Sea and Sea YS-03 TTL Strobe problem

[lan y huang]

Hello All,

I am new to underwater photography and have just purchased the Sony RX100 IV and the YS-03 strobe. We just came back from a dive trip and was very disappointed that we couldn't get the YS-03 to work properly. We had the camera set to fill flashed and auto most of the time. Each time we shoot a picture the strobe does flash, but the picture still came out green. Does anyone know why?

 

[stepfen]

Was the water green?? Are we talking about macro (close distance) or wide angle (large distance)?

Light even from strong strobes is effective up to few feet. Further than that the ambient light dominates. So if you took images for example of a reef or schooling fish in open sea at a distance of say 10 feet or more and the water was green in the area then that's totally expected.

Strobes/lights work wonders but only in close distances.

Another thing that might give you wrong colors even at macro is wrong white balance setting. But if you used auto settings with flash and macro, colors shouldn't be that off.

In anyway if you saved your pictures in RAW format (if not, you should next time) you might be able to somewhat correct the colors in post processing.

 

[fmerkel]

Probably was not set up to synchronize properly. It will flash, but not be timed to the shutter. FWIW I've had poor luck with TTL. Get it to work playing with it in a dark basement. Fails in the water. Go manual.

 

[JackConnick]

Your strobe isn't syncing right.
Neither the camera, nor the strobe, work in manual. They only work in TTL flash.
You should try a different camera mode other than auto, like shutter priority, set it to about 125/sec or so, set the ISO to about 200 and the flash ev to zero to start - you can adjust that as you need to.
Check your sync cord and make sure you can see light through it.
To test this setup, you might try firing the camera outside of the housing, without the sync cord. Hold the strobe so that it looks at the camera. See if the strobe fires so that the frame is completely white. Then you know it is syncing.
The other comment above is correct, you need to get close uw - 4' or less.

Hope that helps.

 

[lan y huang]

We did shoot within three feet range and within inches range for macro, but the image is still green or blue. I will try to play around with the shutter speed for our next dive and see if it helps. Thanks to Photoshop we were able to add some colors to our images. Thanks for all the help, appreciate it very much.

 

[outofofficebrb]

I have the RX100IV and shoot in manual, not auto, and always have flash on. I have the YS-D2s and have a fiber optic cable. I don’t leave it on TTL and use manual on the strobes though.

Can you tell us a little more about which sync cables you’re using and what settings you’re shooting in?

 

[Chris Ross]

The YS-03 is TTL only so that's the only option. A few thoughts :

• make sure red eye reduction off, that could confuse the flash and drain the capacitor. Also AF illuminator to off.
  
• If you shot in auto what f stop did it pick?
• Did you have flash compensation set at a low value? Try increasing it, Zero is your starting point.
  
• Try in slow sync rather than fill flash (with 0 flash comp)
  
• Try it in Av at f5.6, the flash should have enough power to illuminate a scene at f5.6 and moderate ISO with zero flash comp.
  
• Do one change at a time and note what happens with each one.

 

[lan y huang]

I have tried to shoot in multiple settings, tried to shoot with manual setting with different ISO (tried 80, 120, 200, 1000), F ranging from 2.8 to about 5. and Shutter Speed (1/150). I did use an optic cable to connect the camera to the strobe. I also have the AF illuminator set to off as well for the entire dive trip. I didn't check for the red eye reduction so I can look into that. Good advise! Thanks guys.

 

[sskiver01]

I know nothing about the camera, but I have two ys-03’s they will only work correctly if you set your camera flash to force one (always on) none of the other settings will fire the preflash that the strobes need! Also I would follow all the rest of the advice ie check sync speed, distance, exct.