Strobe anxiety

Hey people!!

Does anyone out there have any experience, great or disappointing, with the Sea & Sea YS25 DX strobe?

I plan to use it with my Canon S40 digital camera with pre flash. Will it work? Will I able to take great shots with it? Is it versatile enough to take macro as well as close focus wide angle photography?

Im just a newbie u/w photographer.

Urgent help please!

joyful sun

Hi Mike,

That strobe is very small, but it will work for macro photography.

In my opinion, it is completely out of the question for wideangle of any kind.

Macro is certainly a good place to start though.

Cheers

James

I am using it with Canon A40. So far it is too strong for macro photos. You have to set the camera in manual mode and set the light in White Balance Mode to be from Tungstane otherwise your photos will be too yellowish like mines.

Wasa,

What Fstop and shutterspeed were used for the above photo?

If you need help finding the exposure information for the photo drop me a line.

Cheers

James

James,

If I am not wrong it was 1/800. F 8.0 (I have only 2 choices between (F8.0 and F2.8 for that shutter, it is the way the camera set) Strobe set at minimum power.

The image above was enhanced already. This is the one that show you original look.

:ph34r:

Wasa,

did you use the diffusor ?

The photo reminds me of my MX10/YS40 days. Taking macro shots without diffusor produced results similar to your photo.

Sabine

Try setting your F stop to max (F8), shutter speed to max, a diffuser with the strobe (you can make your own), and if neccessary back the strobe away from the subject. A weak strobe should be fine for macro. I doubt the strobe will held much with wide angle. :ph34r:

I have a YS25-DX which I have used for about 40 dives.

For the first 20 dives, no problem. Then ...

Problem 1 - the way the batteries are mounted is a bit weird. I switched over from alkaline batteries to NiMH after about dive #20. Then I found that the strobe sometimes would not work unless I pressed on the outside of the battery case. After some investigation, I found the reason: the positive terminal of the battery (GP brand) is 0.5mm shorter than the alkaline battery, and it does not reliably reach the battery contact!! I don't believe there should be zero tolerance in the contact setup ...

After a while, I found that the same problem was occuring even with alkaline batteries. I ended up using my GP batteries with a folded strip of alumimium foil at the positive contact to complete the circuit. (I didn't mention this part to the Sea&Sea agent when I took the strobe in after the trip...)

After about dive #30, Problem 2 developed: the ready light would come on, but the strobe wouldn't fire. On the last few dives of the 40, it worked occasionally - usually only in the first 15 minutes of the dive.

When I got back from the trip I took it back to the agent where I bought it, and I just got it back again today.

For the problem with not making contact properly:

apparently they did something to fox it but they won't say what. I tested it and it works with alkaline batteries but not with my GP NiMH batteries (unmodified).

And for the problem of not firing when the camera did:

they said it must be either (1) because the optic fiber cable was dirty at the end (I don't think so, because looking at one end of it I could see changes in light when I pointed the other end in various directions) or (2) because I had set the strobe for the wrong number of pre-flashes (I really don't think I could make this mistake so many times ... once or twice in 40 dives I could believe, but this is ridiculous).

Incidentally it now seems to work fine (on land) when using the alkaline batteries. But I don't feel confident about next week's diving photos.

-David

I also share the same problems with Pattern.

Thanks for telling me why my GP batteries do not work with this strobe.

I have been figuring for a while.

About diffusor, I tried using the provided one but the photos came out very bad, like no flash at all... so I gave up the diffusor. Now I try to adjust the speed shutter and it works quite okay except the yellow tone of photos still remain.

May be I need some kind of guiding light too. Now I have only the strobe. I find it is very hard for my camera to focus when there is limited light.

wasa

I didn't do any rigorous tests, but it seemed that when I used the diffuser on mine with power setting 5 or 6 or 7, it was something like power setting 1 or 2 without the diffuser.

-David

I too have had numerous problems with GP batteries in both my YS90DX strobes and while charging them (or trying to) on my Ansmann 16. The positive battery terminals are too short and I usually have to pull out the battery terminals on my YS90 in order for them to make contact.

On a similar note, I have had the GP batteries conch out on me during the middle of my first dive (normally last 3-4 dives) and the culprit apparently seems to be a false charge. The Ansmann 16 and numerous other chargers show as if they've charged the batteries but to my surpise they die after just a couple of shots underwater. Either I have bad luck with chargers and GP batteries or there's something funky going on.

Update...

I discovered that in fact the YS25-DX sensor "sees" the camera flash in two ways:

(1) through the fiber optic cable, and

(2) (I think) through the darkened plastic body, via a "window" just under where the fiber optic cable feeds into the flash unit.

I took the flash on my last trip (just got back a few days ago). In the end it turned out that the fiber optic cable was definitely useless in daytime (still don't know why, but maybe the ambient light through the "window" swamps the little bit of light coming through the cable??? but then why did it work OK for the first 20 dives???) so I took it off. The flash works without the fiber optic cable at night provided the bottom of the flash unit faces somewhere towards the camera. It didn't work very often in daytime, either with or without the fiber optic cable. I didn't take the flash unit on any daytime dives after the first few.

Altogether not very happy ...

-David