Oly C-8080 Question? Help!!

[outlawaggie]

I'm considering getting an 8080 but I have a couple of question I can't seem to find the answer for on the web. Hopefully someone here will know the answers.

1. Can you use full TTL with the Oly pt-023 u/w case?

2. Is the Ikelite case worth the extra money over the Oly case?

3. I'm interested in this camera due to it's built in ability to take a wide shot, to zoom, and to Macro. Comments?

4. What is everyone's general opinion of this camera underwater?

 

[JAJAVAX]

I'll tell you from my experience by Oly C-5050-Z with PT-015 and Ikelite housings.
My strobe is also ikellite (DS-50)

1. Can you use full TTL with the Oly pt-023 u/w case ?

I think the manual settings are much better. You can get 4 of "My Modes" for low depth with Aperture 4,5 with faster speed (1/125) and increasments of the strobe-power (1,3,4,5). The other 4 "My Modes" for more depth with Aperture 4, lower speed (1/100) and much more strobe-power (6,7,9,10)

Try them with an exteral strobe in a room with TTL and with Manual settings.

2. Is the Ikelite case worth the extra money over the Oly case?

Yes. The new one has special conversion circuitry. No more optical sensor (and back-skating) !
http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/oly_8080.html

Or you must wait the Great INON to make something for the PT-023.
These strobes are excellent. But take care : You need to know about PT-023 and electrolysis. Are these housings safe ? Do they taking water in the buil-in connectors for the external strobes ?

Here is what i mean about INON and PT-023 (to wait something as for PT-020) : http://inonamerica.com/news.html?news_id=12&newscat=0

3. I'm interested in this camera due to it's built in ability to take a wide shot, to zoom, and to Macro. Comments ?

The camera angle in the sea, is getting shorter.

For wide I don’t know if there are real underwater lenses. INON – or something – for matching with ikelite housings, as the INON UWL-100, with the right material-coated.

For Zoom you will need 2 strobes.

For macro you wiil need an external strobe (one). Otherwise your build-in flash will make a shadow cause of the lence.
Or you must turn it to macro (not super-macro) then get more distance and "play" with zoom.

4. What is everyone's general opinion of this camera underwater?

If you have the neat image -or something- for the noise reduction, it's OK. Oly 8080 is the best camera at 8 mPixels.

Take a look : http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/triv_yochens.html

 

[outlawaggie]

thanks.

 

[ReyeR]

TTL with the PT-023
Yes, there are options for hard-wired TTL with the C8080 and PT-023.
The first one is to use and Olympus land flash (FL-20) housed in an underwater case (PFL-01). But this option is not recommended as the FL-20 is not a very powerful flash and most people have ended up upgrading it. There are also reports of cracks apperearing in the PFL-01. See here for some more info about the flash and housing: http://www.camerasunderwater.co.uk/d_stills/olympus/pt_020/pages/flash_hsg.html.
The second option is to get Matthias Heinrichs' Digital Adapter (http://www.muenster.de/~matthias/blitz/indexe.htm) which will work with quite a few strobes (Sea and Sea YS-90DX, Inon Z220 etc). You can get the entire kit from Michael Finger (adapter, cables and parts) at
http://www.mike-dive.de (warning: it's in German), see this http://www.mike-dive.de/kameras/olympus/8080/montage.htm.
Your other option is to check out the Inon D-2000 strobe which has 'mimick' TTL (not hard-wired TTL) which will copy your camera's built-in TTL flash. But this strobe has just been released so it is largely un-tested.

Ikelite C8080 housing
IMO the PT-023 is a quite a ridiculous housing with its gigantic port, and that's just for the built-in lens of the camera. The Ikelite looks like a better option in this case. It also comes with Ike's TTL coversion circuit which will give you hard-wired TTL with the Ikelite DS-50 and DS-125 strobes. It also has a dome port option which will give you wide-angle underwater.

As regards to opinion about the C8080 as an underwater camera I think, apart from the additional pixels, you wil do no better or worse than a C5060.