Olympus C-5060W and PT-020

[davewebby]

Hi there. I am a newcomer to this Forum. I have had a bit of a dig around and can't find too much on the C-5060W/PT-020 combination. I have just purchased said items and had a couple of trips to try it out.
I am very happy with the results and would now like to look at adding a strobe. What I have seen is that folks are mainly using an Ikelite housing with this camera. Is this a limitation with the Olympus housing being able to take a strobe?. Or just personal preference?.
Is the strobe connector on the Olympus PT-020 housing compatible with say Ikelite strobe connectors?. I would prefer to use the TTL functionality of the camera rather than optical sensors.
Any help would be much appreciated.

Rgds

 

[Dee]

Welcome! There aren't very many C-5060/PT20 combos being used by the members here....yet. Please post some of your pics to help others decide on whether the C-5060 is what they want.

Looks like you're one of the pioneers!

 

[jormax]

Welcome! There aren't very many C-5060/PT20 combos being used by the members here....yet. Please post some of your pics to help others decide on whether the C-5060 is what they want.

Looks like you're one of the pioneers!

From what I understand the pt-020 will only take the olympus strobe. The Ike cord will not work, nor will the sea and sea. Am I right Dee?

 

[scubaj]

From what I understand the pt-020 will only take the olympus strobe. The Ike cord will not work, nor will the sea and sea. Am I right Dee?

you are right. the only ways to get TTL that will work is the Ikelite Housing and the Ikelite Strobe or the Olympus strobe with the PT-20 housing at this time.

I just got my ike housing and strobe. I go diving in little over a week,(Turks and Caicos) hopefully I will take a pic worth posting.

Jared

 

[jormax]

you are right. the only ways to get TTL that will work is the Ikelite Housing and the Ikelite Strobe or the Olympus strobe with the PT-20 housing at this time.

I just got my ike housing and strobe. I go diving in little over a week,(Turks and Caicos) hopefully I will take a pic worth posting.

Jared

Good luck Jared. I am sure you will get lots of great shots. I used my 5060 and Ike set up last week for the first time. (I had a trial run in the San Juans, but really got to go hard in Cayman Brac) I shot in Manual mode, 125/f8.0 and got great water color. I bracketed by changing shutter speed and f stop and played alot with the strobe placement. You didn't say what strobe you had, but w/ the ds125 i was getting 3 dives easy. I still showed 1 light of three, and the modeling light was still very bright. I bet I could easily get 4 dives out of both the camera and strobe. I shot shq and was getting 80-90 picutures on my 256 card.

 

[Dee]

I defer to scubaj and other users of the Ikelite housings on this one....I just don't know for sure.

 

[scubaj]

hey Jormax,

yeah I have the Ds125 also, I will have to set up another mymode with your settings to see how they work for me.

I am somewhat lazy, ok real lazy thats why I went with the ike housing and the Ds125 strobe, plug and play just seemed way too hard to pass up.


Jared

 

[ScubyDudey]

From what I understand the pt-020 will only take the olympus strobe. The Ike cord will not work, nor will the sea and sea. Am I right Dee?

Thanks for the insights. Anyone want to buy a PT-020?. Actually after some digging around, I did find the following on www.camerasunderwater.co.uk :

"Olympus housing with external flash connector:
The PT-020 housing for the C-5060wz has a connector for external TTL flash, and there ia a companion housing for the Camedia FL-20 flash unit. The connector is not a Nikonos connector, and the electrical interface uses the olympus Camedia protocol.
Ikelite has devised a conversion circuit for the Camedia protocol to interface with its DS-series substrobes, and its new C-5060 housing (Jan 2004) will have an Ikelite TTL bulkhead connector. Ikelite however, has no plans to make an adapter for the Olympus PT-020 housing."

So, for those thinking about buying a PT-020, at the moment you can only use the Olympus flash (I have seen reviews which say that this is underpowered for wide angle photography but OK for macro work.

Here is a picture I took of a stonefish. This was using the internal flash and in P mode on ISO 200. And one of my first underwater photos!

Regards
ScubyDudey (changed my name!)

 

[Wayne_Sargent]

About 485 b.c. Confucius said, "a link is worth a thousand words...."

See this link for using the Ikelite DS-125 flash, with 4100.5 TTL slave sensor, 4086.61 ball arm, and 9523.01 tray...
http://www.camerasunderwater.co.uk/d_stills/olympus/pt_020/user_info.html

This is a good link for 5050 'my mode' settings that should work well for 5060s.
http://www.splashdowndivers.com/photo_gallery/underwater_photography/up_settings.htm

This link shows Inon's D-180s strobe with the pt20.
http://www.marinecamera.com/oly_pt020.html

This link shows what can happen when the c5060wz is used by a novice that can only afford the onboard flash... and farsighted so he can't see any buttons to change underwater, so has to memorize the number of clicks from setting to setting, which is not easy with fat gloves in our 46 degree water. But it's still fun to just use the few settings that I can find. Most useful is the shutter priority set on 'faster than a speeding bullet' since my dives are usually in higher currents. I'm not too unimpressed with the onboard flash... it ain't perfection, but it works.
http://community.webshots.com/user/idivepugetsound

 

[KrustyTheClownFish]

I just got a 5060/PT-020 and was concerned the built-in flash would be lacking, as strobes are a ways off in the future, and its pretty dark in the St. Lawrence where I do most of my diving. But the pics you guys are posting look pretty good for exposure. I can't wait to try out my new setup!