Question Sea & Sea Strobe Settings - Does anyone have a good technical contact at Sea and Sea??

[AllanHarr]

I posted this question about three weeks ago. I got some good input... but I'm wondering if anyone knows how to approach Sea and Sea to get a technical questino answered...

I have a Sony RX100-VII in an Ike housing with a pair of YS-D2 strobes. For the past year or so, I've been running full manual on both the camera and the strobes. Overall, I'm very satisfied with both the camera and the strobes. I'd like to continue to use my camera on manual settings -> but run the strobes in TTL mode. The question is, what is the appropriate strobe setting?? From what I can see in the (incredibly confusing Sea and Sea manual) is that there are two digital slave TTL settings. One is the third option on the strobe control (which illuminates the back of the strobe in a light blue color); the second is that same strobe control setting but by pushing the modeling light button, it becomes the Slave - TTL mode (which illuminates the back of the strobe in a dark blue color).

Any ideas from some Sea and Sea experts out there???

Thanks!!

 

[Barmaglot]

I think the Slave-TTL setting is meant for film cameras, which (when capable of TTL control) use a sensor measuring light reflected off the film to send a quench signal to the flash when the desired level of exposure is reached. With a digital camera, you need to use the DS-TTL mode - it's fairly straightforward; just put the mode knob in DS-TTL, the light level knob into neutral position (between +0.3 and -0.3) and the camera into fill flash and 0 flash compensation, then take a shot and evaluate the results. If you're getting over- or under-exposure, adjust strobe and/or camera flash compensation as necessary, i.e. dial up if you're getting under-exposure, or down if you're getting over-exposure.

 

[Searcaigh]

I think the Slave-TTL setting is meant for film cameras,

Incorrect

Slave settings as far as I know are designed to fire the strobe whilst disconnected from the camera itself using the light from the strobe fired by the camera.

e.g. You can have a buddy holding a strobe that can be fired to light up areas where your main strobe won't reach.

 

[Barmaglot]

Incorrect

Slave settings as far as I know are designed to fire the strobe whilst disconnected from the camera itself using the light from the strobe fired by the camera.

e.g. You can have a buddy holding a strobe that can be fired to light up areas where your main strobe won't reach.

Yeah, I suppose that's a valid use case too. Another option is manual power control from the camera - if you can manually adjust your camera's flash power, then you can use that to control off-camera slave strobes instead of knobs on the strobes themselves.

 

[Searcaigh]

I don't use my camera flash to fire my strobes, this is done electronically, plus I don't use TTL.

UW I don't see how the flash on a camera, which will be in a housing, will be able to activate a strobe through a slave sensor positioned several meters away.

This can work on dry land I guess using the pop up flash on an SLR, I've not tried this in many years, but I have used UW strobes to fire other UW strobes set on slave mode.

 

[Barmaglot]

By fiber optics? I mean, on my Sony a6300 with UWT trigger, I can set the strobes to TTL slave, the camera into WL flash (manual mode), then use flash compensation setting to control strobe power, with -3.0EV being 1/64th power, and +3.0EV being a full dump. On other cameras, you can set on-camera flash power directly and use that to manually control the power of multiple off-camera strobes simultaneously with a single on-camera dial or menu setting, instead of fiddling with multiple knobs.

 

[MrChen]

I'm confused, how do you run your camera in manual and your strobe in TTL correctly? I thought the camera and strobe both needed to be in TTL (or a TTL adapter attached between camera and strobe) for TTL to work properly.

 

[AllanHarr]

I think the Slave-TTL setting is meant for film cameras, which (when capable of TTL control) use a sensor measuring light reflected off the film to send a quench signal to the flash when the desired level of exposure is reached. With a digital camera, you need to use the DS-TTL mode - it's fairly straightforward; just put the mode knob in DS-TTL, the light level knob into neutral position (between +0.3 and -0.3) and the camera into fill flash and 0 flash compensation, then take a shot and evaluate the results. If you're getting over- or under-exposure, adjust strobe and/or camera flash compensation as necessary, i.e. dial up if you're getting under-exposure, or down if you're getting over-exposure.

That makes sense to me. The DS is "digital slave" which would seem to be the correct setting. It isn't really "TTL" in its true sense, as real TTL is controlled by the camera. That would seem to require a hot shoe on the camera, and hard wired line to the strobes. (Which few today have), The various strobe companies must have a work around that acts like TTL....

 

[AllanHarr]

I'm confused, how do you run your camera in manual and your strobe in TTL correctly? I thought the camera and strobe both needed to be in TTL (or a TTL adapter attached between camera and strobe) for TTL to work properly.

I'm confused, how do you run your camera in manual and your strobe in TTL correctly? I thought the camera and strobe both needed to be in TTL (or a TTL adapter attached between camera and strobe) for TTL to work properly.

 

[AllanHarr]

This is an interesting discussion. Most of us in the U/W photog world run our cameras in manual exposure mode. That yields far more artistic control. However, shouldn't the camera flash still try to use TTL?? And just to make it really interesting... if you fix the flash output, does the strobe on DS-TTL have its own logic?

(I really don't have an answer...)