Can I use one strobe with TTL and another one with its own light sensor?

[DazedAndConfuzed]

Hi,

I have a Sea & Sea YS-01, mainly using its iTTL. I was wondering if I add one of those older strobes with its own light sensor, will the two not know each other and screw up the lighting?

I presume the ones that has its own light sensor, it just suppresses it instead of emulating it, so the YS-01's pre would only take its own pre-flash into effect, thus when the main flash goes off, it be at full brightness and the strobe with the light sensor will barely fire off before shutting down.

So do I just turn the intensity of YS-01 by 1 stop for even left right balance, turn down by 1/2 to 2/3 stop for more light coming from the YS-01, and maybe 2-3 stops if I want more light to come from the other strobe? That's assuming both strobes are equal distance to the subject. If I have to move the strobe around, I might as well have a tripod since there will be compensation for distance of each strobe in addition to the brightness requirement from each strobe via above procedure.

 

[Ardy]

I have done this but not as you are proposing. I ran the left SnS 110a (Master flash) in full TTL and the other older YS-50 as a fill flash.

I found it worked well in most macro situations and close up fish shots, I did not try to use it for wide angle where the guess work would be more difficult. The main problem I had was other photographers triggering my slave flash and either buggering up my shot or ruining their own.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

When you set the YS-50 as a fill flash, it must be set at a very low setting, otherwise, the additional lights to the are that are already light by the main strobe, you could be getting overexposure.

Maybe setting power levels of the 2nd strobe will become instinctive after using it for a while.