Ikelite DS50 Trouble

[BC_diver]

I just bought a used DS50 from E-Bay (along with Canon S3 and Ikelite housing) but can’t seem to get the strobe to trigger. The seller swears the system worked, of course!

The RED light comes on solid when in both TTL and Manual. The camera is a Canon S3 and I'm using the TTL sensor. Even with the TTL sensor set to no-pre flash I can’t get the DS50 to flash. I tried the little switch under metal plug on both sides just in case.

Referring to (SYNC WIRING) I tried to fire the DS50 manually with no success. Using the Ikelite TTL Bulkhead diagram; while quench and ground are connected on the DS50 the ready light flashes, after disconnecting the ready light goes back to solid. While trigger and ground are connected the ready light remains solid, after disconnecting the ready light flashes for about 5 seconds the goes back to solid.

Is the DS50 toast? Bulb blown? Is the sensor bad or the wrong type (again the seller said this setup worked)? Although everything I read on the Ikelite site seems to refer to the EV Manual Controller as the way to go with this camera; shouldn’t it still should fire? I figured worst case it would fire early on the pre flash of the Canon.

Any thoughts? Love the camera and the housing looks solid, all be it huge, I'd love to get the strobe working too. Anyone had any experience with bad E-Bay deals? Is there any recourse or is it buyer beware?

A bit of a novel and a lot of questions I know but any help would be greatly appriciated.

 

[OceanObsessed]

Any chance you got o-ring grease on the contacts of the syc cord?
I've seen Nikonos strobes not fire when o-ring grease is on the syc cord contacts.

 

[BC_diver]

Nope, there wasn't a bit of grease on anything. Another thing I wasn't too happy about! Plus even when I jumpered from one pin to another the strobe wouldn't fire.

I'm bummed, I think I'll have to send it back to Ikelite for service.

 

[RTRski]

I bought a used DS50 as well, and can get mine to flash just by letting it charge up to ready LED on, then turning it off...it should discharge the flash. If you can't even get that working, then for sure something is wrong.

Sorry for your troubles!

EDIT - I do recall at one point not getting it to flash at all....I was using rechargable batteries, and being very careful to put them in in the right orientation. But one of the AA's had kind of a 'wrinkled' outer shell, if that makes any sense, from being dropped at an angle to it's positive face end. The wrinkling had kind of rucked-up the edge of the battery to almost the same height as the positive 'pin' or nubbin (what's the correct term for that thing? "Nipple" just doesn't seem appropriate ) So as a result, it was kind of binding up in the battery compartment and not making contact even with the door closed. I'd get the red charging light, and it would even go solid, but no flash discharge. When I swapped out that one battery with the wrinkled outer jacket, I was back to normal. Went ahead and pitched that puppy rather than mess with it any further....