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.