YS90 cordless TTL

Hi- am thinking about buying YS-90 TTL Duo to pair with my Olympus FL20. Hoping that the cordless ttl mode works ok. Saw a snippet here that cordless ttl was not so great. Advice please!

Welcome to the forum.

I've always found the slave sensor on the YS90 to work well. I have always been firing of another strobe, but it has never mis-fired

HTH

Lndr

Thanks for the welcome! Are the exposures in cordless ttl mode OK?

A TTL exposure is always set by the camera controlling the output of the strobe connected to the camera. When Sea&Sea call this stobe a cordless TTL they mean it will fire in slave mode (ie triggered by another strobe) to match the TTL firing of the primary strobe. Using my YS90Duo in this way I have never had a problem with it not firing as per the primary strobe. Exposure however can still be incorrect due to the way you set up the camera, or the camera not dealing with certain subjects (sand, shiny fish for eaxmple) <_< .

I'm not so sure how you would go firing two strobes in slave mode off the internal camera flash .... i would think you would lose a lot of control over bacscatter etc by working this way. So you need to make sure at least one of your strobes can connect to you housing, either by sync cord or fibre optic cable. Hopefully someone with a similar camera can chip in here ...

HTH

Lndr

Hello

just to inform you that if your FL20 fires preflashes, which i think it will

the YS90 will not work

its just a simple slave mimic gun.

it cannot detect or adjust for preflash so it will false fire when the FL20 fires.

Sorry to burst the bubble.

craig

Although i does work rather well with any camera that dont use PREFLASH

I think that pre flash is the anti red eye thing where the strobe does a couple of short flashes before the shutter opens- right? By setting the camera to external flash only the fl-20 (olympus external flash w/ oly housing) doesn't do this- tried is a couple of times on my wife... Am I right on this? If yes- you're feedback sounds pretty good!

Preflash lets the camera set exposure and is two or more flashes by the camera.

yes it could work, excepting that you are still depending on the onboard flash from your camera to fire the slave strobe. This is not an ideal situation as the onboard flash is a problematic light source at times and you generally buy a srobe as an alternative to this light source. Have you looked at the DX version?

The FL20 is an external flash by Olympus that has a dedicated housing- ttl is through cable. http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/...=1&accessory=49

DX version seems to have same cordless ttl feature plus more manual flexibility- can't seem to find it in Japan though.

Anyway, seems to be that cordless ttl on S&S strobes works well assuming- no preflash and external strobe.

Will get one in next couple of weeks and post how it goes.

Utsubo,

You are correct in your assessment. I'm not sure what OLY camera you're using but you said you have a selection within the camera to fire your fl20 only and disable your internal flash. I have the same setup with an SP350 and FL20 and it works well. I too am going to purchase another slave strobe so I'll be interested how this works out for you.

Cheers,

Gary

Guy's Guy's Guy's

your barking up the wrong tree.

MOST Modern TTL systems fire monitor preflashes, and olympus in no different than any other system.

your using a dedicated gun a the slave trigger, IT WILL fire a monitor pre flash first, You may not be able to see it, its nothing like red eye. you just will not see it.

why do you think we are all struggling with NIKON ITTL & Canon ETTL signal..

MONITOR PREFLASHES... we cant shut them off or else we will lose TTL

The Old TTL systems just simply sent a quench signal to the flash to stop its ouptut.

all new systems are much much more advanced in the way that TTL metering is acheived.

I really cant see it it working, as the monitor preflash will trigger the YS90 prior to the actual exposure flash firing.

Sorry again to burst the bubble

craig

I have previously used the FL-20 with my oly 5060 and it worked just fine for macro photography.

What are you after with the ys-90?

A second strobe to fill in the shadows and creating a more even lighting of you subjects? Or have you realised the fl-20s limitations with wide angle photography.

As I se it you have 3 alternatives.

One is to get another housed FL-20 and attach both with the dual athena cable.

The other is to get the athena TTL converter cable (I do not know if this is avaible as a dual cable)

I any case take a look at the athena page http://www.athena-opt.com/accessories.htm

The third option is to get the Mathias/Heinrich converter, either the one for the oly strobe connector or the one the with the nikonos connector.

http://www.heinrichsweikamp.net/blitz/indexe.htm

http://www.mike-dive.de/

Craig,

Consider my bubble popped So what is the solution rather than going to a dual TTL option as discussed by Vannar? The FL-20 has been great for small photos including fish and macro. The problem with the FL20 is WA shooting. Since the FL-20 also has an auto mode. This works by setting the strobe to auto and then preselecting 10 different outputs inside the camera menu. There is also a complete manual mode which I think just gives you a full dump. If I'm thinking correctly, both the auto and manual mode will not use TTL and should fire a second strobe?

Thanks,

Gary

Jonas,

Where do you buy the Athena options? Do you know how much these cost? The websites were...well...not real helpful haha.

Thanks,

Gary

I bought my dome from a japanese shop, there is a internetshop in austria too...

In the US, I havent the faintest!

Am just hanging out as you guys teach me the way to go!!! Thanks!

HI Gary

ok, here's my suggestion

when i was using Olympus on a professional backup basis, here was my setup

5060wz with WA Epoque 20mm

with a MIKE DIVE TTL converter (hard Wired) running Dual YS90 DUO's on a sea & Sea dual cable.

Check out www.mike-dive.de for more information on the conversion scrcuit and hardware required. cost is about £130

it work perfectly and gave me excellent results.

The Fl20 will be ok for macro work, but no good for wide work. if you dont fancy going down the TTL conversion route, then my suggestion is use a optical trigger system dual rig.

something like dual ys90 or dual inon d2000 will work just fine.

regards

craig

Craig,

Mucho thanks. My Daughter's braces just ate up my fundage for the year but those are great suggestions. I think I'll go the TTL route. One less thing to worry about underwater.

Thanks,

Gary