Can a ys-03 be made to work with either a ys-25 or ys-55?
The ys-03 has a port for a secondary strobe, but I'm not familiar enough with compatibility to know what the secondary strobe can be.
Thanks for any info!
Yes - maybe - it depends... Can you provide more information? What camera do you have? What strobes do you have? Why are you asking this crazy question?
The "port" on the ys-03 is simply a mechanical connection point that will allow a fibre optic cable to be connected to the ys-03 to transmit light from the ys-03 and trigger another "slave" strobe. This works best if your other strobe has a corresponding mechanical fibre optic cable socket on its slave sensor. Page E-15 of the ys-03 manual depicts this chaining to another optical slave:
http://www.seaandsea.jp/products/strobe/ys03/manual_Chvv.pdf
Neither of the ys-25 or ys-55 has a fibre optic cable socket - unless you cobble one up with duct tape or plastic & glue. Their slave sensor relies upon reflected light of another strobe coming back from the subject. Note that this reflected light can be from any strobe - including another divers camera rig. You can fashion your own socket for the ys25 or ys55 by cutting a short section of barrel from a suitable plastic pen and gluing it onto the front of the strobe.
But that has really nothing to do with whether they will work. The use of a fibre optical cable is simply a "more reliable" trigger mechanism than depending solely upon reflected light.
The REAL question is "will a ys-25 or ys-55 work with my camera". When used as an optical slave (the only option with a ys25) they both have the ability to obey or ignore camera pre-flash, so they should work with most (all?) digital cameras.
I assume you are in one of the following situations:
a) have a camera, ys25 & ys55 and want to upgrade to a newer strobe (ys-03)
b) have a camera and a ys-03 and can get either a ys25 or ys55 real cheap as a second strobe
If a) above then if they work with your camera the ys-03 will also work.
If b) above do not pay more than about $5 for either strobe. Then it really doesn't matter if they don't work with your camera.
P.S. The YS55 is a fairly rare strobe - it contains internal canon ETTL circuitry wired a wired sync cable. No idea which canon models it works with.
P.S. Neither of these strobes will work in optical slave TTL mode, manual only...
