gerardb

Hey Spence you should check the Ikelite website as they list the recommended ports there. I use the flat port for the 60 mm lens and also use this for the 18-135mm kit lens set at 26mm. The photos are not too bad, medium wide-good for fish shots. Gerard

I had the same dilema and ended up buying the d80 and a 60mm lens for about the same price as the d200. I'm stoked with the camera and its performance and have forgotten about my prior obsession with the d200. I think that you will be very happy whichever camera you get. Gerard

I've put some on picassa for you to have a look at. I loaded them as they were, no cropping or editing. Gerard http://picasaweb.google.com/khanti888/Unde...ShootoutDay2Sat

I got the kit lens, 18- 135mm ( nice topside zoom) with my D80 and a 60mm macro lens as it was what I could afford at the time. I decided last week to see what the kit lens could do in the flat port i have for the macro. On 18mm the corners were a bit dark but from about 24-35mm( where it hits the port) the shots were very good. So if you are on a tight budget to begin with, the kit lens will get you some reasonable wide angle. Nothing like the 10.5 but still better than having a macro lens on to shoot sharks with. Gerard

Just to end the story..... I used another strobe yesterday and the TTL and manual worked very nicely- it was very good to know that the new housing was OK. The DS50 is now on its way back to have its circuits checked. Gerard

Thanks Dany Yeah its looks like I might be able to get a DS 125 on Monday or possibly a bit later in the week to test whether the same thing happens. This should confirm whether it is the housing or the strobe. I spoke to my local Ike rep this morning and he is going to sort something out. If it works then the strobe will have to go in for a check up. Thanks again everyone for all the advice. It just reinforces in my mind what a great site wetpixel is and how generous everyone is with their help. Gerard

So, now I have tested the TTL and manual settings in the other flash modes but it doesn't make any difference. It seems as though the strobe output is fairly consistent and so the shots just fade from bright to dark as the f stop is increased. I had an email from ikelite who suggested that the DS50 circuitry might not be working correctly but I think I'd like to try the housing with a DS125 and test it in a similar way to see what results. For those of you that use The DS125 with the Ike housing and d80 , what do you have your flash set to for TTL? In the instructions it says that Balanced Fill flash can't be used. Does that mean you don't set the flash to Fill flash but to Rear Sync? Gerard

I've just gone back through the camera settings and actually I didn't check before but I think the flash setting in manual was on red-eye. Red face Well, I will now test in the normal flash mode and fingers crossed problem will be solved. Thanks for all the suggestions, I will post the results. Gerard

OK so now that I've done some tests I'm still pretty convinced that either both TTL and Manual are not working properly or that I'm missing something on the camera that I should be setting. A series of shots taken at 1/60 sec from f22 to f6.3 in TTL mode show steadily increasing brightness and the histograms marching across their axes. I took a comparison test with the camera outside the housing using the built in flash at 1/60 sec from f22 to f3.3 just to make sure that the camera's TTL was OK and all the exposures are relatively the same. They are great all the way down to 3.3 with very little change in the histograms at all. Nice to know that the camera is OK Ive attached a few of the shots I took in TTL using the DS50 to show the change in exposure. One other thought I had, I wondered for those of you who might have the housing does the TTL dial on the back click into place at the different settings? Mine just seems to rotate without any real feeling of it clicking to a setting. Normal? Gerard

No the DS50 is compatible as long as the serial number is higher than 7000, which mine is. The DS50 doesn't have the focusing light so I dont think that is the problem but hey thanks for the suggestions. I'm going home now to take a few test shots as suggested by scorpio_fish and see what I get. Gerard

Hmm Well like the diligent fool that I am I trashed most of the badly underexposed images so dont have much to show. <_< However I will do some more test shots and post them tomorrow. What I find most confusing though is when I did some tests on the surface later on using the manual setting on the housing the strobe output seemed to vary very little. I managed to get some correct exposure through adjustment of the aperture and the camera position but I was of the impression that I should be able to vary the output through the use of the dial in both TTL and manual modes to work with photo composition. Point taken about the power of the DS50 but I should expect a consistent drop or rise in power whilst using the manual mode?

Hey Gerard, cool name and thanks for the info, Ive rechecked those four points. The strobe is 75302 which should be OK The setting was TTL not manual The sync cord was a new one with the blue band and the switch on the housing was set to the DS50 side. So any other ideas from here?

I recently purchased the housing for the Nikon d80 and what a lovely piece of equipment it is! I have been using it with the 60mm macro lens and the DS50 substrobe but having problems with the exposure in both TTL and Manual settings using the controller on the housing. Most of the photos have been quite underexposed at apertures between f8- f16 which surprised me as I have previously used this strobe with an olympus 5050 using the manual controller and had difficulties with overexposure at f8 whilst taking macro shots. Actually often the shots were so overexposed that I felt like the strobe was frying the fish and I needed to move or partially cover the strobe with my fingers. B) Further test shots on the surface don't seem to indicate much change in the output when the dial is set in different positions in either TTL or manual. Now I have spent a fair bit of time reading both the housing and the camera manuals to try to work out what is going on but I am a bit stumped. It seems as though the camera doesn't need to be set in a special mode for the external TTL to work or be changed when the dial is set to manual( or does it?). Is there something obvious that I am missing? Has anyone else experienced similar? Or if it works for you can you let me know what I'm doing wrong. Thanks in advance