RETRA Strobe Thread

It's now Sept 12th, has anyone received notice of shipping yet on their preordered Retra strobes?

On 9/6/2019 at 9:58 PM, serpentara said:

Are  these still on track for September/October shipping? I am looking to replace 2 YS-D2 (non j)

On a related topic, if I have a Retra LSD fitted for YS-D2 what do I need to fit it for these?  How much is the adapter? 

https://www.retra-uwt.com/collections/shop-for-lsd/products/mounting-module?variant=14941328834602

9 hours ago, Walt Stearns said:

It's now Sept 12th, has anyone received notice of shipping yet on their preordered Retra strobes?

Their website currently says shipping in October. Realistically I am not expecting my order until November.

For what it's worth, I just received an email from Retra that "we are now entering the final phase of the new Retra Flash production. We expect the majority of pre-orders will be sent out in the second half of October."

A production specification pair arrived with me today. Just took the photo below. 

I haven't seen the email sent out to those who pre-ordered. But my understanding from Retra is that they are well into the production run now - and they are planning to have all the pre-ordered strobes ready at around the same time to send out in the second half of October. 

I received the same email this morning.

They just announced connectivity with smartphones: 

Exciting!

Between a bluetooth receiver and high-speed sync capability, is it theoretically possible to trigger it off a housed smartphone over bluetooth?

I think bluetooth doesn't work underwater, so no.

Yeah, initially I thought it might work like air pressure transmitters, but I looked it up and 2.4GHz frequency used by bluetooth is absorbed almost instantly. Still, I wonder, how will the HSS flicker mode respond to getting triggered by a phone's LED flash? Not very long left to wait to find out, I hope.

Great to read about the flexibility introduced with the smartphone connectivity, the Retra guys literally thought outside the box.

One thing not mentioned in Alex’s video is the leak monitor / water tightness test. Hope this is still part of the specs of the production flash.


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

Yeah the leak detection is still part of the strobe. My video was a one-take-live effort - so I didn't remember everything - or explain everything quite as clearly as I would in an edited, written review. The App is awesome - they already added something for me to test in Egypt and I was able to update both strobes and to have a different function on one of the User modes!

Alex

Yeah the leak detection is still part of the strobe. My video was a one-take-live effort - so I didn't remember everything - or explain everything quite as clearly as I would in an edited, written review. The App is awesome - they already added something for me to test in Egypt and I was able to update both strobes and to have a different function on one of the User modes!
Alex

Am dying to hear some reviews of the new versions... I haven’t pre-ordered and am keen to do so, but unsure whether to choose the Primes or the Pros. Any hands-on advice comparing both would be greatly appreciated! M

Would love to hear an update as Retra were supposed to ship second half of October


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

Sent them an email last week and they replied within a few hours: 

"First packages are expected to go out at the end of October / beginning of November."

Based on this I am realistically expecting my order in end of November or early December...

My experience with Retra 1.0 was I had the strobes in my hands in western Canada less that 48 hours after they shipped from Slovenia.

It looks like the first severalpairs have been shipped (and received). I have it on good authority that one of WetPixel's' members may be dving with a pair in BC right now  

Hoping for mine before trip to Philippines in Dec.

What is the fastest shutter speed you can use with the E-Opto converter? There is no specs about this on the website.

Why would a LED trigger limit your shutter speed?

It's clear that this so called "E-Opto converter" is only an LED connected to a battery that is triggered by the electronics inside your housing/hotshoe. If you want HSS sync you need special electronics in your housing that mimic a speedlight on a hotshoe and fool the camera to synchronise correctly. Although HSS is an acronym for High Speed Sync the fact is that the system has no basis on speed or how fast the synchronisation is made! Basically it just needs to time the flash correctly and then the strobe does all the works by emitting a special long duration pulse. Here is a nice article explaining HSS: https://www.elinchrom.com/learn/hss-hs.html

Furthermore they say it works only for manual mode, not even TTL. Go figure, since the price is peanuts compared to TTL converters for underwater housings...