Housing & strobe settings

[Steve2056]

Digging through my paperwork/manuals for my Ikelite strobes (2x DS161s) and housing (Olympus E-3) I came across the bit for setting Manual/TTL on the housing. It says to use the substrobe set to TTL when using the manual setting on the housing. Is this correct, or a typo? If correct when would you ever use the strobes in manual mode? If the strobes are set to TTL and the housing to Manual then surely the overall effect would be that the housing setting would be an offset from the calculated TTL setting? Confused!

Cheers, Steve

 

[Ikelite Staff]

Digging through my paperwork/manuals for my Ikelite strobes (2x DS161s) and housing (Olympus E-3) I came across the bit for setting Manual/TTL on the housing. It says to use the substrobe set to TTL when using the manual setting on the housing. Is this correct, or a typo? If correct when would you ever use the strobes in manual mode? If the strobes are set to TTL and the housing to Manual then surely the overall effect would be that the housing setting would be an offset from the calculated TTL setting? Confused!

Cheers, Steve

Steve,

The instruction manual is correct. Leaving the strobe in TTL setting allows for the power variance decreases in the housing manual setting from full power. Setting the strobe to manual will cause the strobe to fire at the strobe's chosen power setting regardless of the housing setting. The strobe is just waiting for a signal to fire fully at the chosen power setting when in manual.

To put it simply, always leave the strobe in TTL and make all your exposure adjustments on the housing (TTL or Manual).

Best Regards,

Brett Foster - Ikelite