YS-01 Strobes & Olympus E-PL Flash Power Settings

[KevinG58]

I've been pretty happy with my pair of YS-01 strobes for three or four years, except they will not trigger when flash power on my Olympus E-PL1 and now my E-PL5, are set to anything less than full power with anything approaching consistency.

By both Oly manuals I should be able to conserve camera battery power by turning the flash power down, and still trigger the strobes. The recommendation was 1/64th. I can get intermittent firing on the E-PL5 only, at 1/3rd power set. The E-PL1 will not fire strobes at anything but full power (I've fired stobes in RC mode on it but lose ability to turn power down in RC.)

Last year I changed out one of my fiber optic cables when it suddenly stopped firing either strobe (I swapped cables to test), even though I could see it still conducted light.

Are the YS-01s just sensitive about the amount of light it takes for them to fire? Or am I missing soemthing really simple?

And if it matters, I use rarely use TTL. 99% of the time I am in Manual on the camera & strobes.

Thanks in advance.
(Yes this is a cross-post from the Sea & Sea group, I see very few replies there, historically.)

 

[Karloss]

Good question, I have noticed that mine drastically changes also.

 

[Furnari]

This may not be helpful, but at least it's another data point. I noticed with my old E-PL2 on 1/64, my YS-02 and YS-01 wouldn't fire. Both were fine with the next highest setting (can't remember what that was), and never had an issue. My M1 is ok with the lowest setting. Do you ever notice any variance with different camera batteries? Might be worth borrowing a fresh battery from a buddy- preferably an Oly battery fully charged on an Oly charger. I'd also check the ports where the fiber optic cable plugs in on the housings and strobes in case there's any gunk on there...

 

[ggibson]

Huh. I just recently picked up my YS-01 to use with my E-PL1, but I was able to get it to fire at the lowest power setting (1/64) as well as TTL. Most of my dives so far I've had it set to TTL for ease of use. I can't imagine having to shoot with full power on all shots... that would run down the camera battery in a single dive.

 

[samplin]

Huh. I just recently picked up my YS-01 to use with my E-PL1, but I was able to get it to fire at the lowest power setting (1/64) as well as TTL. Most of my dives so far I've had it set to TTL for ease of use. I can't imagine having to shoot with full power on all shots... that would run down the camera battery in a single dive.

I have a E-PL5 and the Olympus PT-EP10

Would you know where in the menus is the option to reduce the on-board flash power?

 

[smoore]

You actually do not go into the menu function to adjust this. Depress the right arrow key which should give you access to the flash function. This should bring up the flash menu at the bottom of the screen. Scroll over until you have highlighted full power. Then depress the info button and use the up and down arrow keys to select the power setting you want to use. It is also explained at page 33 of the manual.

 

[Wisnu]

Mine EM-5 and EM-1 have no problem with YS-01 at 1/64