Ikelite 150 for digital?

[ozziworld]

Have some Ikelite products from late eighties that I am hoping will still have some useful life.

Ikelite Housing for Pentax SF1 SLR Film camera
IkelIte Substrobe 150 TTL
Ikelite TTL cord
Various trays, brackets and Arms
Various flat ports and dome ports

I have recently started diving again and was wondering if I can refurbish the ikelite Housing for a Nikon D40. Was hoping only new controls, TTL socket and mounting plate would be required.

The Substrobe 150 is actually in good working condition. I fired it up the other day and all functions seem to be working fine. Have not yet tested it underwater. The two rechargeable batteries still hold a charge and I hope after a few cycles they will be actually serviceable. In anycase I can repack the batteries. I was juts wondering if the strobe will work TTL with digital SLRs.

Does anyone have any experience adapting an existing Ikelite housing to another camera model?

Any advise I can get with regards to what is the best way to breaty some life into any of the items I have above would be much appreciated.

[oly5050user]

doubt it would work via ttl--but may work on full manual--only way to find out is to try it and see if it syncs with camera

[Ikelite Staff]

Your existing ports will work with new Ikelite dSLR housings, but the rest of your equipment is not compatible with the Nikon D-40.

Digital cameras communicate much differently than old TTL film cameras, so the SubStrobe 150 circuitry cannot be used TTL with newer dSLR cameras. The best you could possibly do with the SubStrobe 150 is use it in some sort of manual set-up, but we do not currently offer any two-conductor sync cords that would accomplish this.

Also SubStrobe 150's are no longer serviceable by the factory (we couldn't purchase parts to repair if we tried), so they will eventually obsolete themselves... Also newer rechargeable batteries are much more powerful than they used to be, so repacking the battery packs yourself will likely blow the oscillator circuit in the strobe.

Cannot offer any suggestions on putting the D-40 in your old Pentax housing (and would not recommend doing so).

Cheers,
Jean / Ikelite

[laurin]

Originally Posted by Ikelite Staff

Also SubStrobe 150's are no longer serviceable by the factory (we couldn't purchase parts to repair if we tried), so they will eventually obsolete themselves... Also newer rechargeable batteries are much more powerful than they used to be, so repacking the battery packs yourself will likely blow the oscillator circuit in the strobe.

I've been shooting SS-300, SS-400 and SS-50 as manual strobes with my Canon 300D wiht no problems, but lately I had to replace the battery packs of the big strobes. I replaced the old cells with NiMH, and now the SS-300 works just fine with both renewed packs, but the SS-400 just emits the charging whine, but doesn't fire. I reckon it might have something to do with the oscillator... Is there any chance of fixing as DIY job?

I love the big old strobes - lots of light, wide spread, neutral in water (a big plus, a DS-125 is really annoying with a long strobe arm...).

//LN

[Ikelite Staff]

Your results aren't surprising. DIY repair is unlikely if not impossible. The new batteries probably ended up destroying the transformer in the 400, which was not an off-the-shelf item at the time. These kinds of problems coupled with an inability to even purchase the required parts was the reason that we had to discontinue the SubStrobe 400 altogether.

So I guess you could try to work on it yourself, but we have no parts or advice to offer unfortunately....

Regards,
Jean / Ikelite
IKELITE Underwater Systems

[Gilldiver]

How about keeping it as a slave strobe using a remote controler?

Marry it up with a DS-160, and you might be able to get some control.

The bigest problem I see might be just moving a twin strobe set like this through the water.