Subject:	The DS-125/C-4040 in action (+img)
Author:	NLAVD
Date:	2/27/2002 12:37:25 PM
Message:

Well, I can say that when the DS-125 works, it works nicely.

Unfortunately I had quite a fight with it...and I think all of it was my fault. It didn't hit me until during the flight home. The short of it is, be careful how you point the TTL slave sensor if you use one, I think that was my problem. If my thory is correct and it makes the strobe work as it did on the above shot, I think I'll love the strobe. It's a very useable package (I believe typical of Ikelite), it recycles before my camera can store the previous shot, and its battery pack lasts through many many many trial and error shots (I couldn't even guess how many shots I took trying to solve the above problem). Again, if what I think will fix my problem does, I have nothing but good things to say about this strobe.

As for the Ikelite housing, it also performed like a champ. The housing's good points are, again, typical of Ikelite. It is well built and the controls are solid and easy to use. The main o-ring can be seen through the back from multiple angles so it's pretty hard to screw it up if you inspect it at all. The straight down installation of the back, verses a hinge, all but eliminates the posibility of pinching the o-ring while closing it. Its depth rating of 200' (vs Olympus' housing rating of 100') was important to me as I took this one to 140' on it's first dive and to 155' on its fourth...I wouldn't have dared with the Oly housing. The only bad point is an inconvenient assembly of the camera/housing. The camera mounts on a small "tray" which is attached to the housing back. This attaches with the tripod nut on the bottom of the camera such that when the back of the housing comes off, the camera comes with it. The problem is that the camera must also be removed from the back to change batteries or the memory card. If you're doing this between every dive, it's a substantial pain.

The Olympus C4040 camera is going to be winner after I figure some things out. The first is the battery management. I ended every dive with the LCD display off and trying to use the viewfinder, which is nearly impossible u/w. This will probably be much less of a problem when I'm not troubleshooting a strobe problem. The second is settings, settings, and more settings. I'm still nothing short of bewildered by the combinations of exposure compensation, flash compensation, LCD display brightness (for use u/w), white balance (as it pertains to u/w), contrast compensation, sharpness compensation, standard/macro, zoom length, metering modes, autofocus modes, etc.

I'm VERY glad I got to dive with this setup before my trip to Thailand in April. I learned allot, I discovered some things I need to learn, and I got a few good photos to boot.

Here's one more for now. For what it's worth, these two photos are un-altered except for resizing them from the originals.