Thanks guys!
When you order the HW adapter (4 or 5 pin), do you get just the round plastic adapter or do you also get the cables and have to cut/splice etc like it says on one of the websites I read? What about the "circuit board looking" chip, does that come with it? I had read somewhere that you just glue down the adapter to the housing and screw in the cable from the YS-60. Is that the case? Sorry, I'm confused!
There's no splicing necnesary. You just connect the cable from the stobe into the HW adapter and place the adapter near the flash of your camera (on the outside of the housing) and you're ready to go. The HW adapter does come with some cable ties, a piece of bungee cord and some velcro-like tape to attach it to the houisng as you see fit.
If you are getting the HW adapter with the YS-60 from the Sea&Sea closeout, you need to purchase nothing more. The YS-60 is a 4 pin, Nikonos (what the N stands for) strobe. Hence, when purchasing the HW, adapter, make sure you get the one that is setup for Nikonos sinc cords. The exact title of this part is "Heinrichs-Weikamp Optical Digital Adapter for Nikonos Sync Cords (hw.da.o.n)". The strobe comes with tray, arm and sync cord. The sync cord plugs in directly to the HW adapter (no wire splicing), which then velcros onto your camera case (HW provides underwater velcro with your purchase).
Actually the 5-pin is the N type and the 4 pin is the S type.the ones they have in stock now are the 5 pin N type. but yea, it comes with a base tray and handle. The HW adapter comes with various goodies for attaching it to your housing.
@ randini et al.
Also, for those people who already have this setup, here is what I found on my first dive a couple of days ago. I mounted the strobe on the left side, same side as my flash, set my Canon SD800 to underwater mode (which adds red back in) and went shooting. Here is what I found:
- Pictures at 30-50 feet turned out quite well, but you have to be fairly motionless as it takes a few seconds for the camera to fire. A number of times I would press the trigger and by the time it took the picture, I was on top of my subject rather than in front of it. The best pics I got were at my safety stop as I was holding onto a submerged pylon.
My guess is that the delay you encountered might be more related to the camera having a hard time focussing since the internal focus help light is not powerful UW.
- Pictures at 110 feet were way overexposed and too orange. I am thinking this is because I had the underwater mode turned on. The camera is not assuming that you have an external strobe attached and it is adding red in to make up for the loss of that color at depth. However, the strobe adds a ton of natural light, which means the camera has overcompensated for red. In addition, the camera sees nothing but complete darkness at that depth, which means it is going to expose the picture for longer. However, the external strobe adds so much light that it washes out the picture. To compensate for this I am going to experiment on changing the exposure and also switching the strobe to half power.
Keep in mind I don't know that much about cameras and am no expert on how they work, but those are the results I got on my first dive with it. I am going on a night dive tonight and will be able to test plenty of these modifications. I'll let everyone know how they work out!
I'm sure that the UW mode is why your pics came out orange. When using the strobe, my understanding is to keep the camera set on auto WB. When playing around last night in my domly lit living rrom, I was getting some pretty decent exposures by turniing the the EV down a few notches. You might want to try this while leaving the strobe in TTL and see if it helps.
I hope to try all this out in the morning, assuming I don't come down with this cold that started bugging me today, so that rather than talking from theory and what I've read I can actually contribute from experience. I will get back, but by all means let us know how it went for you!
I have been following this thread with some interest, as I have been using a Canon A620 and the Canon housing for the last year. I borrowed a friend's YS-25 with a fiber optic sync cord on a trip to Ginnie Springs last February, but most of my photography has been with available light only (I have found little use for the built-in flash). I use a UK Light Canon for video with the A620.
Our recent trip to Key Largo convinced me that I am ready to move up to an external strobe, so I went ahead and ordered the YS-60 and HW adapter after reading this thread. I expect to have it next week.
When I used the YS-25, I taped the end of the sync cord onto the housing in front of the flash. How is the HW adapter used? Does it just need to be attached to the arms and aimed in the general area of the camera's flash, or does it need to be mounted on the case somehow?
Good question. I'm not sure how far away from the internal flash it can be mounted and still work. I'm mounting mine from the top of the housing, just above the camera's internal flash so that it recieves the light going upward from the flash and I can block off the light going from the flash towards the subject (electricaltape inside the housing) in order to prevent backscater. This way it also does not interfere with the add-on lens I'm mounting on the housing. I guess you just have to play around with it and see what works best for you.
BTW if you liked the Ys25, they are now available on the S&S closeout page for $225. It says "Complete with all packaging", but I don't know if that includes a tray and handle/arm like the YS60 Kit does. But you could easily find out by sending them an email.
