Hi all,

I'm hoping for a bit of help diagnosing a strobe issue. The problem at hand is that I cannot get my strobes to fire using the fiberoptic cable along with the Nauticam flash triger on my Sony A7RII.

Here's what I know so far:

• The strobes are functional (and brand new, never used). I can fire them using the electrical sync cables, and they will fire in TTL or manual mode as set on the strobe. So, it's not a defective strobe, and the camera is set correctly to trigger a flash on exposure. (I'm shooting in fill flash mode on the camera.)

• The nauticam flash triger is functional. I have put brand new batteries in it, and I can see the light flash through the housing port when I take a picture.

• The fiberoptic cables are functional (to at least some degree). I can see the light flash at the strobe end of the fiberoptic cable when I take a picture.

• All surfaces the light signal passes through are clean and dust free. I just washed them all carefully with 70% isopropyl and visually inspected them.

• I believe light is making it through to the strobe, as I can see a faint flash of light from the front of the strobe when I take an exposure. I beleive that to be from spillover from the fiberoptic cable signal. It is NOT from the strobe filament.

So, what am I missing? Is there some setting/switch on the strobe body I need to enable for it to respond to the fiberoptic signal? Any chance the cables I have are just not transmitting enough light for the strobe to respond (and how could I test this)? Something else?

Any ideas or things to test would be MUCH appreciated. For now, I can work with the sync cables, but would much prefer to be able to use fiberoptic cables for the slimmer profile and lower chance of introducing a leak into my housing or strobe bodies.

There are two ports that the sync cable can plug into on that strobe, which are you using?

28 minutes ago, Grantmac said:

There are two ports that the sync cable can plug into on that strobe, which are you using?

I actually tried both, and simultaneously too, since the fiber optic cable is built to run two strobes. But, to directly answer, I initially used the one under the black spring-loaded flap (closest to the ball) mount.

Try trigger the strobe without a cable. Just line up the strobe's optical port with the trigger directly to the flash trigger and housing bulkhead. Direct line of sight. I don't know about S&S, but most strobes I have used can even be triggered with a bright dive light or even phone flashlight. Just move the light right over the optical port from a couple inches/cm away.

If line of sight does not generate a flash, then the strobe is defective.

If it does flash, then your optical cables are not transmitting enough light. Could be due to bent, damaged, or low quality fiber.

Aha! That's the test I couldnt figure out to do. And, it appears to be the cables. I can trigger the strobe using my super bright dive light, whether I do it directly, or through the cables. But, when I switch to a regular household LED flashlight, I can only trigger directly, but not through the cables. Same for the Nauticam flash trigger. So, I must be losing too much light between the housing flash and the strobe detector.

Thanks for the help! Now, to see about building some new cables with the DIY info on here.

Edited July 18Jul 18 by wdeutsch

38 minutes ago, wdeutsch said:

Aha! That's the test I couldnt figure out to do. And, it appears to be the cables. I can trigger the strobe using my super bright dive light, whether I do it directly, or through the cables. But, when I switch to a regular household LED flashlight, I can only trigger directly, but not through the cables. Same for the Nauticam flash trigger. So, I must be losing too much light between the housing flash and the strobe detector.

Thanks for the help! Now, to see about building some new cables with the DIY info on here.

Great. Message me if you want me to get some to you for a reasonable price.

FWIW I've had similar issues with strobes from other brand (Fotocore) for which the strobe light detector is known not to perform that well (unlike Inon or Retra strobes for instance).

Here are some actions that willl allow you to test and may improve the light transmission, at least it did on my side : (if none works, I'd suggest you purchase new fiberoptics, S&S multicore 613 fibers would be my choice)

• I assume you're using S&S type connectors : check your cable bush plugged into the strobe port. do not use double hole bush, it might not work (I got this hint from the owner), it seems critical that the strobe end cable is centered into the optical port, hence a single hole type.

• check how the cable connector is fitting in its hole (I had a loose one that didn't work). In this case I'd rather change the connector & use a new rubber bush : first cut the cable end with a sharp razor blade (not scissors!!!) and try triggering your strobe adjusting the cable end with various insertion depth into the bush (ie. cable barely visible from the bush end, protruding 1/2mm from the bush, etc.) until you get a consistant firing.

• Make sure your cable does not twirl too much around the strobe arms or the clamps, the light might be lost through those twirls.

3 hours ago, Luko said:

FWIW I've had similar issues with strobes from other brand (Fotocore) for which the strobe light detector is known not to perform that well (unlike Inon or Retra strobes for instance).

Here are some actions that willl allow you to test and may improve the light transmission, at least it did on my side : (if none works, I'd suggest you purchase new fiberoptics, S&S multicore 613 fibers would be my choice)

• I assume you're using S&S type connectors : check your cable bush plugged into the strobe port. do not use double hole bush, it might not work (I got this hint from the owner), it seems critical that the strobe end cable is centered into the optical port, hence a single hole type.

• check how the cable connector is fitting in its hole (I had a loose one that didn't work). In this case I'd rather change the connector & use a new rubber bush : first cut the cable end with a sharp razor blade (not scissors!!!) and try triggering your strobe adjusting the cable end with various insertion depth into the bush (ie. cable barely visible from the bush end, protruding 1/2mm from the bush, etc.) until you get a consistant firing.

• Make sure your cable does not twirl too much around the strobe arms or the clamps, the light might be lost through those twirls.

Interesting ideas. I wondered about the double hole bushing (as that's what the current cable has), and will see if a single hole with better alignment works. I hadn't thought of cutting the current connectors off and "re-plumbing" with new ones to check alignment. That's a great idea as well.

I'm getting a new set of better quality cables, but will try your ideas as well. If I can get these working, backups are never a bad thing to have. Thanks for the thoughts!

55 minutes ago, wdeutsch said:

I wondered about the double hole bushing (as that's what the current cable has), and will see if a single hole with better alignment works.

In a conversation I had with Oskar at Retra some time back, he mentioned that a centred hole in a bush was important for some strobes.

4 hours ago, Luko said:

• Make sure your cable does not twirl too much around the strobe arms or the clamps, the light might be lost through those twirls.

I was with you until this last point. Wrapping or twirling the cable has no impact at all. The bend radius of 613multicore fiber is 2mm before loss of signal will be a problem. Most vendors coil the cables more tightly than you are going to wrap your cables. As long as you don't tie it into knots it will work perfectly.

Anyways, just use some Velcro straps to fix your strobe cables to the arms.

Edited July 19Jul 19 by Dave_Hicks

I have had no problem with coiled 613 cable with any strobes (Inon, Retra, Marelux) but I have had with YS. I would use single bushing ends, not doubles, make sure you have quality multicore 613 type cable and fresh ends that are not recessed up into the bushing or plug.

1 hour ago, Nemrod said:

I have had no problem with coiled 613 cable with any strobes (Inon, Retra, Marelux) but I have had with YS. I would use single bushing ends, not doubles, make sure you have quality multicore 613 type cable and fresh ends that are not recessed up into the bushing or plug.

I will be heading this direction courtesy of some cables that Dave is making up for me. I tried fresh cut ends and a single bushing end on one of the cables I have, and it still didn't work. So, those must not be up to snuff (brand unknown and not labelled).

I'm not super psyched by the brightness of the little LEDs in the Nauticam flash trigger, so if the cables dave sends don't work, I'll look into one of the bright mini flashes on Amazon, and see how I can re-orient the flash element to be directed at the cable ports to get a brighter signal to the strobes.

I would skip the mini flash, getting it to work was a pain for me.

I'd look at one of these:

https://underwaterlightandmagic.co.uk/

3 hours ago, Dave_Hicks said:

Wrapping or twirling the cable has no impact at all. The bend radius of 613multicore fiber is 2mm before loss of signal will be a problem. Most vendors coil the cables more tightly than you are going to wrap your cables. As long as you don't tie it into knots it will work perfectly.

Anyways, just use some Velcro straps to fix your strobe cables to the arms.

I was NOT assuming OP had multicore 613 fiber (that's why I recommended purchasing this kind if he couldn't solve the issue).

Believe it or not when I had sync issues with older fiber optics, I found that sometimes unwinding fibers caught around the clamps and even loosen the velcro straps attaching the cable around the floats (I also use velcros for 2m cables) helped, it proved it worked "somehow" better.

Hence my experience is that for with lower quality fibers too much twirling does impact on the signal liability.

9 hours ago, TimG said:

In a conversation I had with Oskar at Retra some time back, he mentioned that a centred hole in a bush was important for some strobes.

Particularly important for LED triggers which only produce a narrow beam of light.

On the topic of 613 fibre cables, the YS-D2 historically has a history of difficulties in triggering due to a rather weak slave sensor and needs the very best optic fibre cables. I recall one instance where cleaning the windows the LED trigger fires through solved a problem. It will work though with coiled or straight cables if they are the 613 fibre variety.

Just to follow up for anyone who encounters this in the future:

I got brand new, quality 613 fibre cables (Thanks, Dave!), but they did not solve the problem. In trying to further diagnose, I can get the strobes to fire using the Nauticam triger, either with the strobe placed directly over the trigger (camera out of case) or directly over the window (camera in case), but the strobe is incredibly directionally sensitive when doing so. Only a slight tilt on any axis, and the strobe will not fire. No matter the orientation of the cable ends when using a cable, I cannot get the strobe to fire.

So, I think it's likely a combo of the weak(ish) signal of the nauticam trigger and the poor pickup of the YS-D2 strobe that is the issue. For now, I'll just switch back to using sync cables. I'm debating whether to disassemble the nauticam trigger and attempt to replace the LED elements with brighter ones, try a compact flash from amazon with a reflector to direct it through the trigger windows in the case, or just let this project die. I'm no so eager to use fiber optics that I want to invest $$$ on a new trigger.

Thanks, everyone, for the advice and help troubleshooting. Looks like just a bad combo of gear that may be unfixable. :(

Urgh, how frustrating. Using 613 fibre, clean knife-cut fibre ends, centring the cable/bush is about all you can do. As Chris posted, I think we’ve been here before with the YS strobes. Annoying.