S&S YS-60 With Digital?

Someone gave me a YS-60/S strobe in brand new condition. This strobe was intended for the Motor Marine II system as near as I can tell.

I don't think the strobe has any sort of slave sensor?

Is there a way that this can be used with any digital camera? I was thinking maybe I could use a HeinrichsWeikamp slave sensor on my brother's Oly 5050 using the internal flash in the PT-005 housing as a trigger?

Does this work? Can the Oly be set to manual flash without a pre-flash or will TTL work with the HeinrichsWeikamp sensor by ignoring the pre-flash?

Also, I got the arm system to go with it. It has four ball segments with 2 clamps and a 2-screw mount with the T-mount system. Is there an adaptor for the Ikelite tray to the S&S ball size? I have such a thing for my ULCS arms but these ball are smaller.

Thanks

Hi,

you are right - no strobe sensor.

Your idea of the setup will work, but it has a disadvantage: If you use the camera's strobe as a trigger, your camera battery will be finished sooner, and also you need to wait longer before you can take the next photo because the internal flash capacitor needs to be recharged before you can fire again.

A possible solution (does ONLY work if the 5050 has a hot shoe -I don't know the camera-, and it is more expensive): Replace the strobe cord of the S&S with a chord that has a Nikonos connector at the end. Buy the Heinrichs Weikamp Oly TTL-Converter for the PT005 housing and replace the housing bulkhead.

http://www.heinrichsweikamp.net/#/en/olympusttl/

http://www.heinrichsweikamp.net/#/en/bulkheads/

I did this for my Olympus 350, works perfect.

If you use the external Converter for the Sea&Sea connector: In TTL you need the pre-flash. The camera triggers the YS60 for a pre flash, the camera gets a feedback and calculates the power output for the final flash, and the converter calculates the power output from the second camera trigger flash. It works, but... for example I found out that the results are better if you blacken the housings flash window in a way that the light from the internal strobe does not reach your subject and leave just a small window where the light will get to the external sensor. Otherwise you have a mix of internal and external strobe lightg which confuses the external sensor. (I have had this setup before but was not pleased with the results, so I sold the sensor and changed to my current setup).

See your camera manual to find out if the Oly can be set to manual flash.

Hope this is more helpful than confusing...

Jock

I had the YS60 and bought one of those adapters. It mimics the flash so you don't generally need to change your camera, it will just do whatever the flash does. The only change needed is if your camera is a 'non preflash' TTL model, you can check your camera on their site for compatibility and in the manual for what to do if so. It was quite useful when people were switching over to TTL and tons of these old YS60's were lying around.

It worked but you do have to work out your own attachment to the camera and mask off the flash well as said previously. As long as you're happy to do a bit of DIY, its doable, but I found it a lot of work myself, the big rubber band thing they give as a fastener was pretty unreliable in its placing so you really need to make up your own more rigid fastening for reliable functioning, they have lots of pictures of ones people have done on the site.

Its a fairly old strobe now so you might want to consider the cost of servicing as well and likely usable life, depending on what you mean by 'brand new' and what you'll do if the strobe dies fairly early on.

The cable is electrical so one nick and its stuffed, and its attached to the strobe making replacement expensive. Its also pretty bulky by todays standards. Id be more tempted to save up and get an Inon S2000 or one of the newer low end optical fired strobes myself, unless money was very tight indeed.

Dont know about the ball size issue sorry, are you sure it wont match? Lots of companies use 1 inch balls as a standard.

Otara

Someone gave me a YS-60/S strobe in brand new condition. This strobe was intended for the Motor Marine II system as near as I can tell.

 

I don't think the strobe has any sort of slave sensor?

 

Is there a way that this can be used with any digital camera? I was thinking maybe I could use a HeinrichsWeikamp slave sensor on my brother's Oly 5050 using the internal flash in the PT-005 housing as a trigger?

 

Does this work? Can the Oly be set to manual flash without a pre-flash or will TTL work with the HeinrichsWeikamp sensor by ignoring the pre-flash?

 

Also, I got the arm system to go with it. It has four ball segments with 2 clamps and a 2-screw mount with the T-mount system. Is there an adaptor for the Ikelite tray to the S&S ball size? I have such a thing for my ULCS arms but these ball are smaller.

 

Thanks

You are correct, no slave sensor on this YS-60 / S. It has a cable for Sea & Sea cameras with a 4 pin plug on the end (not a Nikonos 5 pin connector). The only way to make it work with a 5050 is to use the Digital Adapter S (Sea&Sea) from Heinrichs Weikamp: http://www.heinrichsweikamp.net/#/en/digital_adapter/ Order DA-O-S, for 92 euros by Paypal. This is a cool gizmo, a slave sensor you affix over the Olympus flash on the outside of the housing. I use black Velcro with cutouts. It is powered by the strobe through the cable, no batteries.

I would only use this YS-60/S in manual: on the camera, slave and on the strobe, manual not TTL. It tries to work in TTL, but I fried one doing it. So, use manual.