robbarker

Now sold.

New baby arrives in January so I'm unloading the housing for now - hopefull I'll be back in action next year sometime! No point in having it gather dust in the meantime, so.. Sea and Sea DX-D200 Housing 2x Sea and Sea YS90 Auto strobes Dual sync lead 2x extended (17 section) flexi arms Compact dome port 40mm extension ring Standard flat port (Between them these cater for the 105, 12-24, 60 macro and 105 macro Nikkor lenses) Carry-on legal Kinetics hard case No camera body or lenses, but Ebay is awash with nice D200 bodies! All this kit has only done about a dozen dives. It's all in excellent condition, nothing has ever been flooded or abused. It is my second D200 outfit, I sold my first then regretted it, so bought the same again! £1950 UK only for now! Any queries - please mail me - rob at reb co uk.

Ah well, I'll wait for the D400 then. Unless anyone from Sea and Sea is listening! Many thanks for your efforts on this Sam, we appreciate it.

I'm interested Sam! :-) Thanks for the pointer.

Has anyone managed this with a Sea and Sea DX-D200 yet?

Wonderful images Eric. You made the Daily Telegraph in the UK today.. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/5785901/L...-on-camera.html

I don't suppose anyone is going to be in Nuweiba for the middle two weeks in June? My wife and I are trying for a baby and I may need a buddy..

Fixation: http://www.fixationuk.com/Fixation/Repairs.html

I would echo the view that keeping it simple is the way ahead. Taking pictures underwater is a skill that requires a fair bit of concentration at first, and it's not a good idea to introduce it while you're still thinking about your diving. Think about getting a few dives in on the trip before you take the camera, and take a peak performance bouyancy course if you can; either that or get an experienced buddy to help you develop your bouyancy skills until hovering without kicking or sculling is second-nature. Your bouyancy needs to be instructor standard, or preferably better, to be an effective and safe underwater photographer. The starting point is getting your weighting right - most novices dive with too much weight, and good bouyancy control is then impossible. Look at how much lead your dive guide uses, it will be less than you'd expect. Do a weight check as you've been trained to - as you exhale you should be *just* sinking very slowly, not dropping like a stone when you dump air. If you are constantly adjusting the amount of air in your BCD during the dive, you're probably over-weighted. I probably touch mine two or three times during a 60-90 minute dive. It's very easy indeed to damage reefs with fintips and hands when you're taking pictures, as you tend to forget about where your limbs are when you're looking through the viewfinder. Most of us have seen divers with point and shoot cameras kicking coral, or grabbing it to steady themselves, and they don't give us a good name. The bottom line is learn to enjoy your diving first, and get good at it, before you start with the camera! As for looking after your kit, rinse the camera after every dive. Ideally soak it in a rinse tank of fresh water, but don't let it bang against other cameras or computers. I always take my own bucket (well, crate actually, I use an SLRand two strobes) so that I have my own rinse tank. You can use the litte shower things they have on some dive boats, but be careful not to force water into the seals and buttons. At the end of the day soak for 30 mins in fresh water, and work all the controls to dislodge salt water. Then leave to dry and open it if you need to to download your great pictures and recharge the batteries. Always open a housing upside down so any drops of water drip away, not onto your gear. Take cotton buds with you so you can clean O ring grooves throughly, and make sure you have no dust, sand or hair on your O ring or in the groove before you put it back together. O rings need to be lightly greased before you put them back in. Finally, others have mentioned the "Magic Filter", which is an easy way of getting nice looking pictures without using a strobe. Have fun!

Pics of everything are in the ebay auctions majulah! These items end today and look like they will be a bargain for someone!

Take a look at my post in classified today!

All on Ebay, located in the UK: YS90 Auto Strobe: 200324719578 Compact Dome Port: 200324724199 Standard Flat Port: 200324725108 Extension Ring 40: 200324727431 Flexi arms: 200324721051, 200324721579 Grab some bargains folks!

I'm with Karl. Forget about the 18-55, it isn't suitable as an underwater lens - you need to go very wide (i.e. 10.5 or 12-24 in Nikon terms) or macro. The 15 will be fine, but... wide angle is much more difficult to get to grips with and is a recipe for disappointment unless you can get a lot of underwater time in and some good mentoring early on. I would go for a secondhand D70 and housing (some available now that lots of people are upgrading to D200 systems) and get a Micro-Nikkor 60mm f2.8 and a flat port. The D70 is important as you need to get used to working with manual exposure underwater - TTL is seen a s a panacea but it never worked that well with film and you don't need it with digital SLRs provided you have plenty of power settings on the strobe. Just remember, when reviewing exposures on the LCD, that the ambient light is less underwater and a properly exposed image will appear very bright on the LCD - best to use histograms and blinking highlights, since blown highlights are the real enemy with digi SLRs, as you will find out... Shooting raw gives you a bit more recoverability from underexposure. Stick with the more powerful strobe - it will give you the ability to stop right down with the macro lens to get some depth of field.

To give an idea of how compact this housing is, here's a shot of my new rig stowed in a Kinetics 821 (carry-on legal) case. I can get the housing with camera and geared 12-24 lens mounted, the detached handles, compact dome port and extension ring , two strobes, a flat port, 60 macro and 10.5 FE lenses, sync cord and flexi-arms all in one case.

It does sound like you have YS-90 autos, which I have been using for 18 months or so now. Make sure you use auto 1 - auto 2 is for use with digital compacts and the mode is there so the slave can ignore the preflashing and only fire on the main flash of the built-in flash on the camera. Bear in mind they are not manual strobes and the power settings won't work independently of the light sensor. The best practical way to use these strobes is connect them with a 5 pin standard Sea and Sea sync lead and use them in auto 1 mode - uncover the auto sensor and then set the correct aperture (adjusting for ISO if necessary - the dial assumes 100) You can use a dual sync lead, or, if you only have a single, set one strobe to slave and the connected one to "on" The strobe then takes into account what aperture is set and quenches when it detects what it thinks is enough light reflected from the subject. Then simply review the histogram and adjust the power setting accordingly - the higher the f number you set, the more light it will give before quenching. (In practice, for most of the time I have found that setting it to one half stop less than the aperture, i.e 6.7 if the camera is set to ISO 100, f8, gives the correct exposure.) Also, it goes without saying, check the sync leads and bulkheads for cleanliness and ditto the battery terminals.