Strobes - does this exist?

Are there any strobes available that can be fired with the push of a button on the strobe itself?

I'm sure the Nikonos SB104 strobe had a setting on the selector switch which allowed a test fire.

My old Intova SS4000 strobes had that:

http://www.digitaldiver.com.au/shop/product/int-iss4000

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I have not seen this option.

My nikonos sb105 has a test switch setting. None of my other S&S strobes have this.

You can manually test trigger optical slaves by using a camera flash. Your phone camera flash may even work?

Can you select the manual strobe output you want in the test fire on the Intova SS4000 and Nikonos SB104/SB105 strobes? Or does it do an unmodifieable light output?

Any chance you could take a photo of the switch to show how to produce this fire? I'm wondering how difficult it would be to do if you were doing it in complete darkness by feel.

sb105: yes. no. really easy to do by feel

google sb105 for images. you can also find the manual online.

p.s. maybe giving us a few hints on the problem you are trying to solve will give some other ideas. I do not think that hunting down an ancient sb105 is a good idea - especially if you want to take it underwater.

and i checked. the camera flash on my samsung s5 phone camera can trigger my S&S YS110a strobe.

I'm looking for ways to fire multiple off-camera strobes at a distance beyond what is effective optically from on-camera strobes.

Hi,
have you tried one of these:

Think you wanna use it in caves ;-))

That solution should normally work for your ideas.

Regards,
Wolfgang

Hedwig made me a triggerfish with a piezo switch in it - push to trigger the strobe plus it triggers off light flashes as per normal. Very handy! But I think they were a once off product rather than a commercial run. Other things I have tried include SB105s, the old ikelite substrobes which flashed when first turned on, and using a small LED torch pressed against a triggerfish attached to the off camera strobe. The torch is quite tricky to do with one hand but could be improved by using a push button torch and duct taping parts together. The rise time of the LED is enough to mimic a flash when you first turn it on.

Doing multiple flashes underwater during a long exposure requires minimal/no ambient light. I found a small back-up torch on the ground pointed backwards was helpful, and even then myself and my buddy swam into the walls a lot. Composition is tricky but I really liked the lighting impact of reduced on camera light. This photo is a particular favourite. No on camera flash and three strobes on the diver triggered manually during as I held the shutter open in bulb mode until I saw his strobes go off.

I guess the other option is to use a tripod and multiple short exposures, combined later.

have you tried one of these:

http://www.heinrichsweikamp.com/?id=43&version=en

 

Do these work better than Triggerfish? I love the Triggerfish, but sometimes I want to shoot further than its effective range. I also don't want to light the area around my camera all the time which is what ends up happening if you use the on-camera strobes to fire the off-camera ones.

https://www.facebook.com/InspiredToDive/photos/a.1519854804900757.1073741828.1515565758662995/1768404323379136/?type=3&theater

Liz knows exactly what I'm getting at. :-)

By you description, you want a trigger to be depoyed far way from the camera, to a set of strobes that are "connect in chain".

As you were asking for a strobe that has "test push button", I assume that the person that is going to trigger is prety close to the point you want to iluminate, and being so, you can use a small compact camera with flash on an housing to be the optical trigger to the other strobes (probably the flash from the compact camera does not iluminates has you want, but you can use it to trigger a triggerfish and/or a Inon type 4)

If you do not have a camera like that, you you can buy an old one on a few dollars/euros/pounds.

 

Do these work better than Triggerfish? I love the Triggerfish, but sometimes I want to shoot further than its effective range. I also don't want to light the area around my camera all the time which is what ends up happening if you use the on-camera strobes to fire the off-camera ones.

 

https://www.facebook.com/InspiredToDive/photos/a.1519854804900757.1073741828.1515565758662995/1768404323379136/?type=3&theater

 

Liz knows exactly what I'm getting at. :-)

Nope, the RSUs are much worse. The sensitivity/distance is about half that of the triggerfish and if there's too much ambient light they shut down and refuse to trigger anything.

I’ve had discussions with my dive buddy the nuclear physicist, and my Dad’s dive buddy, the guy who built the Challenger Deep sub. Both of them said that trying to change wavelengths from visible light to something else was impractical. The ones I looked at were:

Infrared (used by dry cavers a lot) – attenuation distance in water is about 7cm

Ultraviolet – causes eyeball cancer

Soundwaves – too slow, you’d be looking at shutter speeds of 1/15 or less over 80m distance

The best option I could see would be to introduce a delay in the system somewhere and still use the light as a trigger. For example, press the shutter but the shutter is delayed by half a second while the onboard strobe fires. The off board strobes are all delayed by half a second after they receive the flash. This would probably require some fine tuning (understatement!).

I forgot the other option - really long strobe cables and well disciplined buddies

I'm lucky - I dive with the world's most disciplined buddies. :-)

For reasons of cave conservation though I wouldn't like to consider a cable option. I can't stand scarred cave floors.

No long cables? How about short cables? Really short cables?

By asking about manual test controls, I assume you are happy with randomly swimming about and popping off flashes every now and then.

The following page is my goto reference for strobe electrical pinouts. Shorting the X and Gnd will fire your strobe.

http://www.camerasunderwater.info/engineering/ttl-flash

Conceptually you could make a very short cable with a X G switch and then swim that single strobe around for a Bulb image capture.

I do not have any grand ideas on how to make a simple water proof switch..

I'm lucky - I dive with the world's most disciplined buddies. :-)

 

For reasons of cave conservation though I wouldn't like to consider a cable option. I can't stand scarred cave floors.

You need a bigger tunnel :-) Long cables are better than tripods from a conservation perspective. You could consider laying one along the line during a setup dive and coming back to take the photo later.

The options I outlined require some DIY as they're not commercially available. The other option is to throw a lot of money at the problem - a few 10,000 lumen heads would give you enough power for reasonable pictures dependent on cave size and colour.