa bon tardi!
kbob

Leif,

The 5050 is capable of some good results without strobes spcially if you shot in RAW format. This shot is as is, a straight RAW to JPEG save;

and this was the RAW file manipulated in PS


Alright they are not brilliant they were my first efforts of recovering pics I had all but discarded and within a couple of hours of loading PS. So I am sure there is a lot of room for improvements.

From memory a red filter was used.

Dave

David, your two pics show how PS can manipulate brightness and color. I'm sure the second photo was how you remembered how the models looked. If there's one thing that I'm learning after many hundreds of UW shots is that exposure is one thing and color is another. I want my strobe to replace the color that is lost at depth as well as illumination. You could take any camera to depth with an onboard flash and get the cameras "idea" of proper exposure but, with no color. And as Bob said ;paraphrasing(some of the the best shots are with an internal flash). Often , the computer in my camera is smarter than me so, in the future I think I'll let it do more of my thinking ITH.

BTW Oly 5050, PT-105, Ike D125, manual controller.

Bob & All,
Thanks for the suggestions. I finally had enough time tonight to fool around with my camera setup. I just purchased another YS90DX, so I will be shooting with doubles. What seems to have worked is both of the strobes set on "Pre" (otherwise, they will go off with the camera pre-flash), the strobe slave settings are "on" and then I am able to manually adjust my strobes' light settings. The camera setting is internal + strobe. Now, if everything will just work underwater...

Again, many thanks, Mark