Ikelite System for Canon F-1N back up!

[SeaRat]

Okay,

While you guys were working on regulators, I was trying to get my SubStrobe 150 strobe/housing/camera system up and going. The first thing on the list was to get my Canon F-1N film camera back in order and functioning. I took it out on several trips, and got photos outside on slide film. I recently got those slides back, and they were really good. I took this photo of a spider on its web in the dead of night, without any other light.

Spider 100mm Macro013 by John Ratliff, on Flickr
Canon F-1N, 100mm Macro Lens with MacroLite Strobe, 1/90th second at F-22. Color slide film, Provia 100.

One thing I've found out is that the focusing with a film camera's manual/optical focus tools (split screen) are really great! For macro photos with my digital camera, sometimes the focus is off as I'm trying to focus without any focus aids, and the autofocus system is not that great with macro photography.

Now, the second problem was the strobe. I have several strobes, some small and one large, an Ikelite SubStrobe 150. I bought a new battery for it over a year ago, but I could not get it to charge. I took it back to BatteriesPlus, and they declined to work on it. I showed them the interior, and that one of the electrical lines was dead. That line appeeared to have a resistor in the circuit. The tech there said that this resistor may not be necessary, but I was hesitant to work on it myself. No other camera shop would work on it, and I didn't want the expense of sending a 20+ year old strobe back to Ikelite. Well, this last week I took it out again, and did some surgery. I disconnected this resistor, and reconnected the wire. Guess what--it took the charge. So I soldiered it up, used electrical tape to close the bare wires, and put the unit together. I then again charged it, and was pleased that it is working correctly. I could get it to fire by shorting the cord too!

So that left the camera/housing interface. Today I put the camera on my workbench, took the back of the housing, and placed the hot shoe onto the camera. I then hooked the strobe to the back of the camera using the existing circuit. Then, I triggered the camera--nothing. I tried again, and again, nothing. I took the battery out, and checked it with my battery checker--it read the required 22.5 volts. I placed it back into the carrier on the inside of the back housing cover, and then triggered the camera--again, nothing. I was getting discouraged. So I took the housing back out into the sunlight, and saw that there as a switch under the battery. I moved the switch, triggered the camera after re-hooking it up, and again--nothing. So, discouraged, I moved the switch back to its original position, and triggered the camera, not expecting much. FLASH!!! The strobe flashed! I tried it again, and again the circuit was complete, and the strobe flashed! WOW! Now, I have a complete camera system.

Why am I going back to film? Well, two reasons. First, I have photos that date back to the 1980s that I can still access as either negatives or slides. Here is one that I took in 1984 of mussels in the North Umpqua River spawning.

Mussels spawning8a by John Ratliff, on Flickr
Nikonos Ii, 1/60th second, F-stop unrecorded, using a Subsea 150 strobe. Color Negative film, ISO 100.

So the film camera has the ability to capture not only the image, but also to keep in more or less indefinately. It doesn't junk up my hard drive, and I can select the images that I want to scan, or have them scanned when they are developed. I did that recently with a trip out on my canoe with my wife. I took my Nikonos II camera, as it was impervious to being dunked. Here's one of the images from a canoe trip this summer with my wife, Chris. By the way, I kinda tested this theory about using the Nikonos II underwater camera when, in trying to get out of the canoe, the water was a bit deeper than I thought, which placed my foot on the bottom quite a bit further in front of me than I thought, and resulted in...yes, a dunking of me and the camera; not a problem for the Nikonos II.

fullsizeoutput_2873 by John Ratliff, on Flickr
Nikonos II camera, F-16 at 1/125th second, color negative film, ISO 100.

All the photos in this post were from slides or color negatives, scanned. So I have a historical reference to these photos.

Does this mean I'll not use digital cameras? No, not by a long shot. But I don't have to spend $1-2,000 on a housing for my digital camera. I can use my old housing that I bought in the 1980s. I will be limited to 36 photos per dive, but that means I need to be disciplined in my picture-taking. It also means that I don't have to sort through hundreds of images, many the same, to get the one photo I was thinking about. So it is an adjunct to my photography. And, I'm pretty happy about that.

John

[technidiver]

Wonderful write up John. Glad to see that film isn’t dead. What slide film do you use? Ektachrome E100 pr Fuji Provia?

Nice shot at the bottom too on the kayak, the scan is excellent. I mainly shoot just b&w on the surface and do development and printing on my own.

The Nikonos has a super nice lens, especially for low iso film. Shots come out nice and clear and the lens has a tendency to give great colours. It’s also very forgiving, so for clumsy people like me who tend to drop things it’s not a problem.

PS, where do you get your slides developed!?

TD

[scubalawyer]

I keep threatening to overhaul my Oceanic Hydro-35 housing and SubSea MK150 strobe for my Nikon F2 Photomic but never seem to get around to it. May have to start looking at that project. My original set-up that I bought in 1978 was stolen but I replaced it sometime later. I hauled that heavy contraption all over the planet. Dedication to the art form I guess.

Great to see that old photo gear can be brought back to life!

[SeaRat]

Oct 20, 2020 20:08:36 GMT -8 technidiver said:

Wonderful write up John. Glad to see that film isn’t dead. What slide film do you use? Ektachrome E100 pr Fuji Provia?

Nice shot at the bottom too on the kayak, the scan is excellent. I mainly shoot just b&w on the surface and do development and printing on my own.

The Nikonos has a super nice lens, especially for low iso film. Shots come out nice and clear and the lens has a tendency to give great colours. It’s also very forgiving, so for clumsy people like me who tend to drop things it’s not a problem.

PS, where do you get your slides developed!?

TD

I use Blue Moon Camera and Machine, in Portland, Oregon. It's actually in a small suburb of Portland known here as St. Johns, and is famous for the St. Johns Bridge.

bluemooncamera.com

They do mail-in development too, from all over the USA. They have and sell old cameras, and sell and refurbish old typewriters. They are one of the only in-house photo development firms in the USA for slide and color negative film.

I have a housing that came with the strobe that I got on E-Bay from the U.S. Fisheries Service out of Portland, Oregon too. It is another Ikelite housing, and I don't know what camera goes with it. So I took it over to them, and they will look at their collection of cameras and see if they can find a mate to the housing. I think it's for a Nikon F-series, or a Pentax.

Blue Moon has two Facebook pages, one of which I'm contributing to. Here is their commercial Facebook page:

www.facebook.com/bluemooncamera/

And here is the one I contribute to:

www.facebook.com/groups/135005440558900/

This is the Blue Moon Camera Group, and is dedicated to film photography. One of the guys does a lot of really old-fashoned photography with large format cameras, mostly black and white.

Fishing_North_Umpqua by John Ratliff, on Flickr
Here is a slide that I took in the 1980s of my son, Nathan, fishing on the North Umpqua River near our home (at that time) close to Roseburg, Oregon. It shows how well slide film translates onto our scanned media. Note that although he was on the Roseburg Swim Team at the time, he's wearing a life jacket.

John

[SeaRat]

Oct 21, 2020 7:22:51 GMT -8 scubalawyer said:

I keep threatening to overhaul my Oceanic Hydro-35 housing and SubSea MK150 strobe for my Nikon F2 Photomic but never seem to get around to it. May have to start looking at that project. My original set-up that I bought in 1978 was stolen but I replaced it sometime later. I hauled that heavy contraption all over the planet. Dedication to the art form I guess.

Great to see that old photo gear can be brought back to life!

I have a Subsea Mk 150 strobe, but I have given up on it. Why? Well, the battery, if you can even find a 510 volt Everready battery, is hugely expensive. Here's a Thread which explores that issue:

www.photrio.com/forum/threads/510v-flash-batteries-still-made.145116/

Also, I had a short in the wire right where it connects to the Subsea 150 housing, and got one hellofa shock on my knuckle from it. I just looked, and I still have a scar on that knuckle from the burn. Oh, and I had my Subsea 150 strobe/Nikonos II on a dive trip to Puget Sound, turned it on and the housing exploded. The explosion broke off the housing clamp on the side of the strobe, as well as scaring the hell out of me. Luckily, Subsea replaced the back of the strobe for free (I was a poor college student at the time),and I got a lesson on why the 510 volt battery should not be left in the strobe--it gives off hydrogen gass, and only awaits being turned on to ignite the explosive mixture of hydrogen gas and oxygen in the air.

That's why I bought the Substrobe 75L on E-bay, to replace my Subsea 150 strobe. The Ikelite Substrobe 75L uses a 22.5v or even a 1.5 v battery system.

John

[SeaRat]

Let me give you some perspective on why I'm reserrecting my Canon F-1N/Ikelite underwater camera system. The results are pretty spectacular. Here are several photos of aquatic insect larva, the stonefly nymph (Isoperia species):

Umpqua U:W007 by John Ratliff, on Flickr
I have had this slide for maybe almost thirty years, but before I scanned it, I thought it was a bad composition. I had only part of the stonefly nymph. But after scanning it, I find that this nymph was probably feeding off eggs on the rock surface that I turned over.

Umpqua U:W008 by John Ratliff, on Flickr
Here is the same stonefly nymph moving off the rock, and beside it are juvenile limpets.

Umpqua U:W003 by John Ratliff, on Flickr
Here this same stonefly nymph is moving off the overturned rock and onto the river bottom.

This was done without the wire framer that is necessary with the Nikonos systems (except the Nikonos RS, which allows through-the-lens viewing). My Canon F-1N is equipped with a Speed Finder FN, which allows full through-the-lens viewing when inside the housing.

How do I know that this is a stonefly nymph? Well, I had to do a bit of research. Here's the site I found with photos that allow good identification.
lifeinfreshwater.net/aquatic-insect-larvae/

Now, in another post I said that I was somewhat compensating for not getting into the water. This thread is a part of that.

John

[sharkskin]

I loved your post. I have so many underwater digital cameras and I truly love them all, but I also own a few Nikonos kits and I totally agree with you that film set you apart and away from the whole megapixel race. My Nikonos V systems are 30+ years but I don’t ever have to worry about obsolesce. On the other hand, my Sony photo gear is constantly topped by new models,literally every single year. Lately, I acquired an adapter to use my beloved Nikonos 15mm wide angle lens with my Sony Alpha R system. I can’t wait to try it in tropical waters pretty soon!

[SeaRat]

Here's an update. I got my strobe to recharge, then fire, and then...nothin'. The batteries would not take a charge. So today, I opened it up again, resoldiered some terminals, tightened one screw for a ground wire (I think), and still nothing. No charge! I took the charger (which is also 30+ years old) and checked it out--no juice coming from it. So I looked closely, checked again and again, and no juice coming through. Well, my Dad had a trick, so I used his ol' way of thinking and took out my pocket knife, and scrapped both blades which went into the socket hard, down to bare metal. Viola!!! Juice coming through. So I've hooked the strobe up again, and will see if I got a charge.

I'm hoping to dive this unit Wednesday. I have set up a dive at High Rocks with my buddy Marion, and it looks to be a "Go."

Now, I also took the camera housing (the extra one which came with the Substrobe 75L, to Blue Moon Photo and Machine. They have had it since last week. Well, they called today, and could not find a camera for the strobe. They called Ikelite and Ikelite did not have a means of determining what camera went with the housing. They said that they could try to match it with one of their cameras, but it would cost me $75 per hour to do so; I told them "No, I thought if you could match it you could sell it." They said they were not interested in that, so I told them I'd come by and pick up the housing. I will drop off some film, hopefully the film I take on the dive Wednesday. But what I plan to do is to ask them to bring out their Nikon FM camera and see whether it matches the housing. They have several for sale, for something like $200. If it does, anyone here interested in an Ikelite housing/Nikon FM camera setup? I would not charge much more than what I've got into it.

Here's some more photos from my Canon F-1N/Ikelite/Subsea 150 system from years ago.

Umpqua U:W002 by John Ratliff, on Flickr
This, believe it or not, is a snail in algea with its antenna sticking out of its shell.

Umpqua U:W006 by John Ratliff, on Flickr
This is some kind of insect larva that I uncovered when I turned over a rock (amazing what you'll find under rocks in the rivers).

Umpqua U:W004 by John Ratliff, on Flickr
And here's one of the small stickleback fish portraits that I took years ago.

John

[scubalawyer]

I had an Ikelite SLR housing for a 35mm Pentax KX film camera back in the 70's. I sold the housing to put the money toward my Oceanic Hydro-35 aluminum housing for my Nikon F2. I kept the Pentax, still have it actually. Ikelite made, and still makes, an excellent housing. You would enjoy talking with my SHF dive buddy Karl Gehering who is a repair tech at Ikelite. He has been repairing strobes for a long time. Great guy too.