how to mount light & motion sola 3800 to Olympus PT-058

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

pangpang

New
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Location
USA
I recently bought Olympus tough tg-5 + Olympus PT-058 underwater housing. Also bought a light & motion Sola 3800 video light and it's on its way. I went to a scuba diving trip and one of the divers had the same system and it works very well. However I've been searching forever on the internet and couldn't find the answer to this question: how to mount the video light to the housing? There seems to have 3 types of mounts: Sola photo ball mount, Sola video locline mount, and Sola YS mount. I remember seeing a ball shape thing attached to the housing unit of the fellow diver, which leads me to think I should buy the Sola photo ball mount, however the accessory mount of the housing is square-ish so I don't see how it can be mounted without some sort of adapter. What mount/adapter should I buy? Thanks in advance!
 
The top of your housing looks to have a shoe mount. You can get one of those then a clamp then attach the other end of a clamp to the sola ball mount.

Similar to this - they come with different ends instead of a ball mount so you can attach it in different ways depending on what you want to use. Nauticam Ball Mount for Cold Shoe here’s one with a YS mount. Nauticam Strobe Mounting YS Adapter for Cold Shoe

Sorry, I’m familiar with Nauticam since that is the mount I use so it’s easier for me to reference those but other people also make it. I hope this helps!
 
thanks @outofofficebrb ! Not 100% sure the Nauticam one will work with my particular housing but it all makes sense now. So two ball mounts connected together by a clamp, or YS adapter with YS mount.

Another question though, does ball+ball+clamp system work better than YS+YS or it's totally just a matter of choice (or re-usability with other accessories etc)? Right now seems to me I can save some money if I go with YS+YS since it's 2 pieces versus 3 :D
 
thanks @outofofficebrb ! Not 100% sure the Nauticam one will work with my particular housing but it all makes sense now. So two ball mounts connected together by a clamp, or YS adapter with YS mount.

Another question though, does ball+ball+clamp system work better than YS+YS or it's totally just a matter of choice (or re-usability with other accessories etc)? Right now seems to me I can save some money if I go with YS+YS since it's 2 pieces versus 3 :D

I think cold shoes are a standard size thing. Can someone else confirm?

cold shoes to Ball to clamp to ball leaves you more flexibility in how and where you can position your light or strobes from different angles/planes (while also adding more distance away from the camera which also gives you more ways to reduce backscatter. I have not used a YS mount so can't comment in how it compares but when I was shown the option, I liked the ball mount option better due to how modular it is with other arms and accessories that I already have. There are also shoe to YS mounts and you can run a YS to YS mount from there. There are a lot of quite a few combinations
 
Call Backscatter...they hooked me up with my TG4. Told them what I had and what I wanted to do and got me together everything...tray/arm/ locline and connector.
 
I have the olympus TG-5 and the PT-058 housing as well. I use a 6" arm that connects to the cold shoe and goes to a Gobe 850 wide. Works pretty good, I like the little extention I have as I can aim the light a little easier. Without a trey the cold shoe is a good place to mount a light. I'm pretty sure that the shoe is standard sized across all brands.
This is what I have been using
Bigblue 6" Flexible Camera Arm FLEXIARM-06-HOTSHOE-YS B&H
 

I use this "cold shoe to ball mount" adapter; can't remember exactly where I bought it but it's a "standard" UW photo accessory. Then I use a clamp I already have with my other ball-end underwater "arms", and Gobe/Sola lights with the ball mount adapter on them.
 

Back
Top Bottom