Sea and Sea YS03----help!!!!!

[kurtluker]

Ok...first..we are dunces.. we admit and know it ..please help if you know what we are doing wrong

We have been using a Canon S120 in an Ikelite housing with two Sea Life SL961 strobes for the past 5 years. The pictures are pretty good..but it has a long recycle time for the strobes and they are starting to get a little finicky...probably just needs a new fiber optic cable.

I decided I wanted two new strobes to up the quality of the pictures and to have a faster recycle time.....recognizing we are dummies we researched and from our research we figured buying two YS03's would be great. Our understanding was that they were pretty dummy proof..they would be great for Macro and wide angle from what we read.

We set up the camera and did a little research on settings and thought we had it right.... We are testing it out of water first.......when we are close to the subject both strobes flash and the pictures seem fine..not great..but ok.....however when we move away from the subject about 3 feet...the strobes don't flash.....we have messed with it and messed with and changed settings....when we put the camera on Auto..it flashes up close but not at a distance......when we put it on AV and go through all the settings it recommends....the pictures are not as bright...... something just isn't right.....so much for dummy proof.

we called bluewater where we purchased the flashes and the guy told us that he really didn't know what the issue was but it was probably because the flashes weren't getting feedback from the subject matter when the camera wasn't close to the subject.....that doesn't make sense to us because our research had pictures taken from a distance and they looked great.....the tech recommended sending them back and getting another strobe.

We wanted strobes we could set to automatic and they would fire based on the level of light needed in the water.....we are pulling our hair out trying to figure this out.....we leave for Oman to go diving in 30 days and are starting to get a little panicky......is there anyone out there who knows how to correct this.....did we buy the wrong strobes? what strobes are the best for what we are looking for ...we don't want to mess with settings and all that...we just want two strobes we can set to auto and have it take macro and wide angle.......

Please help.........

 

[outofofficebrb]

Do you have a force flash option on your camera? Flash all the time regardless?

 

[KeithG]

You have not give us much to go on. maybe provide some more specific details on your exact settings and setup?

You claim moving further away from the subject causes the strobes not to flash.

from your symptom description that strobes DO flash when you are close to the subject and that strobes DO NOT flash when further away, I would take a wild guess that you are not using fibre optic cables and instead are relying on the strobes to detect reflected flash from the subject.

Distance from subject will not affect the strobes firing if you are using fibre optic cables.

 

[Chris Ross]

You need to set the camera to always fire the flash, is your camera on board flash firing?, if it is this is a different problem. Assume you are connecting up with fibre optic cables from your housing. I don't know what flash options you have but what you want is the one you would use to take snapshots at night. If you use fill mode (slow sync) with the low light underwater the shutter speed will drop too low. Having the flash always on is the best way.

In theory TTL which is the only option with the YS-03 is a good choice and it works well above water, but below water it can be hit or miss, tends to work better with macro but not wide angle. The problem seems to be with the TTL circuitry in the camera which does not provide enough power to make the scene primarily lit by flash. So unfortunately underwater a point and shoot flash solution is not really available.

To me the YS-03 is a poor choice as you can't put the flash in manual, I know that's not what you want to hear but it is not as difficult as it sounds. The YS-02 allows you to go to manual when TTL does not work. Generally you will be getting in close to minimise water between you and the subject and after a few trials you can leave the flash set at one setting and the required exposure won't change much unless you get really close or really far (which is normally too far away for a good pic). But for this to work properly you need a camera with a manual exposure option.

 

[kurtluker]

Do you have a force flash option on your camera? Flash all the time regardless?

Yes....the camera flash is set to fire all the time.

 

[kurtluker]

You have not give us much to go on. maybe provide some more specific details on your exact settings and setup?

You claim moving further away from the subject causes the strobes not to flash.

from your symptom description that strobes DO flash when you are close to the subject and that strobes DO NOT flash when further away, I would take a wild guess that you are not using fibre optic cables and instead are relying on the strobes to detect reflected flash from the subject.

Distance from subject will not affect the strobes firing if you are using fibre optic cables.

We are using the fiber optic cables that came with the flashes.

 

[kurtluker]

You need to set the camera to always fire the flash, is your camera on board flash firing?, if it is this is a different problem. Assume you are connecting up with fibre optic cables from your housing. I don't know what flash options you have but what you want is the one you would use to take snapshots at night. If you use fill mode (slow sync) with the low light underwater the shutter speed will drop too low. Having the flash always on is the best way.

In theory TTL which is the only option with the YS-03 is a good choice and it works well above water, but below water it can be hit or miss, tends to work better with macro but not wide angle. The problem seems to be with the TTL circuitry in the camera which does not provide enough power to make the scene primarily lit by flash. So unfortunately underwater a point and shoot flash solution is not really available.

To me the YS-03 is a poor choice as you can't put the flash in manual, I know that's not what you want to hear but it is not as difficult as it sounds. The YS-02 allows you to go to manual when TTL does not work. Generally you will be getting in close to minimise water between you and the subject and after a few trials you can leave the flash set at one setting and the required exposure won't change much unless you get really close or really far (which is normally too far away for a good pic). But for this to work properly you need a camera with a manual exposure option.

Yes the camera is set to flash all the time and the camera flash does flash each time regardless of whether the strobes flash or not. The camera is set to flash at every picture. Thank you for your help.....blue water said we could return it and swap for something else.

 

[JackConnick]

The s120 will not shoot TTL (that's required) in manual camera mode. You'd need to be in one of the auto modes. But it sounds mostly like you just aren't close enough, or have your camera flash in an auto mode and it is not always firing due to ambient light. Or you just aren't close enough for it to show up in the photo.

 

[KeithG]

The s120 will not shoot TTL (that's required) in manual camera mode. You'd need to be in one of the auto modes. But it sounds mostly like you just aren't close enough, or have your camera flash in an auto mode and it is not always firing due to ambient light. Or you just aren't close enough for it to show up in the photo.

Just trying to learn more here... I am totally confused by the observation that the strobes will not fire when the subject is to far away.

In my world, strobes connected by FO cables will always fire when the camera onboard flash fires (except for extreme cases of rapid flash pulse firing like High Speed Sync). Subject distance should not make a difference - actually the further the subject the brighter the strobe fires since more light is required to illuminate the scene.

In the old days we did not have Fibre Optic (FO) cables (think Nikonos SB105). Strobes without FO cables sometimes (often?) do not fire (or misfire) since they need light from the camera to be bright enough to bounce off the subject and make it all the way back to the strobe to trigger the strobe. Misfires occur when that other nasty photo diver jams in on you and the light from his strobes cause your optical slave strobes to fire when you are not even taking a pic. FO cables solved this problem by "directly" connecting the camera flash to the strobes slave sensor. Your strobe only sees light from your camera. If your camera flashes then the strobe flashes.

In this case, I can easily believe that "far away" subjects are poorly light by the strobes. The strobes fire properly, but are too far away to deliver enough light to properly expose the subject. The solution is to get closer. And then even more closer still.

What am I missing?

 

[Chris Ross]

If it was me I'd send them back and get either YS-02's or the INON S-2000, both will do manual flash exposure. The INON slave sensor is more sensitive.

Your symptoms sound similar to what I have experienced with TTL underwater - I'm assuming when you say the strobes don't flash that they physically do not emit any light - not that the image is underexposed. It is rather strange that you are seeing it above water.

Return them for a different strobe and be prepared to use manual for wide angle shots. For that I would suggest using the "C" on your mode dial to store the info you need which would be something like Manual mode (or Av mode if you really want to try it and flash exposure compensation turned to minimum and low or base ISO. Then you adjust flash exposure on the strobes by turning the manual power dial. Do this on land and note the dial setting that gives the right exposure then add 1/2 to 1 stop and note that down. That is your starting point for underwater, At the start of the dive take a few shots and adjust flash power to fine tune the exposure and that is your setting you leave the strobes on. If you then take all your shots at about the same distance then exposure should remain consistent. Distance is all that matters for the right flash exposure.

If you're doing macro just switch to Av and select something like f4 bring your flashes in closer set them to TTL and fire away. TTL normally does better with macro where the subject fills the frame and there is little open water background in the frame.