Problem w/ S&S YS90DX

Yes Miki and I tried multiple sync cords. My gut feeling is that it's a strobe problem. Getting S&S to admit this is going to be tough though let alone having them do something about it.

One more thing to add. When the strobes do a full dump they will continue to work until they do anything less than a full dump.

Interesting. I had what appeared to be some hotshoe issues on the prototype A5000. Have you ruled that out?

My production model seems to work like a charm.

The reason I don't think it's the housing is because I can consistantly fire on strobe when the other is off, fire both strobes as long as they do full dump, use a Nikon F100 and hooked to the A5000 housing and everything works normal.

Stopped in at Nikon Repair today and asked to borrow a CP 5000 to test the problem. Just as I suspected it's not the camera. The two I tried did the same thing.

Here's the latest. I stopped by Sea&Sea again today to do some more testing. We've narrowed it down to the strobes. I tried two YS-120's using the dual sync cord and they worked fine. Now let's see what Japan has to say about it.

Hi. I'm new to u/w photography. I got a canon s40 with the wpc housing while I was in the US last June. The store I ordered my system from suggested I get a Sea and Sea YS 90DX strobe system (with the fiber optic cable) to go with it. I did. I also got the Sea and Sea wide angle and macro lenses and an adaptor among others. They did not get to mail it to me my YS90 until 3 months later. When it got to me (in the Philippines), I tested it (on land) and it fired twice. I put it away and took it on a trip in late November (I was just getting familiar with the camera and using it without the attachments since June). After setting up my camera, I found that the strobe did not work. It did not want to fire. Someone said that it probably does not work with the preflash of my camera. But when I read the specs, it says that it does. Perhaps, I set it up wrong. Help. I'm just a hobbiyist and I keep feeling I really made a big mistake with the flash I got. The only reason I got it is because the sales person told me that I would need it for wide angle shots. It seems that the strobe works because theres a little red light inside that is lighted when I turn on my flash. Please let me know what I should do. Thanks.

Latest news.

S&S US are getting a sample DX5000 housing next week. I will be down at S&S when they get it to run it through the ringer. I predict that it will have the same problem as my housing as the Nikonos connectors are very simple.

Are you convinced its not the batteries? Im listening to to this caerufully as I have just invested in a 90DX. I have had problems in the past with the YS 25DX & batteries. It appears that some AA batteries are actually slightly longer than others which could explain this. It may be worth digging out from the battery suppliers EXACT lengths and tie this up with the contact length within the strobes.

Suggest we all measure our batteries and see if there is any difference?

Now this is interesting I have just measured some Jessops 1500 NIMH's to be 49mm overall legnth. My new Panasonic 2000 NIMH's are 50/51mm. There is a clear visible difference here. Unfortunately, I do not have any Alkalines to measure.

Perhaps wes hould post battery measurements here & we can compare.

Mark

I think the problem is nothing more than a high resistance occuring on the battery cap.

Does the 90DX have the springs or the crappy leaf-type terminals? If it is the latter fit one sided self adhesive sponge between the leaf terminal and the plastic.

I had this problem with my YS120; when the strobe had a jolt the weight of the batteries causes the leaves to squash slightly away from the battery posts giving a high resistance.

The springs too can suffer like this, so just stretch 'em slightly.

The 90dx has the leaf type terminals on the cap. I will put something under them but I don't think this will help, we'll see.

Mark, I am convinced it is not the batteries because during our test at Sea&Sea we used all types of batteries including alkalines supplied by S&S. This has become a problem that is reproducable every time unlike in the begining of this thread because I now know what will and will not make the strobe work. Also, the fact that two YS120's with the same dual cord work perfectly, point to a problem with the 90dx model.

I do appreciate the feedback from everyone and will galdly try any suggestions. I'll let you know latter about putting extra support under the leaf springs.

Rob,

To test my idea shake the strobe up and down... If you can feel or hear movement it will be a resistance problem.

No, I don't feel or hear anything while shaking the strobes. I tried putting a little bit of foam under each tap to make the contact tight. It didn't make any difference.

I had the same frustrating time too including the purchase of extra cables, but that's all it was for me. It hasn't missed a beat in three years since the mod! Symptoms were loss of TTL, intermitant on/off etc.

Did you swap battery caps around?

Sea & Sea in UK said it seemed ok and had no idea why it was acting up; this didn't surprise me.

Best of luck anyway!

I did better than swap battery caps I tried FOUR other YS90DX's. They all did the same thing. I am working closely w/ Sea&Sea on this issue and will have more info next week.

This probably won't solve any of your problems but the topic shifted to batteries, so here's my 2 cents. Some brand alkalines have a thin coat of plastic on the bottom (negative side) of the battery. I'm not talking about the plastic wrapping which wraps the underside a little. The thin coat is not visible until you scratch it and only leaves a small portion of the negative terminal conductive. The plastic can be sanded off. Solved my lighting issues (intermittent HID light problem).

Update:

I stopped by Sea&Sea today to test out the DX5000 housing with the dual strobe setup. As I expected, the Sea&Sea housing doesn't work with the dual sync cord either. I really hope S&S will try to resolve the problem. If not maybe Ike can take a look at them for me

Aquatica sent me a double bulkhead to try out. I connected the double sync cord to ONE of the double bulk head connectors without installing it and it worked just fine. I was very happy to finnaly have a solution. My happyness was short lived. I installed the bulkhead and decided to try it out again. DOH!... it wasn't working again. . The only thing I had changed while installing it was the batteries in the strobes because they were dying. Hmmm, maybe that had something to do with it. I took ONE dead battery and combined it with three fresh ones and guess what, it works. The fact that it worked with the double bulk head connector was just a coincidence.

Any electrical engineers out there want to try to explain this?

I am going to send everything off to Sea&Sea Japan this week and let them figure it out.

This is because one of the cores is omitted in the secondary strobe sync lead to syncronise both strobes as one! This should have been done at the bulkhead maybe?

Sorry to hear it is still screwed. Please post anything you do hear further as I am interested. Especially since mine have worked. Remember the prototype housing had issues and would not fire the strobes. Maybe all along it was something else, although I have the same strobes and no problems. Humm

I am very curious....