TG6. Not firing external strobes in microscope control sub-mode

[Hector1959]

Configuration: TG-6 + Seafrogs housing + Sea & Sea YS-01

Strobe si not firing when camera is Microscope Control ( Sub-mode un Microscope mode).
It seems internal flash intensitity in this Sub-mode not strong enough to trigger the YS-01. I haven't find a way to solve it.
Have any had this same issue? Any solution?

Regards

 

[Hector1959]

I kept trying to find a solution.
And it seems I found one. But I do not find its logic.
In YS-01 strobes You can select no pre- flash, pre-flash and TTL.
With the TG-6 I use no pre-flash and it works fine in most modes but Microscope Control Sub-mode.
TTL seems to work fine in Aperture Priority. Not really use it. In microscope burns images and in Microscope Control does not fire.
I just found that pre-flash works fine in microscope control.
Any logic?

Regards

 

[Nemrod]

Your camera is always firing a preflash I think therefore you should have your strobe always set for preflash condition. Pretty sure I am right on that. Unless your camera has the ability to cancel preflash in some modes and I do not think it does. Look in your operator manual for preflash cancel. It would be neat if it does have that capability.

Make sure the red eye function is off and that the RC mode is off.

James

 

[Hector1959]

Your camera is always firing a preflash I think therefore you should have your strobe always set for preflash condition. Pretty sure I am right on that. Unless your camera has the ability to cancel preflash in some modes and I do not think it does. Look in your operator manual for preflash cancel. It would be neat if it does have that capability.

Make sure the red eye function is off and that the RC mode is off.

James

Thanks for your reply. There should be something wrong either with the camera or the strobes. I emptied almost 2 batteries doing tests and tested two differents ys01 strobes .
Red eye function certainly off and flash set to fill in and during tests I tried also with RC but I don't remember how it worked .
I Will repeat today the test and keep récord of each scenario.
Regards

 

[Hector1959]

James,
Your are mostly right. I had misconcieved in my head the order of the swicth. You'll see
in my first post that I said no pre-flash, pre-flash and TTL, in that order,. It really is pre-flash, no pre-flash and TTL. So when I thought I had selected pre-flash I was wrong.
But the problem still exist in the reverse way.
Strobe works in pre-flash mode mode mostly always, as you correctly explains, except in the Microscope Control Sub-mode. Here, the strobe YS 01 works definetly better in No pre-flash mode .
Below, You can ser the results of my new tests

Test1
Aperture mode.
Flash mode: Fill in
Flash compensation: -2.0 (to save camera battery)
Tests:
Pre-flash : Ok
TTL: seems to work fine

Test 2
Microscope mode:
Flash mode: fill in
Flash compensation: -2.0
Tests:
Pre-flash : Ok
No pre-flash: not working
TTL: not working correctly. Burns images

Test 3
Microscope Control sub mode:
Flash mode: manual value at 1/64 (default value)
Flash compensation: -2.0
-Pre-flash : Strobe not fired at all.
-No pre-flash: strobe fired about half the times
TTL: not working. Never fired

Test 3.1
Flash mode: manual value at 1/32
Flash compensation: -2.0
Pre-flash : not firing most of the times. Just fired once in about 10 shots.
No pre-flash: fired about half of the times.
TTL: not working . Never fired

Test 3.2
Flash mode: manual value at FULL
Flash compensation: -2.0
Pre-flash : not firing most of the times. Just fired once in more than 10 shots.
No pre-flash: strobe fired everytime.
TTL. Fired a very few times but burnt images.

----_
I really can not explain this behavior. But now I know that I need to select no pre-flash if I want yo use Microscope Control Sub-mode

 

[Nemrod]

It seems like from what I have read and your results that your TG does have control of pre-flash or no pre-fladh. In flash manual mode the camera does not pre-flash I am thinking. Does your strobe have pre-flash, no pre-flash control/settings?

Stand in front of a mirror to test with camera and strobe looking at the mirror. Do you see a strobe flash as you go through the modes in the mirror in the resulting images?

James

 

[Hector1959]

It seems like from what I have read and your results that your TG does have control of pre-flash or no pre-fladh. In flash manual mode the camera does not pre-flash I am thinking. Does your strobe have pre-flash, no pre-flash control/settings?

Stand in front of a mirror to test with camera and strobe looking at the mirror. Do you see a strobe flash as you go through the modes in the mirror in the resulting images?

James

I made some new tests. Still it is curious the behavior.
In A mode, strobe fire only in pre-flash. Ok.
In Microscope mode , flash FILL IN, strobe fires synced when in pre-flash.
But in manual flash strobe fires when selected to no pre-flash.

In Microscope Control, where there is no fill in option strobe fires correctly synced in no pre-flash.

I should add, curiosuly, that this has been the most repeatable behavior since eventually in Microscope mode it fired synced differently to "standard" behavior. Maybe with flash in manual full , the lenght of the firing si so long that overlaps the timing of the strobe to sense the camera flash.

Conclusion:
In Microscope mode Fill IN + pre-flash is the most correct setting.
If camera in manual flash, strobe is to be set to No-preflash.

In Microscope Control sub mode the correct setting is camera in manual flash + strobe in no pre-flash

 

[Nemrod]

It sounds like you are figuring it out. I am sorry I could not put you completely straight, I did download and read the manual. I do not have a TG series but I do have one of the older Olympus Tough cameras but it does not have the features of your TG6 like a manual flash mode and microscope mode.

What you have to do, and you are on track, is to figure out how your camera flash performs, flash with or without pre-flash and then set your strobe mode (pre-flash switch on or off) accordingly. Then make yourself up a chart so you do not forget between trips.

James

 

[Hector1959]

It sounds like you are figuring it out. I am sorry I could not put you completely straight, I did download and read the manual. I do not have a TG series but I do have one of the older Olympus Tough cameras but it does not have the features of your TG6 like a manual flash mode and microscope mode.

What you have to do, and you are on track, is to figure out how your camera flash performs, flash with or without pre-flash and then set your strobe mode (pre-flash switch on or off) accordingly. Then make yourself up a chart so you do not forget between trips.

James

Thanks very much James. You really help me to focus where the issue was. Microscope Control anyway is not a mode that I will use very often but I wanted to test how it performs and what results one can expect for and I felt fustrated in my last dive when I could not fire the strobes.
I have this TG6 for about a year but because of Covid I have dived with it no more than 3 times. My other camera is a A6300 and I think I have a better knowledge of what I can get out of it.

 

[Chris Ross]

The TG-6 has a manual flash mode it should fire without pre-flash in that mode, other modes are TTL so will have pre-flash. The strobe will work just fine in either pre-flash or no pre-flash mode no matter what the camera does with a limitation. It just fires a burst at the manual setting you have chosen each time it is triggered.

If the camera is emitting a pre-flash and and the strobe is in pre-flash mode the strobe ignores the pre-flash and triggers on the main flash.

If the camera emits a pre-flash and the strobe is in non-pre-flash mode then the strobe will go off twice.

If the camera is in manual flash mode without a pre-flash and the strobe is in pre-flash mode the it will ignore the main flash and wait for the main flash but it never arrives so the strobe does not fire.

With the camera in manual flash and the strobe is in no-pre-flash it fires whenever the camera flash fires.

However the limitation is if the camera is in pre-flash mode and the strobe is in no pre-flash mode the strobe will fire on pre-flash and if you are at half power or the strobe has not fully recycled for any reason after it has fired on the pre-flash then it won't be able to fire on the main flash from the camera. So the strobe fires but does not sync and there is no flash in the shot taken.

The problem you have is that the camera doesn't know there's an external strobe and the strobe doesn't know what the camera is set on and can only respond when it sees the strobe fire. So it is up to the user to set up both sides correctly.

Apparently you can't use TTL in microscope mode. So flash is manual only.