Sony a6000 Seafrogs Housing with YS01 twin strobes

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plodbird

plodbird

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Hi all
Ive just finalised my set up for my Sony a6000 with a Seafrogs housing and twin YS01 strobes.

I have an issue............I can't get the strobes to fire.
I have tried every "flash" setting on the camera but no joy.

if anyone has this set up and can guide me or has knowledge of these things it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Chris.
 
Is the camera flash popped up? Do you have fiber optic cables going to the strobes? Are you looking to shoot manual or TTL? If you're looking to shoot in manual mode, keep in mind that the pop-up flash always fires a pre-flash, so you need to enable pre-flash cancellation on the strobes.
One thing you could try is to hold a strobe's optical sensor right up to the camera's flash (no housing or fiber optics involved), fire a shot and see if the strobe triggers properly.
 
Is the camera flash popped up? Do you have fiber optic cables going to the strobes? Are you looking to shoot manual or TTL? If you're looking to shoot in manual mode, keep in mind that the pop-up flash always fires a pre-flash, so you need to enable pre-flash cancellation on the strobes.
One thing you could try is to hold a strobe's optical sensor right up to the camera's flash (no housing or fiber optics involved), fire a shot and see if the strobe triggers properly.
Thanksfor the reply.
Yes I have the optical cables attached. Manual or TTL but at this stage just TTL until I get better at it. I read about the pre flash and so forth but nothing I have tried will make the strobes fire. I did try with the strobe and camera right infant pointing at each other but no luck their either. The flash is definitely not popped up......
 
The flash is definitely not popped up......
Unless you've mis-spoken here, that's your problem right there. Unless you have an LED trigger installed and connected to the camera's hot shoe (and I'm assuming you don't), you have to have the flash popped up in order to fire off-camera strobes.

Also, don't forget to disable the AF illumination light.
 
To test your strobes, take a photo into a mirror after each adjustment. After making the settings that Barmaglot advised, you should see the strobes reflections in the resulting photo in the mirror.

To shoot in strobe TTL, be sure to have your strobes set to TTL and also make sure your on-camera flash exposure compensation is set to 0. To keep things simplest, set the camera to Manual, F8, 1/160 sec, ISO 100.
 
Unless you've mis-spoken here, that's your problem right there. Unless you have an LED trigger installed and connected to the camera's hot shoe (and I'm assuming you don't), you have to have the flash popped up in order to fire off-camera strobes.

Also, don't forget to disable the AF illumination light.
Really...the flash is supposed to be up.....I had NFI about that.....Im going to get my bear out now and give it a shot.
Cheers
 
To test your strobes, take a photo into a mirror after each adjustment. After making the settings that Barmaglot advised, you should see the strobes reflections in the resulting photo in the mirror.

To shoot in strobe TTL, be sure to have your strobes set to TTL and also make sure your on-camera flash exposure compensation is set to 0. To keep things simplest, set the camera to Manual, F8, 1/160 sec, ISO 100.
Thanks for all that info. Really appreciated
 
Really...the flash is supposed to be up.....I had NFI about that.....Im going to get my bear out now and give it a shot.
Cheers
The external strobes fire when their light sensor detects a light pulse above certain strength and duration. Typically this is produced by the camera's built-in/pop-up/clip-on flash. For cameras with a hot shoe, you can get an LED-based trigger which brings certain advantages - less drain on the camera's battery, fast recycle, support for additional modes, etc. For cameras without a built-in flash, such as Sony A6600 and A1/A7/A9 series, this is the only option when you're using fiber optics triggering. I use an A6300 in a SeaFrogs Salted Line housing with UW-Technics trigger and Retra Pro strobes; this combination allows me to fire strobes on half power at up to 3fps as well as use high-speed sync, enabling shutter speeds all the way to 1/4000s. In your case, you just need to pop up the flash and your YS-01s should fire, although you will be limited to approximately 1 shot per second and 1/160s shutter speed.

Keep in mind that the pop-up flash on the A6300 always fires in TTL mode (pre-flash which is used to measure needed strobe power, then main flash), therefore, if you want to use your YS-01s in manual mode, you need to set the mode knob to double lightning bolt setting - this will make them ignore the first flash pulse and fire on the second. Alternatively, you can put the strobes in TTL mode and use that - if you do, I suggest using center point metering and pointing the camera at the spot that you want illuminated, as otherwise the exposure tends to go all over the place.
 
The external strobes fire when their light sensor detects a light pulse above certain strength and duration. Typically this is produced by the camera's built-in/pop-up/clip-on flash. For cameras with a hot shoe, you can get an LED-based trigger which brings certain advantages - less drain on the camera's battery, fast recycle, support for additional modes, etc. For cameras without a built-in flash, such as Sony A6600 and A1/A7/A9 series, this is the only option when you're using fiber optics triggering. I use an A6300 in a SeaFrogs Salted Line housing with UW-Technics trigger and Retra Pro strobes; this combination allows me to fire strobes on half power at up to 3fps as well as use high-speed sync, enabling shutter speeds all the way to 1/4000s. In your case, you just need to pop up the flash and your YS-01s should fire, although you will be limited to approximately 1 shot per second and 1/160s shutter speed.

Keep in mind that the pop-up flash on the A6300 always fires in TTL mode (pre-flash which is used to measure needed strobe power, then main flash), therefore, if you want to use your YS-01s in manual mode, you need to set the mode knob to double lightning bolt setting - this will make them ignore the first flash pulse and fire on the second. Alternatively, you can put the strobes in TTL mode and use that - if you do, I suggest using center point metering and pointing the camera at the spot that you want illuminated, as otherwise the exposure tends to go all over the place.
Awesome amount of info mate. Thanks heaps.
 
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